My ASN weather radar gauge for FSX (&P3D?)

[roland_lfor 245]

In VC mode, the gauge is loaded before the VC is build.

Perhaps you start the loop processing too early, for exemple begin to draw before the objectif exists?

[Bryn 72]

I've heard of this problem, and realise there's probably a bug in there somewhere.

 

If I get some time over Christmas, I might revisit the gauge and see if I can fix it (and maybe muck around with a few other ideas).

 

Sorry I can't be any help sooner.

[roland_lfor 245]

Thanks Bryn, enjoy Christmas time !

 

About ideas:

It could be more realistic to take in account the aircraft pitch angle and cumulate with the radar pitch command when you send the request to ASN Api.

 

I imagine that weather radars in real aircraft are fixed in the nose and does not compensate aircraft pitch. So during climb, you have a "natural" pitch of +10 degrees and see above precipitations.

 

Roland

[ckyliu 1,749]

I imagine that weather radars in real aircraft are fixed in the nose and does not compensate aircraft pitch. So during climb, you have a "natural" pitch of +10 degrees and see above precipitations.

 

Most weather radars have and are used in STAB (stabilised) mode, which means the weather radar tilt angle relates to the horizon (i.e. parallel to the ground), not nose pitch.

[roland_lfor 245]

You are correct, I found very detailled information in Bendix-king user manual RDS 86

Actually the stabilizer can compensate smooth roll and pitch in a range of +/-30 degrees. (Seems to be the standard on Honeywell or Bendix radar)

 

I currently develop my own gauge. The goal is to use it in a Virtual cockpit.

[nirgal76 100]

 

At the moment it's just using the stock bitmap that ships in the FSX SDK!  I know a bit about getting code to work, but I know really nothing about illustration and graphic design... do you like my little plus and minus buttons?  Cutting edge graphics there... took me forever to get them right in MS Paint.

 

Anyway, I'll have a crack at changing the background image... it will also give me an opportunity to learn a bit about embedding more than one gauge in the file. 

 

I have a problem with the gain function, though.  I'm not really sure what the logic should be. 

 

At the moment, each pixel on the radar is essentially a number between 0 and 255 that HiFi gives me through their API.

 

I had a look at the dbz numbers at wikipedia.org/wiki/DBZ_(meteorology), and used that as a bit of a guide for the cutoff levels for green, yellow and red on my weather radar.

 

My code looks a bit like this:

 

if (radarPixelReturn > 153) Color = Red;

else if (radarPixelReturn > 115)Color = Yellow;

else if (radarPixelReturn > 60) Color = Green;

 

So my question is this: Does the logic of gain just boil down to lowering and raising those cutoff numbers?  Or is there something more sophisticated going on?

 

Bryn.

 

You have an example for color on this (Collins_WXR-2100_Operators_Guide):

 

https://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCoQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.smartcockpit.com%2Fdownload.php%3Fpath%3Ddocs%2F%26file%3DCollins_WXR-2100_Operators_Guide.pdf&ei=eleiVNHKD8iX7AblyYDIAQ&usg=AFQjCNF7DSD58Zd-sglIj-g4DpiJ8SHgCQ

See page 169

[nelsly 0]

Hi Bryn, is there any way this will work with the de fault fsx or p3d weather? Just curious

 

Thanks

 

Nelson

[Bryn 72]

It seems to work with default weather if the ASN dll is installed (at least, it did when I was testing it early last year).

[nelsly 0]

Hi Bryn, I have a friend Ken Wiggton who makes great freeware panels and I thought it would be nice to have your guage work in them but as you know ASN is payware so it will only work if you have ASN. Too bad really that it will only work with ASN. Do you know if it will also work with opus which is also payware. It is really confusing because the opus guy seems to state in another thread that any radar guage should display the data in fsx or p3d with the default weather, but as you say the .dll file must be installed I guess

 

Nelson

[ckyliu 1,749]

For a weather radar gauge to work accurately, it must know where precipitation is occurring. ASN is the only weather engine that can provide this data, at time of writing.

 

I am aware there are other weather radar gauges on the market, but these are not accurate as they only take a best guess based on FSX weather station data. This data does not contain precipitation locations as FSX considers this to be a somewhat random visual effect.

 

The weather radar gauge discussed here interfaces with the ASN weather engine directly to get accurate precipitation data, so it won't work unless ASN is installed and running.

[nelsly 0]

Hi Thanks for the info but I already new that although there have been conflicting reports on other threads that would lead one to believe different however

 

Nelson

[owinfrey 0]

Hello, 

 

I've followed the instructions to install Bryn's radar but I have no data being displayed from the radar. I get a blank screen. I have ASN with SP1B installed on the same FSX pc. ASN works fine even with xgauge but it seem the weather radar isn't communicating with ASN.

 

HELP!

 

Thanks in Advance.

 

 

Olin

[funkyj4ever 2]

Any change you can impletend it into the pmdg j41? like the reality xp weather radar? would be cool!

[roland_lfor 245]

You can try my radar gauge.

 

It's working well in the JS41 VC.

 

Thread is here:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/459050-another-radar-gauge-for-vc-window-usage/?view=getnewpost

 

Roland

[Bryn 72]

Roland's radar has well and truly surpassed my one (it's nice work!), and I won't have any time to work on mine further. Thanks for all the support and encouragement along the way, and I'm glad to have contributed a bit to the community.