Opus has a different approach: it uses weather themes to set the weather. They don't use weather stations to display cloud formations. However, weather themes have the disadvantage, that they only have 30 x 30 km tiles; so if you are in KJFK, then KLGA has the exact same weather (wind, visibility, clouds etc)

 

That is complete rubbish, you should get your facts straight rather than just guessing. The weather cells are not 30 km wide and the weather will be different at KJFK and KLGA as can be seen in these shots,

 

 

 

Cheryl

 

 

I turned cirrus off in OpusFSX because it suddenly appeared or disappeared depending on my position

 

If you have Auto Cirrus Clouds (General User Preferences) enabled which is based on weather conditions then cirrus will be displayed when the weather conditions dictate. You can also configure cirrus to be turned on or off.

 

Cheryl

That is complete rubbish, you should get your facts straight rather than just guessing. The weather cells are not 30 km wide and the weather will be different at KJFK and KLGA as can be seen in these shots,

 

 

 

Cheryl

 

 

 

If you have Auto Cirrus Clouds (General User Preferences) enabled which is based on weather conditions then cirrus will be displayed when the weather conditions dictate. You can also configure cirrus to be turned on or off.

 

Cheryl

 

Hi Cheryl!

 

Sorry, I mixed up two situations I encountered; weather cells are 16 km wide and I had the problems in two of Paris' airports, not JFK and LGA. However, I meant that in the FSX weather menu you can see that the weather is different, not when querying Opus for the weather conditions at that stations. That's what caused ATC/AI Traffic problems on my flight.

 

I was not guessing (I did a lot of research on FSXs weather system), I just didn't remember the cell size correctly, sorry for that!

 

Bernd

Hi Bernd, since you are here, could you check out this:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/417075-fsgrw-where-the-heck-is-the-option-start-weather-transfer/

 

Maybe I should have posted it in this topic but that would be a bit OT, I think. ^_^

 

 

If you have Auto Cirrus Clouds (General User Preferences) enabled which is based on weather conditions then cirrus will be displayed when the weather conditions dictate.

 

Yes, I had that but with that option the cirrus would popup at once in certain locations: I was expecting OpusFSX to load the various weather types in a huge circle around me, so including the cirrus but it seems that cirrus only gets loaded once you reach the point where it actually is...?

 

 

But others have suggest this does (here and in other forums) so I'm a little bit confused.

 

Hm, just gave that demo a try and only a few minutes after take off the sky suddenly changed from slight haze to completely overcast and 10 seconds later the overcast changed to another kind of overcast (so still overcast but the clouds all moved around suddenly). So that's bye bye to "Actually NO cloud layer should suddenly appear or disappear with FSGRW". And bye bye to FSGRW too. I will stick with OpusFSX also because it has ingame weather reports. No need in spending 40 euro if there isn't a HUGE benefit or progression imho.

 

 

I was expecting OpusFSX to load the various weather types in a huge circle around me

 

Hi JvE

 

The cirrus will appear once the weather conditions dictate and should be all around you. Not sure if cirrus distance can limited in FSX configuration or for some other reason, haven't seen that on my system yet.

 

Cheryl

Interesting thread.   :smile:

 

I'm a very happy OPUS user;  ...As well as the quality of the weather, I also love having 'a few things all taken care of in one place' ..... eg, not having to use too many separate utilities, by having weather, cameras, DHM effects etc all in one bag.   :smile:

 

With Opus, after the initial configuration, I just start FSX and fly..... OPUS does everything automatically;  it starts itself, loads the weather, loads up my DHM effects and cameras ... everything.    I just fly, and enjoy it all.

 

I just tried FSGRW and the manual is quite weak in my opinion.    The section on Autostarting makes absolutely no sense at all.   It talks something about command prompts but gives absolutely no clue on where or how this is set up.   Conversely, Opus manual explained it very well, and supplied everything I needed (eg... entries for the DLL.XML file etc).

 

Weather wise, I just tried FSGRW and Opus, loading each's weather into EGNT.    It is very foggy here today, so a great test bed.    Both looked good but different;   OPUS placed more fog, but the FSGRW looked a little more progressive and gradual and perhaps (in that scenario) a little better....... but not a lot in in.      In terms of turnulance and 'feel' I could tell no difference whatsoever.    The wind was 320 at 7kts.     Both behaved similarly, but OPUS has the huge advantage that it provides all the other fab 'movement' stuff (DHM effects etc).

 

Ultimately,  because the autostart method for FSGRW is such a poorly explained unknown at the moment, I would definitely be sticking with OPUS.      There just wasn't enough of a difference in visual or dynamic weather to justify buying and running an additional utility.

 

OPUS gives me so much...... in one nice bag of goodies, that I don't even need to launch before FSX.    With FSGRW I needed to run it;   save weather, load weather and transfer it to the sim ...... (all had to be done externally with FSX in windowed mode, before then going back to full screen.    I am sure there is a way of proper autostarting FSGRW but as above it's very badly explained.

 

Here is the section from the manual :-

 

AUTOSTART

 

Introduction

 

This feature allows you to specify some command line arguments to let FS Global Real Weather

automatically start a weather mode, download the current weather and transfer it to the chosen

simulator. The simulator can also be started after FS Global Real Weather, however, FS Global

Real Weather will only try to connect to the simulator until the given time out expired.

 

Parameters

 

All of the following parameters are required to use the autostart feature:

 

FS Global Real Weather.exe / weathermode / simulator / timeout / minimize / autoquit

 

weathermode dynamic dynamic download mode

static: static download mode

simulator: fs2004 FS2004

fsx: FSX

p3d: Prepar3D

none: Starts no weather transfer

timeout: A time-out in minutes. If FS Global Real Weather can't connect to the

simulator within this time-out, it will automatically quit.

minimize:

y: Minimize

n: Don't minimize

With this parameter set to 'y', FS Global Real Weather will automatically

minimize after start-up.

autoquit y : FS Global Real Weather will automatically quit after

stopping the operation mode.

- 10 -

n: After stopping operation mode, FS Global Real Weather

will return to the main menu.

 

Example:

 

FS Global Real Weather.exe dynamic fsx 5 y n

 

By using these parameters, FS Global Real Weather will automatically start dynamic download mode,

download the most current weather from the internet and transfer it to FSX. If the connection to FSX can't be

opened within 5 minutes, FS Global Real Weather will automatically quit. The lsecond to last parameter

defines that FS Global Real Weather will be minimized after start-up. The last parameter defines, that FS

Global Real Weather should not quit itself after stopping operation mode.

 

 

 

Now clearly it's explaining something, but does that tell you where or how to set up that autostart 'key' ? ... No.

Now clearly it's explaining something, but does that tell you where or how to set up that autostart 'key' ? ... No.

 

Sorry for your confusion, but I understood it perfectly. 

 

There is no autostart 'key', it's simply a set of command line parameters that allow FSGRW to start up with a specific set of criteria.

 

Most users probably will never use them, but it's great for someone who consistently uses the same options.

 

Ernie

As people are sharing their first time experiences, here is my first experience with Opus:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/398063-fs-flight-keeper-monitoring

 

BTW. The original topic title was "Constant wind shits and pressure changes with Opus". The developers decided to change the title to "FS Flight Keeper monitoring".

 

Funny enough, it was the wind and pressure shifts that eventually drove me away from Opus.

 

(For those who read the linked thread, FSGRW doesn't seem to mind "monitoring software" like FS Flight Keeper)

Now clearly it's explaining something, but does that tell you where or how to set up that autostart 'key' ? ... No.

 

Sorry for your confusion, but I understood it perfectly.

 

I have to say I also understood it at once. ^_^ Or at least I think I do: you have to add those parameters to the shortcut to FSGRW, in the target box. Rightclick on the shortcut, choose properties and add the parameters to the target. That's it. You have to add them ALL, so you can't skip one. The slashes at the beginning of the explanation are confusing though: you shouldn't use them but simply add them as in the example at the bottom (FS Global Real Weather.exe dynamic fsx 5 y n meaning after starting FSGRW dynamic weather will be loaded in FSX providing it can connect to FSX within 5 minutes: FSGRW will be minimized automatically and won't be quitted after quitting FSX).

 

However...!!! Take not that dynamic weather has been LOCKED in the demo so this function doesn't work with the demo!!! So maybe you DID understand it all but simply didn't get it working... because it won't unless you actually buy the software!

 

P.S. Of course it would have been better if the manual actually TOLD you where to put those parameters indeed... I accidently knew this because I recently have been fooling around with the TrackIR shortcut in order to have it start automatically at High priority.

 

Anyway, I also decided to stick with OpusFSX. I did see more movements during the flight (I have the motion effects of OpusFSX turned off so maybe that's why I did notice a difference) but the sudden popup and changes of clouds really put me off.

There shouldn't be any pop-up with clouds... Something wrong with your setup. Especially in demo mode, where you can only download one set of weather info and inject it into fsx. You press the start weather injection button and you see the green bar inside fsx telling FSGRW is injecting weather, please wait... and then saying it is completed. 

 

After that its impossible that it could somehow change the already downloaded weather info since you downloaded a static weather file? With dynamic weather it might be possible that it just updated the weather and downloaded new set of files and injected it, but with static weather download sounds like an error on the user side.

 

 

I personally haven't had any problems with weather injection. Simple program with simple setup. Can't really go wrong.

I have to say I also understood it at once. ^_^ Or at least I think I do: you have to add those parameters to the shortcut to FSGRW, in the target box. Rightclick on the shortcut, choose properties and add the parameters to the target. That's it.

 

 

Don't you think it would have been appropriate for the manual to say;-

 

"you have to add those parameters to the shortcut to FSGRW, in the target box. Rightclick on the shortcut, choose properties and add the parameters to the target". 

 

........why on Earth would that not be pointed out?

 

A manual should state the actions required to achieve something (within reason; ok, I am not saying it should explain how to use FSX :wink:).    If the autostart uses the target field of the EXE, then say that!!!!.....   what the heck is the purpose in using chinese whispers, and 'hinting at things'.       

 

I use target commands on a couple of other programmes (like you, to set TrackIR to set priority to High), but wouldn't have known, from the vague chapter in the FSGRW manual, that this is what it was talking about.........   :smile:

 

Anyway, I've concluded that FSGRW adds nothing to my experience over OpusFSX, but each to their own.

sounds like an error on the user side

 

That's too easy. I know how the various modes work (and also that dynamic weather shouldn't show obvious updates in the game because the weather is only updated in the distance so out of sight) but well... what can I say: I suddenly saw clouds where there were none at first. I only had FSX running with TrackIR and FSGRW and I had even rebooted my PC to make sure nothing was in the way.

 

 

Don't you think it would have been appropriate for the manual to say;-

 

 

 

"you have to add those parameters to the shortcut to FSGRW, in the target box. Rightclick on the shortcut, choose properties and add the parameters to the target".

 

Well...:

 

P.S. Of course it would have been better if the manual actually TOLD you where to put those parameters indeed...

 

Now clearly it's explaining something, but does that tell you where or how to set up that autostart 'key' ? ... No.

 

Change the line of the short cut Icon to start the program from "Your drive and installation folder for example "D:\FSGRW\FS Global Real Weather.exe"  into "D:\FSGRW\FS Global Real Weather.exe" dynamic fsx 5 y n

Straight forward and easy ;-)

 

But my guess is you already knew that ;-)

I don't know if this has already been pointed out (I haven't read the entire thread), but the support offered by OPUS is in my opinion, is second to none. for a dunce like me that means a lot, not to mention that I am very happy with opus.

 

I have ASE and REX Essentials, but have settled on Opus.

 

 

Hey Jeroen,   sorry if it came out that I was furstrated with you.   It was just the ommision of something so logical and easy to include in the FSGRW manual, that I was frustrated at ............ not your good self.

 

Sorry if I caught you with any friendly fire.   :lol: