FS Flight Keeper Monitoring

[Jarkko 59]

Thanks Cheryl!

 

The "Test" feature is very handy when setting the cameras. Didn't take long from setup to being back in the air.

 

EDIT: If you are interested. You can compare my screenshots to the very first picture on this thread. It's the real world metar report from the area. I set my FSX time to match the moment I took the screenshot from my iPad.

 

Flying north from KUTS should have been VFR -> flying over low coulds/overcast -> landing with 600ft ceiling.

[Jarkko 59]

Having looked once more at the data from my two flights, I now understand the replies better. It would be nice if there were other FS Flight Keeper users who could give me a hand.

 

We set FSX targets for the weather which it tries to adhere to but not always very well. We try to illiminate any errors in pressure readings by limiting pressure changes to 2 millibars between adjacent weather cells so these small fluctuations are caused by FSX trying to achieve its target gradually.

 

This is one of the things I didn't understand correctly the first time around. As KDFW area has many weather reporting stations, I can only guess how much good and "not so good" data is available (trying to avoid the word accurate). Let's say that station #1 is reporting 1023 millibard and a nearby station #2 reporting 1022 millibars. What I didn't realize is that FSX is doing the interpolation from 1023.0 -> 1022.7 -> 1022.3 -> 1022.0.

 

The first time I read this (erroneously), I thought there was a method of allowing only 2 millibar deviation between stations, not the 0.3 millibars that were recorded. Sorry about that.

 

If FSX is struggling to cope due to the number of add-on packages, detailed scenery, high defintion high resolution cloud textures (we recommend non HD low resolution textures) etc then wind shifts are more likely.

 

I try to stay away from HD textures to avoid the treaded OOM. My memory usage usually stays below 2GB. Having said that, I have many addons and hardware that use either SimmConnect (EFB and Latitude) or WideFS (Flight Keeper and AirHauler).

 

Here is the sequence of events that happen before a windshear is reported. First the plane shakes quite rapidly (tiny and fast, side to side motion), then my hardware refresh interval seems to slow down for a second (MCP II with LINDA) and after that I can see windshear reported on my laptop. This is accompanied with a comment from the FO saying that "he doesn't like the wind, it might be shearing".

 

What I seem to have forgotten to mention is that this is "normal". I have gotten windshear or two reported on almost every flight before using Opus. I just hadn't experienced so many during a one hour flight.

 

You are also probably causing many problems just by running that monitoring program. You must ensure FSX can calculate its ambient conditions smoothly and frequently enough to minimise wind shifts (a very well known FSX bug !).

 

This means that I might have some planning to do. For these flights, I didn't use Latitude and VoxATC that I normally fly with. These would but even more strain on the FSX.

 

What you are attempting to report on has already been tried and tested by thousands of people.

 

This why I'm asking for help. It would be odd that I'm the only flight keeper user out there.

 

Please do not feel any need to report back on your findings about the Live Camera interface, there are thousands of users who have already commented and provided feedback within our forums, especially our official support forum.

 

I missed this part the first time around. I feel a bit insulted to be honest. If you go back and read my posts on this thread, you can see that every one has at least one positive comment about Opus. All of them true. Again, just trying to find out if my findings are normal or caused by me.

 

Stephen, nice to hear that you liked the screenshots! Thank you for the great weather!

[Opus Software 84]

Can you alter the sample time of your Flight Keeper package. Just fine tune it so that it doesn't keep reporting the transient erroneous wind shifts within FSX. It may only need a small change. I know through the SimConnect link you can change the number of FSX intervals between updates so I don't know if the package made that adjustable in some fashion.

 

With the past METAR injected and global weather settings the internal wind shift errors would not have been a problem to the package so they may not have accommodated such settings. The internal FSX wind and pressure variables should be treated as 'noisy' by all developers, if they were then such transient errors would not cause erroneous wind shear reports or aircraft behaviour.

 

Perhaps the developers could include an adjustable setting that could alter the scan/update rate and even take into account the possible transient noise.

 

Didn't mean any insult about not reporting back on LC, just that proper review type reports should not be based on a quick look at the interface. As I said Mutkeys Hangar took several months to do an in depth independent study and gain experience with the product.

 

Stephen

[Jarkko 59]

Can you alter the sample time of your Flight Keeper package. Just fine tune it so that it doesn't keep reporting the transient erroneous wind shifts within FSX. ... proper review type reports should not be based on a quick look at the interface. ...

 

I think I know what was causing this! Your text above might be the key to this whole problem I'm having. Here we go: I never meant to write anything that could be seen as a review. Having read my post again, it can sound like a review, sorry about that!

 

What I tried to do is report something I had not seen before. I tried to include these things:

 

a) What was I doing B) why was I doing it c) what was the expected outcome d) what was the real outcome and e) what steps are required to reproduce the situation.

 

Now comes the big ahaaa moment for me! Lets go over the steps I just outlined:

 

a) What was I doing: At 17:15Z I searched through real world METARs to find an area where I could takeoff in VFR and land in IFR conditions. B) why was I doing it: I wanted to try Opus demo before buying and have a clear test scenario that I could repeat if needed.

 

c) what was was the expected outcome: I would be able to see scattered clouds change into a solid overcast during a 1 hour flight. d) what was the real outcome: I purchased OpusFSX

 

In order to run my test, I changed the flight keeper "weather mode" from Live weather (downloaded from NOAA and updated infrequently) to "FSX weather mode". I did this because I knew that I had to use historic weather. Otherwise my scenario wouldn't be reproducible.

 

What I didn't realize at the time is, that "FSX weather mode" meant constant polling, not just weather snapshots when approaching waypoints outlined in my flight plan (similar to "live weather" mode I normally use).

 

I will do a "live weather" flight when life/wife allows I'm 95% sure that this can be written down as StupidUserException

 

Thanks again for your help!

[Opus Software 84]

Thanks for the feedback.

 

Stephen