Active Sky development team faces uphill battle to bring weather engine to MSFS

Weather enthusiasts in flight simulation who have been eagerly awaiting the release of Active Sky for MSFS may have to wait a bit longer. In a recent statement from HiFi Technologies, the development team behind the popular weather engine add-on revealed that they continue to face significant challenges in bringing their product to MSFS.

“We have received many questions about any potential Active Sky for MSFS2020,” the team wrote in the statement. “We wish we could offer more information, but at this time we are very limited.”

The primary challenge, according to the team, is that Microsoft and Asobo have announced they will not offer weather API functionality to enable an Active Sky-style add-on. The reasons behind this decision are unclear, leaving developers struggling to find workarounds.

“Some developers have attempted to work around the lack of API and extensibility of weather in order to offer some basic weather control, but these solutions, which we have also attempted and have been working on, have so far been very limited and unable to provide the kind of weather engine experience and utility that we had hoped for,” the statement continued.

Despite these challenges, the Active Sky development team has made some promising progress and continues to work hard to bring some kind of custom weather solution to the simulator. While HiFi was not able to provide any concrete details about their progress, they have promised to announce more information about these solutions in the near future.

Active Sky has long been a favorite among flight sim enthusiasts, offering highly accurate weather simulation and real-time weather updates. The lack of access in the SDK to the weather engine in MSFS may be a significant setback for HiFi, but fans of Active Sky remain hopeful that a solution can be found.