XPL

Product Information

Developer

HiFi Sim Tech

Purchase From

HiFi Sim Tech

Price

€35.99

BUY HERE

Version Reviewed

7205

Press Copy Provided By

simMarket

FSElite's preferred Flight Sim vendor is SimMarket. (Why?)

As per our Community Charter, all of our reviews are free from bias, prejudice and favouritism. Don't forget, each reviewer has their own style and thoughts, although they all abide by the Review Guidelines - something I suggest you read.

There is no question about the impact of ActiveSky for P3D and how it really brings the weather to life. HiFi Simulations has been working on bringing their renowned weather engine to X-Plane for about three years. In December of 2018 Active Sky for X-Plane (known as ASXP) was born. The add-on is a welcome addition to the default simulator weather and injects a more realistic and exciting feel to flying around the globe. I’ve had ASXP for a while now and I would say I have just about mastered the complexity of the system. If you were sat on the fence as to whether you should take the plunge, then I’ll hopefully help you make that decision.

GETTING IT INSTALLED

Initial installation was quick and easy, the system installs all the necessary files into your X-Plane root folder, including ASConnect – the plugin that allows the system to communicate with your sim. Once all that is done, all you need to do is login to ASXP with your email and password. You set this up on activation, where you’re also prompted with the question ‘would you like to install the ActiveSky weather textures?’ This alone is worth the cash – the upgraded textures for clouds in X-Plane really make an immediate difference. Not only do they look great, they are easy on your frame rate too. I normally get about 40 FPS in the air using the FlightFactor A320 rendering overcast skies with ASXP. This isn’t too dissimilar to using the default X-Plane clouds and weather system. By no means are these volumetric clouds, they are just texture replacements, so you still get the rotating cloud effect, but this does make a big difference to the clouds and realism overall.

Product Information

Developer

Cremonasoft

Purchase From

X-Plane.org

Price

$59.95

BUY HERE

Version Reviewed

1b

Press Copy Provided By

Self Purchased

FSElite's preferred Flight Sim vendor is SimMarket. (Why?)

As per our Community Charter, all of our reviews are free from bias, prejudice and favouritism. Don't forget, each reviewer has their own style and thoughts, although they all abide by the Review Guidelines - something I suggest you read.

We really are in the golden age of the classics within the X-Plane community at the moment. We’ve recently had FlyJSim update both their 732 Twinjet and 727 Series, while we have Felis working on a 747 Classic, along with Rotate’s MD-11 looking like it may make a release in 2019. We were also recently graced with the Cremonasoft A310, which was announced drawing much anticipation from the community looking to get into a classic Airbus. Following the release some days later, the criticism started flowing in. In this FSElite review, we’re going to take a closer look at the aircraft and find out if the criticism was justified.

The A310 was the successor to the first ETOPS-compliant aircraft, the A300. Both were designed for medium-to-long range use by Airbus, which was then a joint-venture between a number of European aerospace companies. Following the prototype’s maiden flight in 1982, Airbus sold 255 of the model to a number of commercial and military operators before being discontinued in 2007 and existing freighter orders being replaced with the A330-200F.