Hello Damian, JimI hope you can help me with the visible result of below METAR found in the screenshot. Visibility is set to 10 which reads as unlimited if I'm right. In real life (now :-)) the sky is abolute clear and bright blue. How come the weather resulting in FS2002 after processing the METAR is this different? See the cockpit screenshot from a PSS A320. Could this be caused by ExtendMetarMaxVis=Yes in FSUIPC.INI? Or can this be caused by misinterpreting the variable winds section (050V120) in the METAR? This was reported as a bug in this forum some time ago, confirmed by you guys. Did the fix for this make it in the v1.6 release? If not, I would very much appreciate to get it fixed, as variable winds are very often mentioned in the EHAM (and many Dutch) METAR's. In the wxRE statuswindow I noticed METAR Clouds A Density set to OVC. Can you tell why this is set? A did look in the docs and checked all settings I can think of. As there are many variables involved here I could be overlooking something. Can you help?Thanks and kind regards,Hakkie

Hakkie,I saw your post, went to EHAM, got a METAR close to yours, but without the variable winds. Sky was mostly clear. I run with ExtendMetarMaxVis=Off. Everything seemed to match up, AS and FS. I'll let Damian or others come along for further insights.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Support

Thanks Jim. Could you try to input the METAR string inlcuding the variable wind into the CUSTOM WRITE. Would be interesting to know if visibility/clouds changes after a while with your setup. I will disable the ExtendMetarMaxVis and see...

That was a good idea. I did so and got a nice, clear, blue sky. Now, let's do the opposite. You write a custom string using your example and remove the variable wind part. Share what happened when you get a chance.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky SupportEdit: I went back to online mode and got a METAR with variable winds. I went into FS and got clouds like in your original post. But with me, the clouds come and go. Damian is going to be around to see this post I'm sure, but if he doesn't, I'll point it out to him.

Hi again,Well, I had already done this. But as I wasn't sure if I had all my settings correct, I thought the problem was mine and not with the variable winds. If I remove the variable winds from the METAR the visibility returns. This ofcourse takes a while due to the graduated/smooth visibility settings. Let's see what Damian's findings are...Have a nice weekend and regards,Hakkie

Hi,From the screenshot this looks normal. Your OVERCAST VIS REDUCTION is enabled, correct? If so, when an overcast layer exists the visibility will be reduced to 3.5 miles to simulate a "gloomy" horizon. Some prefer not to reduce vis during overcast, and thus you will get a blue-band effect as FS2002 doesn't do the horizon well for overcast conditions when vis >3.5 but you'll get the absolute correct vis as reported by METAR (as well as any random extend via FSUIPC). Does this help?-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/wxrebeta.jpg][/td][/tr][/table://http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/ima...][/tr][/table

Hi Damian, yes I've got the overcast vis reduction set. But what is causing an overcast layer to be set in this case? CAVOK means Ceiling And Visibility OK. I noticed that whenever this is reported by airport EHAM the sky is completely blue and clear. If it is not a decoding problem with the variable wind section inside the METAR, then it is something in this TAF that sets an overcast? I tried to decode the TAF but could not find all abbreviations. Could you make a one time exception and decode the TAF part for me? To me it looks like the first line does not only contain a header but also forecast info. I really try to understand what's going on... :-zhelp

Hi,CAVOK means ceiling above 5000ft, which is true in this case, the ovc layer is above 5K. I will be adding an option in v1.7 that will disable random cloud generation during CAVOK conditions, which may (or may not) be more realistic depending on which area you are flying in. But for you it sounds like this will yield better results. Hope that helps!-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/wxrebeta.jpg][/td][/tr][/table://http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/ima...][/tr][/table

Thanks Damian. Yes, in my particular area CAVOK really means 'clear blue sky'. An option to disable random clouds -didn't know this was hardcoded- in CAVOK circumstances would certainly create a realistic representation of actual weather conditions. At this moment it's almost the opposite. If a CAVOK situation is reported the wxRE result is not at all reflecting the actual Dutch weather. I must say that disabling OVERCAST VIS REDUCTION does create a realistic CAVOK visibility. Being able to switchoff the random clouds would make it perfect.As v1.6 was supposed to be the final FS2002 version, I feel sorry to hear you're thinking about creating a v1.7 now ;-) Or is this v1.7 the COF version?Thanks again for your time!Hakkie

I second Hakkie's opinion.In the same way, I get often similar weather situations, when METAR reported CAVOK.Damian, it would be great, if you could include a different coding in 1.7 for CAVOK-conditions.Thanks in advance!

Hi,1.7 was unplanned but now deemed necessary to include offline aloft download capability. So I'll be working on that and a couple other minor things including option to turn off random cavok cloud generation. Thanks!-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/wxrebeta.jpg][/td][/tr][/table://http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/ima...][/tr][/table