MSFS 2020 VS Active Sky FS VS Xenviro*What Weather app has the BEST Performance & Cloud Depiction?

[@onlyyou7171]

I'm more leaning towards active sky. Because the trade off of rendition to frames on the avg. In certain situations the depictions of the same weather is vastly different from active sky to msfs. However the difference between xenviro to msfs isn't that great. My issue is the rendition of what I think the scenery should look like at any given moment matches more with what active sky is doing. I'll have to go back through and look at avg frames on any given weather depiction between active sky and xenviro. It appears that xenviro has that, but I'll check. I'll have to say though, all the addon weather Sims are getting closer to each other and that is absolutely amazing for all us simmers. Such an amazing hobby for me watching the evolution for over 30 years. Many thanks to @2020 fs'ers. The work you do is exceptional.

[@2020fsers]

Thank you very much . I am partial to active sky fs myself but you do see that xenviro in some cases does perform better than msfs but not as often as active sky. But looking back some cases active sky has a better rendition and some cases xenviro does . The consistency is the same across the board and that is there isn't much lol in terms of which one is better at depicting the data. The other thing you will notice is that Xenviro had weather popping issues, and that is common no matter what smoothing level you use, but with Active Sky I don't have that issue. There are pros and cons but I figured best to let the viewer decide .

[@jakeperl5857]

Thank you, this is very helpful! Looks like a decent performance boost with AS over MSFS in most of the scenarios. Honestly as dramatic as MSFS clouds are, I don't think they're realistic in most situations. Love the soundtrack. Kind of like your video is being shown at Disneyland, and they commissioned John Williams to do the score 😁

[@2020fsers]

Thanks for the comment... I tried to pick music that wouldn't be too unbearable to listen to lol

[@BroncoAviation]

Still think MSFS beats both of those softwares in pure visuals. Thank you for the video. It's really great and informative as always 😊

[@2020fsers]

msfs does have some great visuals thats for sure but if you need extra performance then there is a clear winner here but i want to let you be the judge of that .I was very surprised when i was doing my testing .. your welcome and thanks for the comment

[@thomasbushman5022]

I like some of Active Sky's representations. Like in MSFS I have never seen lightning, I've only seen the clouds light up. I know it does happen, people have told me. But I have never seen it. I also like during some storms the clouds have a defined bottom in Active Sky, versus MSFS they are always puffy bottoms. I live near the Great Lakes and the weather patterns here often have defined cloud bottoms, and MSFS just never looks like it is here. I'm not sure about the accuracty though. Others have shown MSFS usually is more accurate. And Active Sky doen't have any clouds above a certain height. They need to fix that, because obviously airliners can get to greater heights.

[@2020fsers]

I saw the same thing with the clouds and having bottoms to them . Thanks for the comment

[@bwc1976]

I remember seeing lightning in MSFS when I first bought it, but they seemed to take it out in later updates.

[@RayKit]

Activesky is simply amazing.. sky textures and clouds 100x more realistic. Default msfs weather is generally very wrong. It's nice to see realistic cloud layering and turbulance. Flying and pproaches are generally more fun.

[@2020fsers]

Active sky is my preferred choice for sure 👌 thanks for the comment

[@steveflynn9279]

Thanks for putting this comparison together. Great approach to showing each engine. Currently I have REX 2020 Weather Force. Anyone have any thoughts on how REX compares to the other two?

[@2020fsers]

I also have Rex I decided to not include that into the comparison one because of the time that it would have taken and two I don't feel that it's up to the same caliber as the other two engines. It was better than the default live weather but since Microsoft up their game I think Rex fell behind. Thanks for the comment if you want to know my personal favorite it's active sky.

[@briancrawley8440]

It would be good to compare it to reality. I know that’s difficult, but I want one that’s more true to actual conditions. Any opinions on that?

[@2020fsers]

Yes I was trying to do that but I didn't want to compare exact placement of the clouds because that it cannot do. That's why I showed the radar and cloud cover on some of them so you can see which one is depicting the weather correctly.

[@gibanica87]

MSFS weather is like hollywood apocalyptic day

[@2020fsers]

lol yeah i think the same

[@nydelicious4u]

why when i activate ACTIVE SKY, MFS2020 weather turn off itself ?

[@2020fsers]

when you run active sky and using active sky depiction mode and not passive mode yes it will override msfs weather . i set the in sim to clear sky so i know when i see weather pop in that its working. when you switch to passive it then switches to msfs live weather(even if you have clear skys set in the sim) but uses active sky winds and turbulence .

[@nydelicious4u]

@@2020fsers so what would you recommend me or suggested leave it off or turn it on on mfs2020 when ACTIVE SKY IS ON ?

[@2020fsers]

I keep mine on clear sky's

[@nonfamous]

strange these fps differences, no matter what weather I use or live weather I have not even FPS differences?

[@2020fsers]

It all depends on how you have your latency balance between your CPU and your GPU load if you followed my guide on balancing your system and you have both CPU and GPU about even once you add weather in it's going to increase your GPU and that's what you want. So if your GPU load is higher than your CPU load then it will impact your FPS but if your GPU load is lower than your CPU load then it won't impact your FPS as much if at all.

[@2020fsers]

That's why I wanted to post all of my settings before I did the comparison so you see all of my settings that I'm using

[@jamesd6952]

Not a good test, the whole reason why I use MSFS built in weather is its smooth transitions when going from one form of weather to another. Sitting on a runway looking at the clouds doesn't really show this and that is the one thing that keeps me away from 3rd party weather addons.

[@2020fsers]

I haven't used any 3rd party weather app that have smooth transitions imo. The sim weather is best for that aspect.

[@bwc1976]

Stopped watching as soon as you said you weren't going to test turbulence. MSFS built-in weather already looks good, but is known for letting you fly through thunderstorms and clouds with absolute impunity. I'm looking for which add-on best simulates the dangerous consequences that were left out of vanilla MSFS.

[@2020fsers]

I can tell you that there is plenty of turbulence with active sky flying through mountains through thunderstorms it will definitely keep you busy on the controls. It is just very hard to try to show turbulence in a video and to replicate that across three different weather applications is almost impossible

[@briank3754]

Active Sky had a wind/turbulence engine that is fantastic! You can even just use AS for the wind modeling and keep the MSFS weather.

[@lknfly1166]

@@2020fsers i should have had an issue somewhere because using Active Sky I can still fly the A2A Comanche through TS without any danger in the sky, I have some turb indeed but definitely not as it's supposed to occur in such dangerous and unsafe weather! That was that point which made me leave MSFS back in the days because of the lack of realism in Live Weather until AS FS came out (90 % of my flights are still with Xplane12 that don't allow to fly a C152 even into dark CB because of huge turb/convective or ice) hopefully it is then the case in MSFS/AS FS then?... So far I haven't seen a video like that which could illustrate the "danger in the skies" ... I use Real Turb in the same time, maybe there is some conflicts between both of them, no idea or my AS settings are not set correctly but so far I don't see anything wrong in there. Let's dig! Thanks for the video Captain ;-)

[@lknfly1166]

Yesss I'd like to watch a video that could show how Active Sky consider the dangerous turbulence in CB/TS up/downdraft, convective and lethal turb in TS... I have to do more tests on my side because using msfs/Active FS in bad weather didn't convince me that much so far, there is turb yet but not that strong/dangerous as it is supposed to be like in xplane.12/Active sky, or even via Xplane 12 Live default weather where you cannot fly a C172 in TS, you will break the structure and kiss the ground, even with a 737. Maybe my Active Sky FS settings combined to Real Turb FS are wrong, I don't know, gotta check this out! ,-)