Developer HiFi Simulation Technologies took to its blog post to announce the release of its comprehensive weather simulation engine Active Sky FS for Microsoft Flight Simulator. The team announced the weather engine just days ago for the platform and has finally been released and brings direct MSFS integration and a whole set of cool new features.
About HiFi Sim Tech and Active Sky FS
HiFi Sim Tech has been developing immersive weather simulation engines for flight simulator platforms for over 20 years now. Their Active Sky series of products have been very popular among flight simmers on the FSX, P3D, and X-Plane series of platforms for their innovative features and realism. They are comprised of real-world pilots, programmers, and artists who strive for the most realistic weather experience possible.
Key Features
The headlining features of Active Sky FS include direct integration into the simulator, intricate weather presets and passive weather depiction modes that offer various levels of realism and variety, and active air effects that have customizable clear air turbulence, thermals, drafts, and wake turbulence effects. Furthermore, the product also features advanced historic weather with comprehensive global data in hourly archives and provides realistic changing weather as per the archived historic timelines.
Another exciting feature also includes enhanced cloudscape and thunderstorm depiction that enable different cloud types such as multiple stratus, cumulus, towering cumulus, cumulonimbus, stratocumulus, and cirrus variations. Moreover, the proprietary and innovative Active Sky Weather Engine is a major cog of the entire system and is the result of 24 years of active development experience in weather simulation engines.
Other features include advanced data collection, synthesis, modeling, and interpretation from real-world weather sources, ground snow simulation, comprehensive custom weather, different weather-based scenarios, and Navigraph/Simbrief integration. Active Sky FS also includes a voice feature to get weather updates over ATIS and their API (application programming interface) to integrate directly with the ASFS feature set and data.
Closing Notes
A very welcome addition to the world of Microsoft Flight Simulator for even more realism and a quick product announcement and subsequent release we did not see coming. HiFi Sim Tech’s Active Sky FS is available to purchase and install on simMarket, JustFlight Store, Aerosoft One store, and Flight1 Software. The product retails for EUR 23.00 exclusive of taxes. For more flight sim-based news, announcements, and releases, do check out our other articles on FSNews.
