Don't you just love FS Real weather?... ..NOT!

[Guest]

Hi allI decided to give the default Real Weather download ago, being interested to see how FS would display the miserable UK weather.... to my utter amazement, FS RW came up with some weather that was TOTALLY incorrect of what it's like out of the window @ the moment :-lol.Weather for EGKK area:Real life, now: Low overcast skies, frequent rain showers.FS RW: Scattered cloud, unlimited vis, no rain.I then decided to try out Shoreham weather (EGKA), it was saying clear skies, unlimited vis, no rain :-lol :-lol YEA RIGHT!!!!As you can see it's not just the weathermen who get the weather wrong, but FS is doing it as well,.. MILES OFF. It proberly thinks that summer weather (very high temps etc) is what you'd expect during winter :-lol.There any more accurate programs out there (as i know there are) but what are they called and where can i obtain them?Cheershttp://ftp.avsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3deb3be16daac29d.jpg

[Guest Josve]

Go and get ActiveSky 1.5 it's here in the library I think :)Johnny"I'LL BE BACK"[div align=center]http://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/josve/zone.jpg ][/div

[Guest dogknot]

Yep, ActiveSky 1.5 (freeware) will do the trick even though it does have some limitations. ActiveSky wxRE will be released in mid December as payware (around $15.00 U.S.) and is/will be truly an awesome dynamic weather generator. It uses real-life METAR/TAF reports. You can find out more from Damian Clark, its creator, right here in the Forums. Look for ActiveSky. http://ftp.avsim.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboa...&conf=DCConfID6

[Geofa 108]

Most weather reports (the duats in the US pilots use for instance) are updated hourly-the duats at 8 minutes before the hour (10:53 am, 11:53 am etc.). If the weather is changing greatly or something amazing or not forecast is occuring, special observations can be put out at any time.I you go flying at 10:44 am in the US you would be using a report possibly almost an hour old-if the weather had changed since then and there was no special put out you could have something different.Then there is the fact that sometimes reporting stations don't report in-leaving a blank forecast for that station ,or one that is several hours old.When you get the Ms live weather-if you click on the chart it will show you the reporting stations MS is using and what they are reporting.The other day here in Detroit it was snowing like crazy-I was supposed to go flying for real, and the duats weather continually stubbornly reported that it was a great day for flying-even as the snow accumulated to 6 inches-so yes the forecasters get it wrong too.No matter if your program uses fs's data (which I beleive is Jepp) or Metars, or another source-you will always have a case of a single station sometimes missing, or a possibly old report for a single station, or combination. http://members.telocity.com/~geof43/Geofdog2.gif

[Guest danowat]

Hi Will,Its funny you say that , as yesterday I did a flight from Bristol to St Mary's on the scily isles, and it was suppposed to be cloudy and raining.The weather that I got was nice bright sunshine!!!.So not quite as real as it gets!!.Dan.

[Guest]

Cheers guysTotally agree with you all, especially Geofa. We'll have to wait until there is a time where the satellites up there are able to "scan" the weather below and duplicate all the correct cloud shapes/formations in our simulators (what would that be, 100000GB of data :-lol ;) )I'm off to get this Active Skycheershttp://ftp.avsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3deb3be16daac29d.jpg

[Guest Simicro]

FS Weather engine use Jeppesen server for METAR downloadother add on use - NOAA- VATSIM- orhers ?hard to tell which is more accurate or has the greater coverage around the globe !

[Gavin 99]

What ####### me off is the 'no weather areas'. I don't mind if the weather's not 100% the same as outside, but I hate it when I'm flying along, battling with the elements when suddenly the world goes perfect. This seems to happen a lot over France. Now maybe our French friends know something we don't, or there is a problem with FS2K2? I realise that France is not in the USA but would like to have some weather there.It's a shame that Microsoft don't consider this type of problem serious enough to warrant a patch. I know that creating a program that covers the entire world is not an easy task, but if 'Real weather' works around Heathrow, why can't it work over France?Of course it could be some problem with my PC. If so I'll shut up.Keep smiling!Gavin

[MikeB 0]

It's not a problem with FS2K2 it's a problem with the available data. A patch wouldn't help because the program is doing exactly what it's supposed to do; it's downloading the available hourly observations and updating it's weather generator. If there is no data available then there is nothing for the weather generator to work with. I happen to live in the northeast U.S. where there are a lot of reporting stations with plenty of overlap. When I do local flights the weather is more often than not correct.Mike

[edetroit 933]

I disagree Mike. On my Fs there is never real weather in North FranceI think it is an FS problem.......The French simmers must be well ######......any French simmers have the same problem?In fact FS weather leaves a lot to be desired....I was at Heathrow (EGLL) the other day .The start of my takoff run was dense fog and just before Vr bright sunshine!...gave me one hell of a shock! :-lol Ed

[Damian Clark 1,231]

"No matter if your program uses fs's data (which I beleive is Jepp) or Metars, or another source-you will always have a case of a single station sometimes missing, or a possibly old report for a single station, or combination. "Hi Yes this is a limitation of the way METAR reports are. There are a few solutions to the problem... one is to use TAF processing to dynamically change weather according to the forecasts when the METAR starts going out of date (common in many areas of the world). wxRE has this technology and is much better than traditional METAR ONLY processing.Another solution is to intelligently process your planned route and filter out (or dynamically alter via interpolation) any station that doesn't agree with the average conditions or has an invalid/old metar reporting time. This kind of logic is coming in a future version of wxRE, and combined with TAF processing will really make things much more realistic.Another thing, the FS2002 weather server seems to be really bad at updating valid metars outside the US. It also has a bug where if you have 'download winds aloft' checked it will use even older weather data. ActiveSky 2002 v1.5 will fix this.. it uses direct NOAA data which tends to be much more up to date than FS.-Damian[table border=0" cellspacing="30" cellpadding="0][tr][td align = "left"]Damian ClarkHiFi Simulation SoftwareDeveloper of ActiveSkyThe next-generation weather environment simulation for FS2002!http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky[/td][td]http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxresmallbanner.jpg][/td][/tr][/table://http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/ima...][/tr][/table

[Guest]

Hi EdIt seems that Northern France then has a similar problem with there not being enough places that record and send weather data such as METARs. I think i'm correct in thinking that not all airports around the world deal with METARs, or send this info - that's where this problem remains, the more the merrier you could say.Just imagine a station located every 20 miles N/S/E/W scattered around the world recording all this data, then FS would be excellent from a weather data aspect. Programmers would be able to proberly blend the cloud formations in an area of such close proximity.It's proberly a fair bet that MS will take photos of the sky next to make it look real, instead of going into too much depth of the types of weather we'd all like to see - suppose it's better than nothing :).http://ftp.avsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3deb3be16daac29d.jpg

[Geofa 108]

I agree completely with Mike-and here are the pictures to prove it.The first 2 are of the Paris area-the first shows a high concentration of reporting stations in Paris-but what happens when you for instance head east? After getting out of the zone of Paris, there are no more reporting stations-no more weather.The second shot zooms out to a good bit of the country. Look at all the gaps in station coverage!Look at the 3rd image which is the Detroit area-a high concentration of stations that pretty much overlap-quite a difference.The Michigan one is zoomed way in-whereas to get the same relative number of stations for France I had to zoom way out. It is possible here to fly from one airport to another and even have weather transitions as the stations are plentyful and close.Now the appropriate question (especially for us who don't live in for instance europe) is-are there really so few reporting stations available? If so-then MS is doing the best job it can. If not....Regards,http://members.telocity.com/~geof43/Geofdog2.gif

[Guest]

It would probably be easier just to set your weather manually for low cloud, about 7/8 overcast, light rain, winds 270ish/10kts, vis 5 miles and use those settings for every flight. Let's face it, this year there haven't been too many days when this hasn't been the case in Britain. :-)

[Guest]

I agree with all. FS' idea of "real weather" using Jeppensen sucks at best. I've been using FS-Meteo since it first came out and have very accurate weather dl'd from it. I have it set to update every 6 minutes (even though the reports are hourly) and if it's raining at O'Hare, it's raining in FS. What I hate about FS weather is that it only gives me 1-2 cloud layers (as well as being miles off in accuracy), whereas FS-Meteo gives me as much as 4+ if the report calls for it and is very accurate. I only live 10 miles from O'Hare, so I can verify quite a bit as well as pick up the communications over the internet.I haven't tried Active Sky yet, I suppose it works very well. But I'm kinda partial to Meteo. If it's not broken... don't fix it. :D There are a number of weather generators available, so try some. I can't help but be surprised that you would post a complaint about FS' weather tho. It's old news and many are (and have been) aware that it is NOT as real as it gets for quite some time now. Very few people use FS weather these days unless they're just starting simming.Happy flying! :-)Mike Baumann