StrataSim Designs today announced StrataFx, a new desktop application for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 that shapes how the simulator renders the atmosphere: the colour of the sky, how light scatters through the air, how high that scattering reaches, and how haze gathers toward the horizon. StrataFx is in private alpha now. Wider testing, pricing and a release date will be announced later.
StrataWx, the studio's weather engine, decides what the atmosphere is doing: where the cloud sits, how hard the wind blows, how far you can see. StrataFx is the other half of that picture. It decides how that atmosphere looks.
Not a filter
StrataFx does not lay a colour grade over the finished frame, and it does not swap out textures. It adjusts the values Microsoft Flight Simulator's own renderer uses to draw the sky, so the result is lit, scattered and composed by the simulator itself rather than painted on top of it afterward.
A look that changes with the flight
Most sky presets are snapshots. A look tuned for midday can be wrong by dusk, and wrong again under an overcast. StrataFx presets are curves rather than single values. Its look engine reads the sun's elevation, the local time and the visibility from the simulator, and glides between settings as those conditions change. A late-afternoon departure and an arrival after sunset can each look right without the pilot reaching for a slider.
Precision you can actually use
Every control has a number beside its slider, accurate to nine decimal places, so a value can be typed instead of chased. Colour channels can be locked together or tuned one at a time. Any control can be reset on its own, a whole group can be reset at once, and a finished look can be saved, exported as a file and shared with another pilot. The editor holds thirty-two controls in three groups: the atmosphere itself, the environment's light and tone, and how weather is depicted.
Built to put everything back
Changing a renderer's values is only acceptable if you can return them exactly. StrataFx records the simulator's original values before it touches anything, and stopping, restoring or closing the app each return every value to precisely what it was. In the alpha's acceptance run on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, all twenty live controls held their targets across 1,688 readings each and then restored exactly, with the simulator's original state confirmed afterward.
Two more safeguards are deliberate. StrataFx only writes to a simulator build it has verified: when Microsoft Flight Simulator updates, StrataFx stays hands-off on the new build rather than guessing, until that build has been checked. And in the alpha, nothing is applied until the pilot presses Apply. It runs as a normal application with no administrator prompt, and it is code-signed by StrataSim Designs LLC.
“Weather tells you what the sky is doing. It has never decided what the sky looks like, and for most pilots that part has been one preset they set once and live with. StrataFx is built so the look follows the flight. Dawn should look like dawn. And when you stop, everything goes back exactly as it was.”
What the alpha does today
The private alpha applies twenty sky and environment controls live, including Rayleigh scattering, particle scattering, scattering height, scattering intensity and the particle distribution that shapes haze. Lighting and weather-depiction controls are already in the editor, and each one will go live once it has been verified in the simulator. We would rather ship fewer controls that hold than more that drift.
Made to fly with StrataWx
StrataFx is a separate product with its own licence, and it does not require StrataWx. The two are designed to work together: StrataFx can connect to StrataWx running on the same machine, and both install, update and license through StrataSim Manager, the studio's free desktop hub.
Availability
StrataFx is in private alpha for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 on 64-bit Windows. It is not yet for sale. Wider testing, pricing and a release date will be announced at stratasimdesigns.com.
About StrataSim Designs
StrataSim Designs is an independent flight simulation studio. It makes StrataWx, a real-world weather engine for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 and 2020 with a separate edition for X-Plane 12; StrataSim Manager, a free hub that installs, updates and licenses the studio's software; and the StrataSim Shop, a marketplace for independent flight simulation developers. Learn more at stratasimdesigns.com.
Media
For interviews, review access as testing widens, or anything else, write to hello@stratasimdesigns.com. The StrataFx mark, the screenshot above and our in-sim photography are free to use in coverage of StrataSim Designs.