Rex Essentials and Weather Radar

[idoleo2001 3]

Rex Games Studios said that Rex Essentials have a new weather engine. Now is it possible that PMDG includes in SP2 a weather radar for use with this tool?

[NZ255 129]

No, I think that 'engine' is the bit outside of FSX. Rex still just replaces textures using the fsx weather system.

[idoleo2001 3]

No, I think that 'engine' is the bit outside of FSX. Rex still just replaces textures using the fsx weather system.

Bad news. Thanks for the information!

[CLett737 14]

Probably been covered, but why cant the wxr be an outside addon which is connected to a weather engine?

[Noble. 142]

Probably been covered, but why cant the wxr be an outside addon which is connected to a weather engine?

 

The main reason why weather radars aren't made for FS, is because it'd be pointless. The way weather injection works, for both REX, ActiveSky and the Microsoft Real World Weather is that it purely stipulates at what altitude the cloud is, and whether it's scattered/broken/overcast over a certain region - it doesn't tell FSX exactly where to put the cloud. So a weather radar, also concerned with the lateral position and not just the height cannot know exactly where the clouds are - so they generally report useless results. This is why you won't find PMDG bothering to make a weather radar.

[777-Pilot 0]

Maybe there is the possibility that the NGX WX engine would also run outside of FSX and the data would just be send to an interface inside of FSX.

[CLett737 14]

Aha! I now understand. Many thanks Harvesl...

 

Although I have seen shots from essentials where a cloud front stops along the coast. And you have gaps quite often between clouds. Is this just by chance?

 

Someone needs to make some addon which gives cloud coordinates for fsx. I guess that would work...

 

I really have no clue what I am talking about here....

[Noble. 142]

Maybe there is the possibility that the NGX WX engine would also run outside of FSX and the data would just be send to an interface inside of FSX.

 

Still wouldn't help. You can't tell FSX where to put a cloud laterally, just in terms of altitude.

[quadraspleen 7]

I'm curious about this. If FSX can know where, vertically, a cloud will be, any weather program will know at what altitude clouds will be. Why can FSX itself not then look at where it has put its clouds and send those coord offsets to any weather engine?

 

In the same way it knows where any AI planes are, and can display them correctly, at the correct height, location and velocity; why can it not do the same with weather? Weather in FSX is only textured objects, same as AI, surely?

 

I really have no idea what I'm talking about; I just wonder how stuff like Wx500 from RXP seems to work (after a fashion, anyway)

 

jake

[Noble. 142]

I'm curious about this. If FSX can know where, vertically, a cloud will be, any weather program will know at what altitude clouds will be. Why can FSX itself not then look at where it has put its clouds and send those coord offsets to any weather engine?

 

In the same way it knows where any AI planes are, and can display them correctly, at the correct height, location and velocity; why can it not do the same with weather? Weather in FSX is only textured objects, same as AI, surely?

 

I really have no idea what I'm talking about; I just wonder how stuff like Wx500 from RXP seems to work (after a fashion, anyway)

 

jake

 

It wasn't programmed into FSX, I believe some changes were made to the weather engine from FS9 > FSX, but they opted not to include positions of clouds for whatever reason. AI are models, and for obvious reasons, FSX needs to know where they are - else it makes the entire AI system quite redundant. Current weather radars just guess where the clouds are, they know what altitude and whether the clouds are broken/overcast etc. but that's it. If you actually look closely to a weather radar in FS, you'll notice it really doesn't tell you where the clouds are at all.

[CLett737 14]

So I assume P3D could solve this issue since they have the base code for fsx?

[quadraspleen 7]

But actually, it's not clouds we're interested in, is it? It's rain storms and cells. How does fsx figure out when a cloud has amassed enough water content to dump it? After all, clouds shouldn't show up on a weather radar anyway...

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[FSMP 95]

But actually, it's not clouds we're interested in, is it? It's rain storms and cells. How does fsx figure out when a cloud has amassed enough water content to dump it? After all, clouds shouldn't show up on a weather radar anyway...

 

 

100% correct :)

 

However, the REX weather map does a reasonable job in showing where REX is putting these rain cells, so it provides a reasobably accurate weather radar.

 

Since REX is inserting its data into FSX, REX itself can potentially proved a far more accurate depiction of that injected weather data, rather than trying to have a non rex Weather Display, makes sense of interpreted weather data extracted from FSX itself.

 

REX runs "outside" of FSX, so it's weather Radar is really a seperate application to FSX.

 

There is however, no reason why the REX weather Radar cannot be used as a situational awareness display, when flying ANY plane... just do not expect to see the Radar as part of a Virtual cockpit.

 

Those with Multiple Monitors, or building Hardware Cockpits, can always put the REX radar up on one of their monitors. (this would be even easier, if only REX allowed a full screen display mode for the weather radar, but there are numerous tools and ways around that as well.)

[JB3DG 197]

Actually FSX does have a way to read the density of clouds in a 3D space. Im surprised not many have been looking at it...Some people just dont read the SDK enough it seems.

[quadraspleen 7]

FSX does have a way to read the density of clouds in a 3D space.

 

This was kind of my point, Jonathan, and thanks to Geoff for explaining that.

I was a bit amazed that there wasn't some way of "reading" clouds (or more specifically "weather" as opposed to clouds)..How do REX do it, I thought..So if the tech is there to do what REX do with wasys, why can't we have it in a working Wx gauge?

 

I think that the Wx500 from RXP does a passable job of putting blobs where there are rain storms, but it could be better..Some way of incorporating the wasys gauge in a plane would be great. More realistic weather behaviour would be great too, although I think REXE is getting there..

 

j