Rex Essentials and Weather Radar

[JB3DG 225]

REX or Active sky do not set the actual positions of the clouds. That is simply not possible. Not without some serious hacking anyway. All they are doing is feeding in the cloud coverage (measured in 8ths) and cloud type etc for a general location and altitude. The actual drawing of the clouds in terms of where they are rendered (im guessing here) is completely random. The weather radar is really just a map where you control the horizontal area it covers and the max and min altitude of it. Naturally the density that is returned is not going to be accurate if you cover the whole altitude range (elevation scan of the antenna) in a single block. So in order to get a more accurate 3D picture of the cloud cells you would take several thinner slices and then merge them together. If PMDG knows about this (im assuming they do) then either they have decided it is not worth their time or they have not found a way to make it frame friendly. Personally (being a dev myself) i dont see the creation of the "virtual"(ie not graphically displayed) 3D picture that hard as it is just a low resolution bunch of numbers. The moment you start translating that into pixels however is when it starts having an impact on performance. Done properly however it should be no different to their terrain display in performance cost.

 

On the other hand i would put it past them to have completely missed this function ;). Sometimes (and i speak from personal experience here) you can be so caught up with trying to find a hack for something that you THINK is undocumented in the SDK and as such the SDK is the last place you think of looking. Only to discover during a recheck for something else that all your attempts for a hack could have been gotten far more easily through something in the SDK that was under your nose the whole time. If this is the case....well Yo PMDG programmers the function is there and it is stated in the SDK that it was created specifically to allow wx radar in FSX. Now there are some other parts that cant be done without some imagination and roundabout methods....but that doesnt make it impossible for someone of your calibre from doing it :D.

[ajpongress 467]

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

 

Already exists.

http://www.reality-xp.com/flightsim/wx500/index.html

[JB3DG 225]

So it is not impossible as can be seen....

[ajpongress 467]

So it is not impossible as can be seen....

 

And also not realistic.

This topic has been beaten to death multiple times. Do a forum search and you'll find out why.

[timest 473]

The actual drawing of the clouds in terms of where they are rendered (im guessing here) is completely random.

Not a chance sir.

 

Now there are some other parts that cant be done without some imagination and roundabout methods....but that doesnt make it impossible for someone of your calibre from doing it :D.

Absolutely correct, NOT out of the picture ;) ... BUT see below what AJ states.

 

And also not realistic.This topic has been beaten to death multiple times. Do a forum search and you'll find out why.

[Paul_Smith 92]

Put simply, a weather radar shows where the water vapour is dense enough to reflect radar energy, and hence dense enough to affect the flight of a plane. Since FSX has no concept of water vapour, FSX can not provide information on how dense it is. There are various tools you can buy which will show you where the clouds are, or you could just look aout the window and see them for yourself.

[ArjenVdv 190]

Oh god no, the weather radar, here we go again.

 

*Facepalm*

 

Oh wait, that's not enough...

 

*Facedesk*

 

Ouch!

 

:LMAO:

[ajpongress 467]

It's never ending.