Flying on Larry's Land.... (Mountains look higher in the Winter...)

[jcomm 5,939]

Yes they do! They get 15' or so, of snow added to the top...

 

Ok ok... You're on GPS... No altimeter needed :-)

 

In my opinion all of you are missing the best part of the FSX weather experience

 

I know, right? I can't wait to experience instantaneous barometer changes of several hundred to 1000 feet, instantaneous wind speed and direction changes up to 180 degrees, instantaneous temperature changes of a dozen degrees, and these changes coming a couple times a minute or more in a GA aircraft, more often if you're flying faster

 

You both would love the way my good-old ELITE v8 integrates METAR data from nearby stations... It's still the smoothest METAR parser/weather generator I found on any sim with the ability to read RT METAR data, after Aerowinx PS1...

[LAdamson 240]

Ok ok... You're on GPS... No altimeter needed :-)

 

Now that you mention it, and for those that don't know; GPS with WAAS is actually the most accurate for terrain avoidance, unless you have a very up to the moment altimeter setting. Otherwise, you'll often see the GPS and plane's altimeters vary up to 200'. When using my Garmin 696's panel page, which animates a "six pac", the Garmin animated round dial altimeter and the aircrafts altimeter will exactly duplicate each other........for a few minutes......if I get a current altimeter setting from ATC or XM Satellite weather. Then, they'll slowly start to drift apart. For ATC seperation purposes, it's always the ATC setting to keep all planes on the same altitude settings. For missing the mountain by a few feet.........GPS/WAAS will probably do better.

 

L.Adamson

[Oracle427 45]

I know, right? I can't wait to experience instantaneous barometer changes of several hundred to 1000 feet, instantaneous wind speed and direction changes up to 180 degrees

 

This always frustrates me. I have a number of lakes and ridges by my field that are correctly positioned in FSX. I experience extreme thermals that require a lot of nose down of around 5 degrees just to maintain pattern altitude! The winds aloft rarely work and I need to manually set it up to mimic reported conditions.

 

The other oddity is how long it takes for the conditions to stabilize. I normally have to give my sim 10 minutes just for everything to settle down. Normally it is close to done if I go through a cold-start, radio/nav setup, taxi and run-up, but it is annoying to have to wait so long for that.

 

I hope that if it ever is implemented in Flight they are able to improve that experience!

 

---

 

I've never noticed if FSX modeled the compression of air layers due to air temp. I can't speak for how "easy" something like this would be to model, but it would be nice to have.

 

For example, when going from conditions of 0C to 40C, all things being equal, you will experience a 500' increase in true altitude. It can mean life and death for somone who isn't thinking about it.

 

My airport's traffic pattern is at 1200' and there is a mountain just outside the pattern by about a mile that is at about the same height in winter. If you're sloppy coming in on the 45 in poor visibility (night) CFIT is very possible.

[jcomm 5,939]

I've never noticed if FSX modeled the compression of air layers due to air temp. I can't speak for how "easy" something like this would be to model, but it would be nice to have.

 

It doesn't... As a matter of fact, that I know the only sim (still in production) that models this will be Aerowinx PSX!

 

http://aerowinx.com/assets/pics/psxA33wxr01.jpg

 

http://aerowinx.com/assets/pics/psxA40wx2.jpg

 

http://aerowinx.com/assets/pics/psxA40wx3.jpg

[LHookins 3,103]

You both would love the way my good-old ELITE v8 integrates METAR data from nearby stations... It's still the smoothest METAR parser/weather generator I found on any sim with the ability to read RT METAR data, after Aerowinx PS1...

 

How does it handle a station that reports barometer at 28.92 instead of 29.92? Happened to me leaving the Faroes flying south on my first around-the-world in FSX.

 

How does it handle data that's reported as current but is probably 6 hours old after the passage of a storm front? I see this kind of thing far too often.

 

Actually, I hope they handle it well. And I hope Microsoft, if they ever implement it, can handle it well too.

 

I gave up on native FSX real world weather early on and got Active Sky X. Been through a couple of upgrades of it since then, now using AS2012. They do their best on the smoothing, but it's still pretty bad at times. I even reported a bug where there were several stations nearby (15-20 miles) but it was using one from over 2000 miles away because it was the only station in that quadrant. Most other stations with similar situations worked well though.

 

I would love to see some real world weather, if only to get some decently randomized weather themes going, multiple cloud layers, and several different "fair weather" themes. Just don't assume that real world weather is the be-all and end-all, that anyone can do it well, or that "all you people" aren't extremely familiar with the concept already.

 

Hook

[jcomm 5,939]

I gave up on native FSX real world weather early on and got Active Sky X. Been through a couple of upgrades of it since then, now using AS2012. They do their best on the smoothing, but it's still pretty bad at times. I even reported a bug where there were several stations nearby (15-20 miles) but it was using one from over 2000 miles away because it was the only station in that quadrant. Most other stations with similar situations worked well though.

 

AS is really good. I was a beta tester for their project until 2008 when I quit using simulators... They were allways looking fwd to try to solve the many problems that MSFS's weather has inside of it's code, even when FSUIPC with it's smoothing options set tries to help...

 

On the Gliding/Soaring side of my MSFS experience I registered yet another excellent weather program - CumulusX!

Actualy before FLIGHT was released I re-installed FSX and gave it a try, using Aerosoft's great Discus X Glider... CumulusX! does an excellent job simulating various forms of ridge lift, as well as convection...

 

I eventualy uninstalled FSX (forever) and set for Condor and SilentWings as my two soaring simulators :-)

 

I prefer to have weather in FLIGHT just as it is now than as it was on previous versions, but I really would like to have varying temperature and pressure and some way to use it in our instruments :-)

 

I hope Alaska will bring us a glider, and that I can even fly it in Hawaii where some gliding records have been achieved.

[LHookins 3,103]

I like Active Sky. When it has good data to work with, it's great. One time I was flying to my home airport from the north... flying through rain which quit just before I landed. I asked my wife if it was raining outside and she said no, but it started within just a few minutes. There's not much to equal an experience like that. :)

 

CumulusX is great. I got to where I was using it even when I wasn't soaring, just to get reasonable turbulence and maybe a few cloud shadows on the ground. If you're using it for soaring, do register it, as you get a few additional benefits. Most of the time if I wanted to do ridge soaring, I had to set the winds manually, and half the time the real world weather just wasn't very good for thermal soaring anyway. I'm guessing the Discus X was first rate.

 

I looked up Condor's website and it looks pretty good. I'll have to check out SilentWings as well.

 

What are the possibilities of getting sailplanes with Alaska? I wouldn't expect a lot of soaring to be going on there, and given how much weather work would be involved in addition to a huge area to be modelled, that might be a bit much to expect out of one DLC. On the other hand, a soaring simulation would be more likely in June than in September/October, and I'd hate to have to wait another year for it.

 

Hook

[jcomm 5,939]

I registered CumulusX!, before uninstalling FSX forever :-) (Have to arrange with Larry for some ritual....)

 

Condor is great, specially Online where I sometimes compete with 18 other pilots :-)

 

SilentWings had a different approach, runs in Apple and Linux, but it's rather inactive for quite a long while. They use a different (radiance-based) algorithm to place thermal, and the latest version even modelled Waves, multiple, while in Condor there a single wave after the trigger mountain...

 

I would like to have detailled scenery of the zones where I fly for real, flightmodel and weather like in Condor or SW, and that's why I gave MSFS x yet another try... I gave up soon :-(

And since Prepar3D was then available for test for a month, I also gave it a try, just to find out that in this area it doesn't differ from MSFS :-(

 

I still hope Alaska brings us a glider :-) and an helicopter as well ;-)

 

The UINIQUE sensation of being there that FLIGHT gives us would be great to feel from a glider :-)

 

P.S.: Any of you can comment on how good xplane is at "rendering" METAR strings ? I believe it also takes winds aloft (?). I have tested it mostly on the flighmodel/physics/engine side...(sorry for being kind of off-topic...)

[andyjohnston.net 617]

I remember reading something from "Taildragger" from the FSX dev team shortly after FSX was released. People love to say "It shouldn't be that difficult to do." Any changed, additions, etc are difficult to do. Make one change and ten other things are broken. Fix them, and they each break another ten, etc.

 

Please, don't say how it should be easy to do things. Unless you are a programmer, you have no idea!

[LHookins 3,103]

Please, don't say how it should be easy to do things. Unless you are a programmer, you have no idea!

 

Assuming this was about my smoothing comment, I AM a programmer... started my professional career in March 1976, retired a few years ago. You and I are saying the same things. People think this sort of thing would be easy, but if it were easy, then everyone would have done it already.

 

Hook

[jcomm 5,939]

I am/was too (a programmer) :-),and I can understand what you mean...

 

Anyway, since FLIGHT is more and more my ONLY simulator, I would love to have it even better than it already is :-)