HU Active Sky 16

R

rich12545

Charter Member
HiFi's new product looks fantastic. It can be used with any cloud texture program.

The technology behind ASCA includes optional tight integration with Active Sky 2016 to enable features such as Real-Time Texture Dynamics, which allow you to manually change or have your textures automatically changed multiple times throughout a flight without needed to shut-down and restart your simulator! The variation experienced throughout a flight with AS16 + ASCAis unprecedented, especially when flying through areas of varying weather conditions and severity. In addition, in ASCA’s Full Dynamics theme, simultaneous variation of up to 8 different texture sets (128 cloud textures total) are provided includingsimultaneous texture resolution to provide increased performance for certain cloud types that don’t require high resolution (such as overcast layers).

http://www.hifisimtech.com/asca/


 
Yes right but....


I stay with ASN, don't see revolutionary features AS16 vs ASN but the price is high if we will have AS16 for both sim (FSX and P3D). Pity than HiFi splits the price...

ASN (+REX) for me is VERY ok still:

MVC310R13_sqqpqah.jpg




I will wait for opinion of the others.
 
Just took off about 15 minutes ago on the first flight using the AS16 + ASCA. So far, so good.

Went thru Simmarket and got AS16 at the upgrade price, and ASCA is on sale until next month. The combo came to EUR 46.48 ($51 ?).

The big plus so far is having a matching set of graphics and weather program. Been using the old version of ActiveSky Graphics with every version of ActiveSky weather since 2007.

Really like the new GUIs.


FAC257
 
The most unique feature I've seen so far is the ability to change weather themes on the fly. As long as ASCA is installed with AS16, you can change entire weather themes & textures without exiting the sim. To switch out a theme takes less than 30 seconds and doesn't pause the sim in the process. I'm currently using the Global Dynamic setting, as it reads like that setting has access to all of the various theme textures.

Not sure why you would need to change themes in mid-flight, but it works really well.

I haven't installed the optional 4096x4096 HD textures yet (separate DL). Using the defaults at 2048x2048 (DXT), there wasn't any affect I could see on FPS between clear blue sky, and skimming through the tops of complete overcast. Haven't flown through any heavy weather yet to see what impact that has.

Also a correction to my earlier post. When moving the new install files over to the ActiveSky archives on my back-up drive, I forgot that AS2012 had a built in graphics/texture feature. I was using that one with ASN, until I switched over to W10. Been running ASN without the AS2012 graphics for quite a while and completely forgot about it.

FAC257
 
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