April 10, 201610 yr SMP v3.1 has just given me a great virtual flight experience, with weather injected by the NOAA plugin, and the clouds beautifully "painted" all around me. Rain was there, the right amounts of wind variation and even turbulence both thanks to NOAA plugin, but the clouds, the light, all of the sky visuals were simply Great! No fps degradation at all ! Bring the connector!!!! Flying gliders since 1980 Flightsimming since 1992 AMD Ryzen 5600x, 32GB RAM, GPU Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB, 1 TB and 500 GB nvme2 SSD drives, HP 27" 60Hz LED monitor @ 1920x1080, T16000, Hotas from old X52 Pro, Saitek Combat Rudder Pro (2010 model)
April 10, 201610 yr I'm using noaa plugin also , and I don't know if its something wrong in my installation, symaxx pro settings or what, but even with 3.1, most of the times when raining, I see just a few clouds, the rest of sky is blue.
April 10, 201610 yr Author I've had that experience in the past with the NOAA plugin, but now, and I really don't know what I did different, it works... One suggestion: - use skyvector.com or badbadweather.com to search for METAR with rain / snow ( RA, SHRA, TSRA, SN ); - go there in X-plane, but chose an aircraft with rain effects modeled. Example: Searched BadBadWeather.com for rain and found LEVD 101500Z 25021G31KT 5000 RA SCT008 BKN025 OVC035 05/03 Q1001 Went there and found a true to life windy and rainy day. Took my Carenado C90 for a circuit. It can also have to do with the version of Python and Sandy's Python interface I use. - NOAA Plugin version 2.2.1 - Sandy's Python Interface v2.7 from here - Pyhton v 2.7.1 64 bit ( more recent versions of Python 2.7 are incompatible with Sandy's interface ) I believe I didn't see rain when using the Python Interface v2.6 and Python v2.6 and that's why I decided to try v2.7 of Python and Interface, but beware that the most recent versions of Python 2.7 also cause problems! 2.7.1 looks to me as the best choice. Flying gliders since 1980 Flightsimming since 1992 AMD Ryzen 5600x, 32GB RAM, GPU Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB, 1 TB and 500 GB nvme2 SSD drives, HP 27" 60Hz LED monitor @ 1920x1080, T16000, Hotas from old X52 Pro, Saitek Combat Rudder Pro (2010 model)
April 10, 201610 yr Thanks, I had noaa plugin 2.0, so upgraded to 2.14 just in case. (I already had phyton interface 2.73) A picture from EGFF ..now with full rain coverage.. still I see it like clouds / clear sky day. My skymaxx distance settings are at max. (When I try to post a url jpeg or png I get "You are not allowed to use that image extension on this community." What extensions are allowed ?) http://imgur.com/wlNY4kF
April 10, 201610 yr I am using the latest version of both - Python and NOAA - and yesterday, when it was snowing here, it was snowing at my local airport in X-Plane. It continued to snow until I got above the clouds, which is what should happen. Not rain, but it accurately portrayed what was going on. Someone mentioned, and it must be true, that the weather in NOAA does not carry over to the weather radar in aircraft... I don't like that. John John Wingold
April 10, 201610 yr Commercial Member Glad you're enjoying SkyMaxx Pro 3.1! I should point out that you won't want to use the NOAA plugin in its current form with Real Weather Connector (RWC) once it's out. NOAA works by distilling the surrounding weather into three cloud layers that surround the plane, using X-Plane's datarefs. Real Weather Connector however uses X-Plane's METAR.rwx file to position different cloud fronts and systems where they should be, meaning you can have different weather visible in different places around the plane. So NOAA really negates the benefit of RWC by how it handles the clouds; it removes the information RWC needs. Furthermore, RWC requires "real world weather" to be active in X-Plane, and NOAA disables that option from what I've seen. So - with RWC, you'll probably be better off without the NOAA plugin - at least until the author can adapt it to work better with RWC. I think the same is true for EFASS's weather injection. If you're really fond of the NOAA plugin, so as much as I hate to say it - RWC might not be a good purchase for you. With RWC, you'll get the best results just using X-Plane's built-in real world weather feature. It also works with weather add-ons that communicate with X-Plane using the METAR.rwx file, such FS Global Real Weather (FSGRW).
April 10, 201610 yr Author Thx for making that clear. No problem, provided the outcome is better than what I presently have with the NOAA plugin. Flying gliders since 1980 Flightsimming since 1992 AMD Ryzen 5600x, 32GB RAM, GPU Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB, 1 TB and 500 GB nvme2 SSD drives, HP 27" 60Hz LED monitor @ 1920x1080, T16000, Hotas from old X52 Pro, Saitek Combat Rudder Pro (2010 model)
April 12, 201610 yr Commercial Member I'm one of those that never bothered to upgrade to SMP v3. However, with the impending release of this program, I was seriously considering upgrading SMP in order to use it; RWC looks like it's going to change a lot of what I didn't care for in terms of XP weather. As such, I was pretty darn pleased to open up my email just now and see them temporarily bring back the upgrade discount for SMP v2 owners. Good job! I'm very sure that I'll be taking advantage of that! Jim Stewart Milviz Person.
April 12, 201610 yr Author Hmmm, I bought it after the initial discount, just a month or so latter and payed for the full version again :-/ Not good to know that should I have waited a bit more I would have been able to buy it in discount again... I'll skip the SaaB 340, again :-/ But, good for you Jimmy - I'm sure you'll like it ! Flying gliders since 1980 Flightsimming since 1992 AMD Ryzen 5600x, 32GB RAM, GPU Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB, 1 TB and 500 GB nvme2 SSD drives, HP 27" 60Hz LED monitor @ 1920x1080, T16000, Hotas from old X52 Pro, Saitek Combat Rudder Pro (2010 model)
April 12, 201610 yr Commercial Member I'll skip the SaaB 340, again :-/ Haha...some kind of self punishment, or what? Founder of X-Aviation
April 12, 201610 yr Author Haha...some kind of self punishment, or what? Yep, sort of... Flying gliders since 1980 Flightsimming since 1992 AMD Ryzen 5600x, 32GB RAM, GPU Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB, 1 TB and 500 GB nvme2 SSD drives, HP 27" 60Hz LED monitor @ 1920x1080, T16000, Hotas from old X52 Pro, Saitek Combat Rudder Pro (2010 model)
April 13, 201610 yr What weather injectors does RWC support apart from native X-Plane? Efass/UltraWX? FS Global Real Weather? Torfi
April 13, 201610 yr Commercial Member RWC works by extracting detailed weather information from X-Plane's metar.rwx file. So X-Plane's built-in real weather, or FSGRW (which uses the metar.rwx file to communicate weather conditions to X-Plane) work well with it. All other weather injectors I know of currently send weather information to X-Plane using datarefs, which limits them to just 3 cloud layers that cover the entire world at any given time. They don't send the detailed weather data we need. As a workaround, you can configure RWC to always use the most recently downloaded metar.rwx from X-Plane's built-in real world weather, and use that for positioning clouds. That way, you get the detail of METAR data for the clouds in your scene, but can still use these external injectors for things like winds, precipitation, turbulence, etc. Short story: RWC works out of the box with built-in real world weather, FSGRW, or any future weather add-ons that interface with X-Plane using METAR data. And you can get it to play nice with other add-ons that take over X-Plane's weather with a couple of extra steps.
April 13, 201610 yr Author A couple of questions... 1) How will it cope with aloft data, namely winds ? As of some recent version, winds aloft are back on default XpX weather, and do not make part of the METAR of course, so, I wonder how RWC will deal with that ? 2) Since METAR reports go only up to sector altitude, how will RWC cope with medium / higher levels on those cases. Example, sector altitude ( like around most European airfields ) is 5,000' at LPPT, so, above that, unless if significant, nothing will be reported, but you can have an OVC at 10,000' which would make your day a lot greyer.... Is RWC prepared to deal with that ? How ? Thx Flying gliders since 1980 Flightsimming since 1992 AMD Ryzen 5600x, 32GB RAM, GPU Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB, 1 TB and 500 GB nvme2 SSD drives, HP 27" 60Hz LED monitor @ 1920x1080, T16000, Hotas from old X52 Pro, Saitek Combat Rudder Pro (2010 model)
April 13, 201610 yr Commercial Member 1) How will it cope with aloft data, namely winds ? As of some recent version, winds aloft are back on default XpX weather, and do not make part of the METAR of course, so, I wonder how RWC will deal with that ? X-Plane will handle winds as it always has. RWC's job is to handle cloud type and placement. X-Plane separates wind METAR files from cloud coverage, so no issues here. Founder of X-Aviation
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