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The mysteries of "real weather"

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Hi thereHope you can help me understand the working of "real weather"1:Sometimes when I download real world weather (using FS download facility) I get very detailed weather information, sometimes eg. visibility or winds or precipitation is not consistent with the "real" weather reports, eg. no snow where tons is falling. Why is this?2: Sometimes I get nothing at all. Is this because a certain locations weather station is closed? (I like to fly in remote areas like Alaska and Greenland)One more question: Is it possible to have two cloud layers, both in the "overcast" class (I mean in real life )?Cheers,halabraham

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I flew (sim) last night and this morning here in Colorado (tons of snow, hard north winds) and the FS real wx had the snow and low ceilings, but the winds were 45-90 degrees off. Basically put, FS real wx is somewhat "shakey". I'm not sure why, it may be inconsistant or late updates from the Jeppesen wx servers. I know here where I live (about 10 miles northwest of COS) the weather at home often differs significantly from the airport reported wx.I believe FS2K2 RW Wx searches for the nearest reporting station, there may be a range limit that affects you when flying in those remote areas. Sometimes it seems doing a "clear all weather" then trying to reload rw wx seems to help.I've seen "dual overcasts" here. I was hiking on the mountain, above the fog (undercast) with a thin overcast well above me. Kinda neat...Dave

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Yes, there are occasions when the weather d/l seems incomplete, and I'm not sure if it's unusual configurations in the d/l being discarded or ignored, corrupt download or simply incomplete info available from the reporting station.ChasW

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HiPersonally I got so fed up of suddenly flying into no weather areas, that I gave up with MS 'Real Weather'. I bought ActiveSky wxRE which I like very much.Gavin


Gavin Barbara

 

Over 10 years here and AVSIM is still my favourite FS site :-)

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Hello,FS real wx is very limited. First of all, however, make sure you are NOT using the "Download winds aloft" check, as this is KNOWN to cause problems with invalid and old data in the METARs...You should get more up-to-date weather this way, however, realize that the FS2002 real wx process is very basic, and will simply download the latest information (may or may not be new or valid), place it in "LOCAL" wx areas, and then display it based on a triangulation interpolation process of the 3 closest stations.Weather add-ons attempt to solve this problem by various means... wxRE uses intelligent processing and TAF awareness (forecasts) to try and ensure the wx is always consistent even if a bad or old METAR report exists. It also uses cloud transition and smoothing processes to further enhance the realism and reduce the chance of invalid wx representation.If you really want better real-world weather, I invite you to take a look at the wx add-ons, and your first stop might be the ActiveSky forum here at AVSIM ;) There is also a freeware ActiveSky 2002 version (here in the libraries) which offers an improvement over default FS2002 realwx but doesn't have the advanced features in wxRE.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


Damian Clark
HiFi  Simulation Technologies

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As a neighbor of yours (Kansas), I concur with your observations. The RWW winds aloft (under 18,000') here in the central plains states persisted in displaying winds aloft from SSW (200 - 220)during the period Colorado was being buried by several feet (yards?) of snow and experiencing exceptionally strong surface winds and winds aloft depicted by NWS and NOAA data as hard out of the NE to NW. In fact, RWW is still showing winds aloft tonight for this region that are close to 180 out from NOAA's, though RWW's surface winds are pretty close to actual metar reported winds.The frequency of these errors by RWW have become the rule rather than the exception. I figure Jeppesen has become disenchanted with the deal they made with MS to provide Real World Weather input for FS2002. I doubt it's much of a money-maker, and the employees Jeppesen assigns to keep the RWW servers' data updated probably don't see much of a future or advancement opportunities in being stuck with updating weather data for a game, while their peers are engaged in the "real work" of cartography and aviation chart and approach plate updating.Whatever the cause of the problems with RWW, I have grown tired flying into a 30kt headwind at 12,000' when I know I should have a near tailwind of 28kts. Therefore, I plan to do what I probably should have done some time ago, i.e., spend $32 on the purchase of FS Meteo.For users of FS Meteo, some questions:1) Does it eliminate the odd and irksome RWW habit of frequently and suddenly switching from a legitimate view of being on top of an overcast to a ground view and later back to on top the overcast (when the overcast extends the entire length of the flight)?2) Does it eliminate the RWW phenomenon of a proper cockpit view (gound-horizon-sky) being changed often during flight to just blue sky by inputting an extreme nose-up angle of attack causing one to hit shift-enter repeatedly to bring the horizon back into view?3) When I land in rain at my home airport (Metar-equipped and 7 miles from my house) when it stopped raining here more than 12 hours ago, will FS Meteo provide me with a nonrainy approach to landing on a bone dry runway? My thanks in advance to any respondent.

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Hi FolksThanks for your comments and info, I guess I got a confirmation that rww is quite shaky, and that my FS is not haunted or smthg.Cool to hear about the double "overcast" conditions, I like to download the rw and then "touch it up" to fit published "real" reports on the routes I fly. However, its only fun if its realistic, of course.I thought about trying out different weather gen's incl. wxRE, but I'm on a pay-per-minute modem con. and preer to be able to download and then go off-line, wxRE needs to be online? Maybe rw will be perfect (maybe not) in 2004

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Guest dogknot

ActiveSky wxRE is multi-functional. You can download and remain on-line for active wx updates, or you can go on-line long enough to download the current wx and then go off-line, or you can, with a little practice, write your own METAR strings directly into ActiveSky wxRE and remain offline. You can also go online to a Weather Display site and copy/paste the past or current METARs into ActiveSky wxRE. You can also save your favorite wx and fly it again another day.http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/metar.shtmlhttp://www-frd.fsl.noaa.gov/mab/metar/METAR-TAF Conversion Cardhttp://205.156.54.206/oso/oso1/oso12/document/guide.shtml Hope this helps :-wave

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Cool!Thanks for the info, guess I'll try it out.-halabraham

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