Windshear / turbulence when entering clouds....

[jcomm 5,939]

A few X-Plane10 users wrote about the very weird and irritating effect of strong wind shear and turbulence when entering clouds, specially if flying a small aircraft.

 

I had never experienced it until last night, when I was playing around with the default 747. I used RW weather, which gave me a broken cloud layer around 6000'. When the 744 entered it all of a sudden the ASI on the FPD was allover the place, the airctaft was bouncing considerably, even being heavy.... I opened the weather menu to check the winds and turbulence, but the reported values were a faint 5knot wind with not turbulence or shear...

 

A couple of minutes later the effects were gone, and even when I reloaded another aircraft, this turn the Sundowner, and went up to find the same weird effects, they were no longer there(?)

 

Has anyone noticed this too? I'll report to Austin...

[anthony_d 32]

Turbulence has been a long standing issue.

 

From what I read in the latest upcoming beta, the turbulence is going to be tuned down when entering clouds or rain.

-------

 

My experience is that turbulence is an issue generally - where variable winds are reported with real weather downloads.

 

e.g. A 5 knot wind variable 110 - 180 degrees delivers unacceptable levels of turbulence with it. I reported it in 10.10 Beta 2, but no mention of a fix yet.

[rojantrojan 17]

I've come across this many times, especially when I set it to download real weather. I get some pockets of extreme turbulence that frankly I just couldn't control. It was only about 7knots with the LES DC3, I just end up never using the download weather, not unless I'm feeling very, very strong on that day B)

 

Shame really because the download weather option can produce some incredible, beautiful looking random clouds and some great weather effects. I think Austin is well aware of people feeling that the turbulence is overly strong sometimes in X-plane. It's perhaps whether he feels it is an issue to get resolved. But, if anthony_d is correct then that would make my day. On the plus side I'm starting to look like Popeye the sailor man trying to wrestle with my Saitek yoke. It's a great workout though!

 

Rhydian

[Timmer 2]

Just a touch over-strong. I actually ran into a fog layer that flipped and crashed my Archer II. There are clouds that can and will do that to a plane but a marine layer in Southern California is not one of them ;)

[Swe_Richard 1,172]

Yeah, I don't really care for that over the top bouncing myself. Seems like it kind of comes and goes for me, though. It is a bit strange. What I really don't like though is that "white out" effect I get when passing through clouds.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[rojantrojan 17]

Just noticed this in new Beta 9:

 

"Much less turbulence in light to moderate precip... but same trubulence in major (red) precip"

 

Anyone tried the new Beta yet?

 

Rhydian

[Timmer 2]

Oo... I guess I know what I'll be doing right about now...

[Timmer 2]

I just did a real-weather flight from San Diego's KMYF through the marine layer and no issue with turbulence . Thumbs up!

 

I did have a huge issue with frame rates once I got into the cloud layer but my 560Ti card isn't the newest thing so I won't be too critical of that. So far it seems like a nice tweak. The change note sounds like they did it the right way since high-turbulent clouds did feel great and XP and really give that sense of "you should not be flying into these clouds if you want to live" -- just that it was happening with Mr. Friendly Cute Clouds and Fog Layers, also.

[rojantrojan 17]

Nice one Timmer.

 

Rhydian

[varignet 1]

nice one! turbulence has been a big issue in x-plane for years

[jcomm 5,939]

Well, at another thread, dedicated to findings in x-plane10.10 b9, this subject has been raised again.

 

I will, instead of simply complaining, think of a solution to send to Laminar Research, although I know it is a delicate subject given the way Real World Weather is used bi X-Plane and other simulators.

 

Honestly I do not find it better or worse in other sims that allow for RW Weather being fed into the simulation, such as MSFS FSX or ELITE.

 

On ELITE, just like in X-Plane, only METAR data is used as a source for weather settings based on RW obervations. Now, FSX can also use winds aloft and temperatures from RW sources, but I know from my personal experience that it falls short from getting the real data properly working in the sim, even when sophisticated weather injectors are used.

 

METARs are based on observations, and these are limited to the area of the reporting station, usually at an aerodrome, so, using this information as a basis for weather settings on the sim is rather difficult and limited. In ELITE practically no turbulence is set from METAR data, unless heavy convective clouds or really intense winds/precipitation are reported.

 

X-Plane, just as any other simulator, has to guess, there being no way of specifying turbulence (only on TAFs, which are not used in X-Plane) and it's intensity, so, how can the programmer decide if turbulence should be set?

 

What I have noticed is that LR chose a way to associate wind intensity and variability with turbulence. Using today's Lisbon (LPPT) METARs for my tests all I can say is that X-Plane does an excellent job at replicating what I see out there, although I do not have the chance to fly around here :-/

 

Apparently, regarding the report of wind variability, but probably not only this, X-Plane sets turbulence at levels higher that 1, sometimes even 2 or 3, when variable, even if faint winds are reported, an that's where the problem resides IMHO. If I then manually set the turbulence back to zero, everything works very well, the wind intensity and direction still varying but the airplanes being perfectly controllable.

 

So... Should we simply ask Austin to quit setting turbulence when wind variability is reported? certainly NO!

 

I'll try to think carefully about this and use the fact that I work next to the meteorologists responsible for the Portuguese MetOffice, to come out with a proposal, instead of complaining only....

 

I'll try to isolate what type of data in a METAR can potentially be associated with turbulence, with various degrees of intensity, and write it down so that it can be discussed with others and with Laminar Research as well.

 

In the limit we could simply ask LR to implement some way of manually controlling the turbulence using keys, joystick axis, a visible slider in the screen that could popup to be adjusted, etc... so that when we do not find that the turbulence level being used by the internal metar parsing algorithm is not adequate... and without having to switch from the simulator to the Environmen/Weather screen.

[iab 0]

Hi all.

 

The option indicated by CMOMM is the one I use when making unfeasible s flight turbulence (disable it manually).

 

But I write this post because I have observed at least in versions prior to beta 9 (I have not tested yet), when I use the metar download the simulator, the flight is very difficult or impossible due to turbulence. But for the same area and time, when the VATSIM metar is taken, for example, turbulence effects disappear.

 

Can you prove this?

 

Greetings and thank you for your attention.

 

Israel Abril

[jcomm 5,939]

Greetings and thank you for your attention.

 

Israel Abril

 

Israel!!! Finalmente utilizador de x-plane10 como tu :-)