Opus disabled during flight + violent wind/preasure change

[mosteen 111]

I run FSX Acc, NGX, GEX, UTX, REXE textures, OpusFSX, EFB dataprovider and FSUIPC on my "server".

 

On my "client" laptop i run EFB display unit and Squawkbox4. All SW are in their latest patches/versions, Opus is in beta 30.2, maybe a new one exist, 30.3? Weather is disabled in SB and in FSUIPC, and it is all works great 99.9% of the time.

 

But, I have some periodic hickups that are bothering me, two to be specific, I am not sure if they are related but they have appeared together.

 

During two 3+and 5+ hour VATSIM flights yesterday and today I got BUFFETING ALERT, insane wind and preasure change, A/T DISCO and so on a few times (2-3).

 

Also, during one of these "emergencies", I tried changing VC view, but no luck. The OpusFSX FSX addon menus were gone, but prg was still running, I closed it and restarted, all good. I run all SW as ADM.

 

Once this wind/preasure change happened together with the Opus services being closed, several other times they seem (I say seem...) to happen without relation to eachother, allthough they probably are related.

 

Mostly it works smoothly, either if Opus autoupdating the weather or if I manually DL new weather.

 

Could it be that Simconnect + FCUIPC comms stress FSX in the moment of weather change?

 

Thanks,

Morten Steen

[Opus Software 84]

Hi Morten,

 

Thanks for the info, it is the FSX winds aloft bug causing the problem. We are currently looking into it. You could try increasing the wind smoothing to make it more stable and setting transition and recovery levels, but this would mean less realistic winds. So it depends if you are prepared to suffer the occasional glitch to gain more realistic weather.

 

You could also try minimising the overhead on FSX by reducing the number of active addons making demands through the SimConnect interface.

 

Regards

Cheryl

[mosteen 111]

Thanks Cheryl, actually I did not touch any of the options in Opus yet It's been working fantastic right "out of the box"

 

I'll look into the settings. I fly VATSIM only, short to medium routes. I run beta 30.3. What would be my best settings for the moment do you think?

 

And, with these settings in mind, how can I get the best possible forecast of the winds that I will encounter up top to be able plan my fuel in the most realistic way?

 

Thanks,

Morten

[Opus Software 84]

Hi Morten

 

We've been doing a great deal of testing to try and get to grips with these wind shifts. We have now identified three distinct wind calculation errors within FSX, so when we refer to the FSX winds aloft bug we really mean bugs.

 

This has clarified a few things and made us realise no amount of tweaking or user options will be able to both eradicate the problem and still give you anything resembling true surface winds when you land. We have therefore come to the conclusion that it is time for simplification. and that is what we are working on now.

 

The normal 'Lower' Wind Smoothing will still be used (default 15 + 15) for normal operation, that should prevent problems for people flying low and slow and still give a very good chance of keeping to the true surface winds when you land.

 

A new 'Upper' Wind Stabilisation option will be provided in the form of a simple checkbox, a configurable Recovery Altitude (RA, default 19000 feet) setting, and a Max Allowed Wind Deviation (default 15 degrees) setting. These options will be for high and fast jet and airliner flyers. By high I mean above 19000 feet.

 

We are now concentrating on the recovery process in an attempt to maximise the chance of recovering the surface winds when you descend below the RA. The recovery will be based on a calculated safe surface wind deviation in addition to the user's configured Max Allowed Wind Deviation. If either test passes the LWE will attempt to recover the surface winds. After recovery the normal 'Lower' Wind Smoothing will be applied throughout your descent.

 

The best settings for you now if you are experiencing wind shifts is to try un-ticking the current 'Relax Surface Wind Smoothing' option, and if that fails, just set your TA and RA to something reasonably low like 15000 and 13000, or even 0.

 

I would recommend a third party flight planner to plan your fuel requirements, there are recommendations on our Flight1 forum, Best VFR and IFR Flight Planning Packages.

 

Regards

Cheryl

[mosteen 111]

Thanks Cheryl, sounds good. I use Vroute, or my VA's routes, then Electronic Flight Bag and Topcat allready.

 

What I guess I wonder is where to get the most accurate forecast of the high altitude winds that I will encounter when flying with Opus?

 

Thanks for the direct and allways prompt support. I hope you and Stephen are getting better from the flu

 

Regards,

Morten

[Opus Software 84]

Thanks Morten, yes recovered now :smile:

[Tom_G_2010 6]

Slightly off topic, but related, does anyone know if the winds aloft bug has been dealt with in P3D?

 

PS, after testing Opus this past weekend, it is now on my buy list waiting for my next paycheck. Great Software!!!!

[Opus Software 84]

As far as I know the winds aloft bug is in P3D too.

 

Cheryl