737NGX Wheather radar

[piama 0]

Good day,

at the moment the wr is not simulated in the 737. Is programmed any update for this function ?

Is possible add the wr to the instrument using other addon (i.e. CS Wheather radar)?

 

Regars

[Don t moderate me this way 882]

Whether or not there will be a weather radar included in the NGX simulation: No.

 

I'm not sure about integrating an addon gauge into the NGX ND, but adding a wx radar gauge in a separate window does work ... of course!

[piama 0]

Thanks for your reply, of course on a separate windows work, but I have see this .mp4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51jlwI5EhXs, now I tray to find some more news.

[Fabo 213]

First, this is the old FS2002/2004 NG, not the new NGX. This will probably not work in the NGX, although it might...

Second, the WXR has not been made because it does not work in FSX (there is no data that can be used to model WXR available. The ones that are made are not proper WXRs, only pseudo-WXR representations.)

[pete_auau 1,164]

Do  a search on it  and it  will  bring it  up on how  to do it  or it  will bring  up lots of pages  on it

 

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/351012-for-the-2d-lovers-notice-anything-different/?&fromsearch=1

[MED1473 18]

Not another one of those threads!

Don't want to be rude guys but there's about a thousand of threads exactly like this one on this forum already, and there's a search button too!

Happy flights ;-)

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

Don't want to be rude guys but there's about a thousand of threads exactly like this one on this forum already, and there's a search button too!

 

Bingo.  There are many threads that have discussed this very topic.  Some have been rather educational.  Others have been outright bloody battles.

 

Thankfully, this hasn't devolved into one of those yet, but the short answer is no.  If you'd like to see the opinions on both sides (to include PMDG's official stance on the matter: no), I'd suggest a forum search, as Matteo mentioned.

[PIC007 82]

Everything you need to know is in this thread...yes it can be installed...

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/360148-how-to-set-up-weather-radar-pmdg-737-89/

[killkenny1 22]

Second, the WXR has not been made because it does not work in FSX (there is no data that can be used to model WXR available. The ones that are made are not proper WXRs, only pseudo-WXR representations.)

So Majestic's DHC Dash 8 Q400 WXR is crap too? I haven't read a lot about about it, but I hope it works nice.

[MED1473 18]

I suppose the place to discuss that would more appropriately be the majestic forum and not the PMDG one...

[Fabo 213]

Depends on how you define crap. I don't think that Majestic, good as they are, invented a way to get the data that do not exist in simulator. And if they did, I think they would run a marketing campaign.

 

What I believe the case to be, they came up with a reasonably OK replication, and installed it exactly to get rid of this type of questions.

 

With that, I refer to the post above me, I will be happy to engage in further discussion, but at a proper place.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

First, weather radar requires precipitation to be able to be seen in order to work, which is impossible in the sim, because there is no precipitation to see.
 
The "weather radars" that people are creating for the sim are essentially big cloud finders, and that's not what weather radar does.  If you don't believe me, then go look at www.aviationweather.gov and check out the radar picture versus the satellite picture.

 

Note that there's a strip of clouds over Illinois, and a blanket of coverage over New Mexico here:

 

...but nothing on the radar here:

 

 

 

Others here have also thought up clever workarounds, like taking the radar feeds from NWS sites and injecting them into the radar, but that won't work becaaaaaaaaaauuuuse, this:

 

Okay, here goes:

This is a problem in the real world as it is in the sim. A lot of the weather digests are just as backwards as the weather injection in Flight Sim. You'd imagine that the National Weather Service would have some sort of way to determine what the weather is at nearly any point in the United States, but they don't.

Here's what we have:
-Localized radar, but contrary to popular belief, there are gaps in coverage, and each radar has somewhat of a squelch feature. Ever see a blue cone around the radar site? Since there's no precip, the sensitivity has been dialed up to pick up lighter precip, which means the radar will pick up moisture closer to it, giving you the blue circle.
-METARs, but there are several gaps in coverage. For what radius is a METAR valid? What if there are two right next to each other with vastly different data? Does the change gradually occur, or is there a front 50/50 between them?
-Wind aloft reports (not going to help in generating a radar picture)
-PIREPs (not really going to help in generating a radar picture)

Here's an example of the radar "squelch":


The circles are over southern Ohio, all over Indiana, and in SE VA. Those circles don't necessarily mean precip, rather, that local station's sensitivity has been increased in order to see showery precip should it occur. So, using this method to infer precip in the sim isn't necessarily going to give you accurate precip, even when porting real Doppler into the sim.
(If the sensitivity thing interests you, research vcp)

So, while that method may be clever to generate a radar picture and then force trigger the rain effect in the sim, it's not as accurate as you'd like it to be, as it's a composite. The radar return from the NWS is a composite of the altitudes (again, see vcp here), whereas the returns on your sim radar would be at whatever angle you adjusted the radar to, based on your altitude. In other words, the NWS radar is multiple slices. Your sim radar would be a single slice.

Even in the real world, when we look at radar, we're only checking for precip and strength of precip. In order to come to understand real world conditions across the NAS, we all turn to digests of METARs, which is what the weather programs all do.

Here's the trick, though:
United's weather model is different from Delta's, which is different from Southwest's, which is different from the FAA's (they all built/contracted different programs - the FAA is trying to remedy this with a "common weather picture" initiative in NextGen). Just like your REX is different from my AS2012, which is slightly different from someone else's ASE. Granted, when you're simulating a weather radar in a sim, the weather in your sim is the only one that matters, but the issues remain.

Aside from radar, METARs are the only near-real-time data we have for various weather programs to digest into some semblance of a weather picture, but they are not a complete weather picture. They are occasionally incorrect (on my flight last weekend, the JYO METAR showed lightning distant and there was no chance*). Additionally, how do you determine weather en route with drastic changes? When I flew on my birthday two years ago, my original destination was reporting a ceiling of 400' and 3/4SM vis. The airport I went into instead was severe clear, and it is only 6.9nm away. They're both located in a plain, but SHD is closer to the Luray Valley, which was "spilling" valley clouds out over it (the airports are KVBW and KSHD, and you can see how the terrain affects them here).

Most weather programs mitigate this by interpolation for smoothing, but with such drastic changes some of them have difficulties. So, even with "real" weather injection through METARs (what we use currently), it's hard to generate an accurate picture. It's also nearly impossible to give any sort of upper air precip picture through digesting METAR data (remember, METAR data comes from ground stations, primarily reporting conditions on the ground, with limited other features like cloud altitudes). Granted, I'm not sure what other information these weather programs are ingesting, but there isn't much else out there.

*If you're bored, there are more videos here along with the narrative of the flight
Also, if you generally hate my guts, you can also see me getting punished by crosswinds in those videos :wink: