How to edit FSX Weather themes within FSX

[Guest]

It seems not everyone knows you can easily edit the Weather themes that come with FSX or that are added by for instance Orbx. (BTW This is a repost from a reply on the AVSIM Screen shots forum.)

 

Let me start by saying you won't be able to save the changes as a new theme: the changes only stick as long as you have FSX running OR when you save the actual flight: the weather will be saved with it.

 

Here is how to do it: on the Main screen click on Change (Current weather). Select the Weather theme you want to edit at the top. Now here comes the trick: click on OK (to load the weather) and when you are on the Main screen again, click on Change (Current weather) once more. Select User-defined weather and then click on Customize... That's it! Now you are editing the theme you loaded previously!

 

You can change basic Conditions using the menu you see now but you can also click on Advanced Weather (underneath the map) to customize the theme with a lot more control: there are four tabs there: Clouds, Wind, Tem/pressure and Visibility. Take note that each tab has its own set of layers! You really can go crazy with the weather in that menu! :wink:

 

So the trick is to select a theme, click OK and then go back immediately to make the theme 'User-defined'. You can not select a theme and immediately go to user-defined: in that case you will be editing the weather that was loaded before you got to the Weather screen.

 

Quite often I change visibility (some themes have way too much visibility) and/or the Wind speed of a theme with the basic controls, but sometimes I also move layers a bit up or down on the advanced pages when I don't feel like flying in the clouds al the time. :wink: All in all this opens up a lot of new weather situations if you don't feel like using something like ASE or if you think setting up custom weather from scratch is too much work (which it is if you want some interesting weather).

[Phillip Gallagher 101]

I'm gonna try it tonight! I didn't know you could do that! I use REX ESSENTIAL but loaded the textures only one time when I first got it and haven't touched it since! I guess I don't like messing with REX once I get the sim looking realistic.

[fs4fun 358]

Jeroen, thanks that's a great tip!

[ti_dabbelju 6]

OR you download Weather Engine and create hundreds of new themes in no time.

[HiFlyer 5,820]

I used to fiddle with this a few tears ago and got some quite funky weather. It was interesting experimenting with the heights of layers and etc but I never had a clue whether what I ended up with had any connection to reality.

 

A frustration is the way FSX does its fog layer, which is pretty poor.

 

Some of my experiments did come out pretty interesting, though!

[Guest]

I used to fiddle with this a few tears ago and got some quite funky weather. It was interesting experimenting with the heights of layers and etc but I never had a clue whether what I ended up with had any connection to reality.

 

That's why I usually only edit existing themes that I like. As I said: change the wind (speed but also the direction), visibility, move layers a bit up or down, little things like that. Nothing drastic. Just now I got sick and tired of the heavy snow during my flight (which looks odd imho) so I just turned that off. :wink: A few of those themes (I like the Orbx ones) are pretty good and just a few changes makes them 'all new' again. I never create a theme from scratch: too much work to get exciting and a bit varied weather.