There is a debate going on in the Avsim PMDG forum regarding weather radar, it seems from what I have read it is possible using GRIB data. But PMDG stand firm on their statement that they will not implement any type of WXR in their sims. Would it be possible to make a third party gauge that does this? I would buy it!

We have plans to investigate providing a sort of weather radar or map facility as part of the LW Assistant. It would not be in the form of a cockpit display, most probably displayed on a networked PC or laptop, running on the client with the LWE.

 

May not be exactly what you are looking for but the weather info should be accurate.

 

Stephen

Sounds great to me Stephen, I can't wait.

Well that would be pretty neat.!

We have plans to investigate providing a sort of weather radar or map facility as part of the LW Assistant. It would not be in the form of a cockpit display, most probably displayed on a networked PC or laptop, running on the client with the LWE.

 

May not be exactly what you are looking for but the weather info should be accurate.

 

Stephen

 

Actually you are in conditions to provide the most accurate WX data for an airborne radar that FSX can handle, simply because you know exactly what kind of weather (clouds density, altitude, type, etc) is being injected on each one of the 16 sqrKm cells that are part of a theme. Any good programmer that could have that information might develop a weather radar with fair to good representation, considering that the maximum level of detail would be an area of 8 x 16 km (5 x 10 nmiles) from the aircraft nose, which seems pretty acceptable to me.

 

Tom

Why not provide thunderstorm cells as Sim Objects and then move them around? Then they could be tracked. As I understand it, there is no way of positioning individual clouds in FSX/P3D, but maybe this is a way around that. The "normal" thunderheads would continue to be created as cloud types, but the new Sim Object cells would be fairly rare. I suppose that real time/real life Doppler Radar could be used to position them. Most of the online weather websites keep track of individual cells, their speed and direction.

Why not provide thunderstorm cells as Sim Objects and then move them around?

 

Damn. It may not be "42", but it's a terrific answer none the less. Seriously. Thunderstorms are the most important weather to model after all.

 

Time to get back in touch with some of the lads at VATSIM, as this would make it easy to integrate it for controllers and pilots alike.

 

Thanks for the idea. Nice one.

i agree with you dave & kudos to you jabloom for the initiative !!

 

i once mulled something similar .... using the AI engine & big fluffy planes, but couldn't rationalise how you got the latlon data to that ????

 

whatever, i hope the gurus can evolve this !!

 

cheers

And how would you handle rain and snow for exmaple?

As we all know it just an effect. You can't have rain a few miles ahead of the airport while the runway is dry, and fly into the storm on takeoff for example.