Hi Mike,What is the valid time for the wx you are using here? All of these symptoms point to the data problems we have been experiencing (which are hopefully over now). As a test you can use an archive prior to 03/02 to confirm you are using valid data.Damian ClarkHiFi Simulation SoftwareDeveloper of ActiveSkyhttp://www.hifisim.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004betateam.jpg

Hi allJust to confirm, a couple of minutes ago, I used Build 90 and the flight processing worked superbly - very quick. I like the new box which appears warning us to wait whilst the data is being processed. Now I'll bet that was done just for me - ta very much !Bud

Hi Damian,Just did my first flight also with build 90 from Denver (kden) to Las Vegas (klas). I had no problems with loading the flight plan into AS4 took about 1 minute with 9 waypoints. I do not use route smoothing since it gives the correct 'average' winds, but not the real winds for the postion, just a personal preference.The clouds rendering was perfect and no popups very good team.The only problem today was an occational wind shift not huge, but just a fast shift about 20 degrees.Damian if you can stop these little shifts this version of AS would be perfect. Everything else worked just perfect.CheersBob

Hi Damien,All is fine now. Must have been a data problem as you mentioned. The time for the SWBC metar was 042100z and the actual time was about 2150z.

Hi Bud,LOL, Damian thought it looked better than the hourglass pointer. (BTW, I have no idea if that is true!)Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Support

Hi Bob,The small wind direction changes are unavoidable without using route-based wind smoothing (with flight plan). Hope that helps!Damian ClarkHiFi Simulation SoftwareDeveloper of ActiveSkyhttp://www.hifisim.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004betateam.jpg

Hi Damian,Build 90 is a big big improvement. Flew a flight as a quick test without any Wind Smoothing, and I have to say that the wind shifts are now minimal when you get them, and even then you only get them in Climb or Descent - and even then this was caused by 2 things happening:1) The winds would swing round CW to the new wind direction, and while mostly would be a smooth transition, occassionally got a 10 to 20 degree jump in heading.2) The winds would swing CCW, despite having the CCW winds Fix box selected. This caused the most of these minor wind shifts. It looks like you are very close to being able to have perfectly smoothed weather in FS9 without having to use the Route Smoothing. Mark

Should I uninstall my AS instance and re-install before applying this MR? Or will MR1 just install OK over the beta? I have one of the recent betas currently installed (I'm a new user to AS).Thanks,Bruce.

Hi Mark, good to hear from you!Thanks for the input..Concerning #2, this is FS9 at work. With CCW winds fix enabled, all writes are intercepted before the actual write and any CCW ascending layer will have a new layer inserted before it to force the "long way around" and thus CW. Unfortunately even though we do this, FS9 inserts its own layers at your current flight altitude and keeps them there (usually when you transition from one distant reporting station to the next) and then contantly and erroneously changes the heading to some obscure value (on any FS9 created layer). This is basically FS9's wind smoothing bug in a nutshell and why there's shifts in the first place.The only way we've found to get around it is to force a constant direction and speed along the entire route for all wx stations (including global zone if enabled), with all layers changing minimally and always clockwise. Thus route-based wind smoothing.. thats exactly what this does.One big positive to all this work... (besides already eliminating severe wind shifts) , I have created a new FS9 wind system debugger which can run and monitor exactly what FS9 does during any flight. With over a month worth of data, we are now trying to find new ways to analyze it and try even more ideas to work around FS9's buggy wind transition logic. We are hoping to eventually be able to completely identify and take back control of any layers that FS9 decides to "own". The ultimate solution is to of course have completely accurate winds (without using locked averages) according to our high-resolution data, world wide, in any area, even those without existing FS9 reporting points, and have all the transitions work smooth and flawlessly. With already close to 1000 hours spent on FS9 wind issues and associated AS2004 enhancements alone, we are hoping that we find the answer soon (or MS decides to patch FS9), so that we can get back to focusing on many other weather enhancements we've had planned (and some new products too!). I am very confident we'll be making more progress in the very short future.In conclusion, we've come a long way, and things will only be getting better :) Thanks Mark!Damian ClarkHiFi Simulation SoftwareDeveloper of ActiveSkyhttp://www.hifisim.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004betateam.jpg

And I just HATE hourglass pointers! :)Damian ClarkHiFi Simulation SoftwareDeveloper of ActiveSkyhttp://www.hifisim.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004betateam.jpg

Hey there Bruce! Good to hear from you..Either or! My personal pref. is to clean everything out and start fresh to keep things tidy. If you do this don't forget to uninstall ActiveRadar Update too...Hope that helps!Damian ClarkHiFi Simulation SoftwareDeveloper of ActiveSkyhttp://www.hifisim.comhttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004betateam.jpg

Thanks Damian,The effort you put into your products is nothing short of amazing! Thanks,Bruce.

Damian,I saved the snapshot with the 100 degree wind flip and the overcast popup, which was 042000ZBest RegardsMax (Bern, LSZB)http://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004betateam.jpg http://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/800driver.jpg

>1) The winds would swing round CW to the new wind direction,>and while mostly would be a smooth transition, occassionally>got a 10 to 20 degree jump in heading.>>2) The winds would swing CCW, despite having the CCW winds Fix>box selected. This caused the most of these minor wind shifts.I've only had a chance to do one 2-hour flight with the latest build, but this was my experience exactly. Route-based smoothing was off for a change, and winds aloft were rock solid right up to descent. None of the shifts encountered on the way down were anywhere near as bad as the ones I've gotten with FS9 weather.If it wasn't for AS2004 I'd have chucked FS9 in the trash months ago!Mark Kuebeler

Hi Damien,Havn't used AS2004 for a while as I was busy doing some scenery design & not much flying. However with a tropical low approaching the Queensland (Australia) coast last night it was too good an opportunity to miss so a couple of nights ago I downloaded build 90 & installed it without any problems. I did a quick flight despite running into the flight plan load problem previously discussed from Brisbane to Townsville in the Concorde (didn't have much time) & noticed that cloud formations changed without the previous pop ups & dissapearances so all in all pretty good.Last night though with the low approaching & the weather pretty lousy with high winds & buckets of rain I downloaded the weather & went back into FS to find that despite the METAR showing that it should be raining in fact it wasn't. The only way I could get rain to appear was by re locating the aircraft to another airport affected by the same weather & then returning to YBBN. This seemed OK till I had fired up & was about to taxi to the active runway when the rain stopped, the visibility lifted & the clouds began to reduce & the sun came out. Far from what was really happening. On using the default weather it showed the correct situation. So I took off with it & then changed to AS2004 for another high speed run up the coast.All the cloud in the southern Queensland area showed as patchy & nowhere near what it should have been. Is this a known problem with AS2004, FS9 or FSUIPC?Is there possibly a setting I have overlooked that turns the rain off using AS2004?Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.Regards,Ross