Question RE: AS2 and visibility in FS2004

[Guest rugerdog]

Hi all,With FS2004's default online weather, the sim sets a visibility layer close to the ground. If you are under this 'visibility layer' an overcast sky looks great, wonderful for a serious IFR takeoff. However, as soon as you climb above the visibility layer the overcast becomes translucent (you can see the ground through a solid overcast from above). I use 100 percent 3D clouds with a 60 mile draw distance and 100 percent coverage.On a typical approach into hardcore IMC (recently in fact on an approach into Fargo, ND, SFC report: snow, overcast at 600 ft, visibility 1 mile), FS2004's built an overcast that looked great from 23,000 feet during my initial decent. Climbing down through about 18,000 feet, the clouds became translucent and I could easily seen the ground and terrain features. At about 3000 ft I finally hit the true visibility layer and vis was finally set to 1 mile as it was supposed to be in the first place.It's like constantly hitting a wall of ground fog instead of getting the reduced visiblity from the outset in overcast from above as it should be. FSUIPC was able to deal with visibilty issues like this with FS2002 but I don't think it can handle the same with FS2004.This is rather typical of FS2004's goofy online weather system :( Will AS2 be able to correct this type of visibility phenomenon? Thank you.

[Damian Clark 1,273]

Hi there..It will help a lot here. First there is the overcast enhancement feature, which doubles-up the overcast layers for you, giving a better overcast representation when above the layer. Second, we set our visibility ceiling to just under the tops of the lowest cloud layer. Meaning better transitions (FS default uses the bottom of the lowest cloud layer). In addition we have station-based visibility smoothing, which doesn't really apply in your example here, but it is nice to have when transiting the weather station zones which all have different vis settings (currently in FS the vis switches immediately from one station to the next).Hope that helps!-Damian

[Romeo_Tango 143]

Hi Damian,Are you saying that there will be no more sudden visibility and cloud changes as we fly from one weather station to another?If so, I am sold.Robin

[Damian Clark 1,273]

Hi Robin,Yes and No. It all depends on the area you are flying in, how many reporting points, and the type of data supplied. Most of the time, no sudden changes. A huge improvement. We've solved many FS9 issues, vastly improved many more, but some were unavoidable, so we're not going to advertise this as fixing ALL of FS9's less-than-desireable issues... That is impossible. But this add-on was specifically designed to make the most of FS2004 and get around these problems as much as possible. Station-based vis smoothing WORKS, when going from one reporting point to the next the vis won't automatically switch, it will update at a rate of no more than 1/2 mile change per 5 minutes (this is variable though depending on the transitionary visibility).Local-range suppression WORKS so no stations within your range are updated, so no cloud changes, UNLESS you're in an area with no reporting point coverage and only global wx is supplied (it has to update at some point). The area beyond your local range is being updated though, so the weather stays fresh, accurate, and smooth as you fly through it.Hope that helps...Damian ClarkHiFi Simulation SoftwareDeveloper of ActiveSkyhttp://www.hifisim.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004betateam.jpg