FSMeteo and ATIS/AWOS reports

[Guest]

Hi folks.Curious about the ATIS/AWOS reports available within Flight Simulator 2002 and how it compares with actual set weather.I use FSMeteo to get real weather. It works fine. The weather settings in the sim are what FSMeteo says they should be. I usually double-check the winds with the handy display in FSNav (lower left corner). Recently (now that I have sectional charts) I've been tuning in ATIS/AWOS stations of nearby airports to get the conditions in a more realistic way, but what is reported is frequently not what the weather conditions actually are.Are the ATIS/AWOS reports just generally inaccurate, or do they just not get updated when FSMeteo updates the weather in-sim?--Tony

[Guest KenG]

In real life, ATIS/AWOS/ASOS are sometimes pretty accurate, other times way off. ATIS is probably the most accurate as they are usually backed up by a qualified human observer. The AWOS at my home airport is notorious for being way off with respect to sky conditions (clouds).As for FS2002 and FSMeteo, what's probably happening is that either FSMeteo isn't downloading weather for that station at the current time, or it is far enough away (and has had the weather downloaded) that but the weather FS2002 is displaying at your current location is somewhat different. If you have FSMeteo set to download periodically, it will only get/load the weather for your local area, not that of all the stations you could tune in to. Therefore, if you tune into a station that is outside the radius of the weather FSMeteo has acquired, it's going to be wrong. The only way to correct it is to either just download all the weather at one shot (similar to the default FS2002 real world weather) or go into FSMeteo and tell it to get that stations weather.When I fly, I always tell FSMeteo to get my destination weather as well as the current weather. That way, I can check on the local conditions at where I'm landing without them changing on me at the last second when FSMeteo downloads info for the next station.In short, the way FS2002 handles weather is kind of messed up. FSMeteo does its best to give you good transitions and accurate weather. The ideal thing would be if FSMeteo would download the whole world weather periodically and adjust it accordingly. However, that may be a problem for those with slower internet connections (i.e., without broadband).

[Guest]

One thing I think you missed. I don't have FSMeteo, but I bet it works off of METAR reports. If that's the case, then you should know that METAR's are typically issued only once an hour. When you tune in ASOS and AWOS, you are getting real-time conditions. ATIS is typically updated every hour or whenever changing conditions warrant an update.