1 hour ago, Zdenek said:

I think he is talking about the graphics on the radar not what it’s doing.

Right, but again, the graphics are driven by the "definition" or "granularity" of what Active Sky is providing us.

Seriously, guys, you're overanalyzing this to an extreme degree.

48 minutes ago, scandinavian13 said:

Right, but again, the graphics are driven by the "definition" or "granularity" of what Active Sky is providing us.

Seriously, guys, you're overanalyzing this to an extreme degree.

Yes i agree.

The weather programs, in my opinion are good but still have a ways to go. Lots of room for improvement in depiction and accuracy. 

6 hours ago, B777ER said:

The weather programs, in my opinion are good but still have a ways to go. Lots of room for improvement in depiction and accuracy. 

Yeah. At the same time, do keep in mind that weather sources - currently - require you to fill in the blanks. Weather programs, to my knowledge, do a lot of that by looking at all of the METARs and kind of "reverse engineering" the weather picture. That's all well and good (and gives you a good idea), but it's tough to get the localizations down well. Around my area, for example, we have a few low ridges, which cause the weather to occasionally behave very oddly. Out in the Shenandoah Valley, there's a low mid-valley ridge. When the conditions are just right, from Front Royal (KFRR) down to Shenandoah (KSHD), you'll have thick low clouds (or fog) socking those airports in (and Luray (KLUA) in between them), yet less than 10nm away at New Market (8W2), or 7nm away at Bridgewater (KVBW), the weather is usually severe clear. Looking down on it, it's pretty cool, and you can definitely see how terrain affects the weather. Trying to reverse engineer that picture from the METARs alone is pretty tough. Drawing that picture in the sim is even tougher, because there really isn't a "draw this weather until it hits the mountain" type of control.

In a different way, my buddy was trying to do his checkride years and years ago, and the METAR showed that the visibility was awful (something like 1/4sm vis - way below minimums to dispatch a student solo up to the airport where he was taking the 'ride), but the METARs literally everywhere around it were severe clear. Everyone was baffled, so he just called the examiner and asked "how's the weather up there?" She said "just fine - why?" He explained, so she walked outside, reiterated that it was fine, and then looked over at the AWOS station.

The problem? Land graders were adjacent to the airport, and the wind was blowing some of the dirt/dust in the area of the station, which was interpreting it as reduced vis.

...and that's keeping in mind that we have some really good equipment at most fields here in the states.

Out on the islands (look at the blue water in the OP's pic), this drops, because the reporting stations are a lot further apart, and some really aren't the top of the line. Outside of the EU, OZ (and NZ - wouldn't want to exclude the Kiwi's since y'all need those stations for the weird weather you have over there...wind at the very least) and US/Canada, stations can be fewer and farther between, so the ability for these programs to even come up with a coherent weather picture in certain areas of the world is a minor miracle.

Even GPS is a bit sketch in certain parts of the world.

Zoom in on Hong Kong on Google Maps, and switch to Satellite View. Move the map around Hong Kong and have a look at the street overlay. Now, drag the map over across the 'border' into Mainland China (up near Shenzhen) and have a look at the street overlay.

2 hours ago, scandinavian13 said:

Land graders were adjacent to the airport, and the wind was blowing some of the dirt/dust in the area of the station, which was interpreting it as reduced vis.

Fantastic.  We received the very first solid state anemometer at Scott AFB (the AF weather service was headquartered there so we got all the new toys first) there were significant measurement errors within the first weeks, while we still had the old cups as the primary.  Investigation revealed that the internal heater used in the heat diffusion method employed by this instrument was attracting birds that liked to sit on it.... and poop.  My guess is that now decades later most instruments are using ultrasound rather than hot wire method.

The only way that I can see for Active Sky or other weather programs to inject truly accurate depictions of the locations of thunderstorms as they are actually occurring in real time would be to take the Nexrad radar feed. That data is readily available, as dozens of PC and smartphone/tablet apps use it, but there is probably a fee for access, and I don’t know what would be involved in translating it to a form that FSX or P3D could use to place cells.

The other problem is coverage. Nexrad (or equivalent) real-time radar data is available for the US, (including Alaska and Hawaii), Canada, Western Europe, Japan and Australia but not for other parts of the world.

2 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

The other problem is coverage. Nexrad (or equivalent) real-time radar data is available for the US, (including Alaska and Hawaii), Canada, Western Europe, Japan and Australia but not for other parts of the world.

Yeah. I think that's the main issue with getting better depiction: data, which is driven by physical hardware out in the wild. Common "here," but not so much elsewhere.

Kinda interesting to think about radar coverage (ATC side - not sure about weather, though I'm sure it followed at about the same pace) even only a couple decades ago. In the (mainland) United States now, it's hard to think of places that you don't really have radar coverage. Go back in history a bit, and you were in and out, and it was normal. Puts some of the IFR knowledge that seems kinda obscure/odd into perspective in regards to non radar procedures.

1 hour ago, scandinavian13 said:

Go back in history a bit, and you were in and out, and it was normal.

Gee... someone my age doesn't think of it as "history" when it seems not too long ago.  When I earned my instrument rating and for the next few years before I deployed overseas and had an hiatus, most GA locations I flew too did not have radar coverage.  I recall working the FBO for an instrument approach IMC at KCLL College Station TX, also a tower clearance for an IMC approach at KGPT Gulfport MS.  Gulfport is next door to busy Keesler AFB but still it was "conventional" coverage.  These are ones I remember not because of the lack of radar but due to the difficulty of the approaches.

As for realism in flight simulation radar.... there are significant challenges due to sparse data but that's not an excuse for rendering a large storm system as a gaggle of little storms both visually and in the radar.  There is also something very wrong with every cell being painted the deepest red, even a small "shower" with tops below 22000 that I'd fly through most any day if I had too.  Not every CB paints 80% red, some are mostly yellow with lots of green scattered around.  It just doesn't resemble airborne radar yet.

15 hours ago, scandinavian13 said:

Right, but again, the graphics are driven by the "definition" or "granularity" of what Active Sky is providing us.

Seriously, guys, you're overanalyzing this to an extreme degree.

Sorry that as a customer you are not allowed to ask questions. Sorry to have bothered you Kyle. 

 

Thanks everyone for your help. Cheers!

7 minutes ago, Le Français said:

Sorry that as a customer you are not allowed to ask questions. Sorry to have bothered you Kyle.

You misunderstood me.

You're perfectly allowed to ask questions. All the same, if I think you're running down a rabbit hole that isn't going to get you any meaningful answers, I'm going to let you know...and I did. That's all.

2 hours ago, scandinavian13 said:

Yeah. I think that's the main issue with getting better depiction: data, which is driven by physical hardware out in the wild. Common "here," but not so much elsewhere.

Kinda interesting to think about radar coverage (ATC side - not sure about weather, though I'm sure it followed at about the same pace) even only a couple decades ago. In the (mainland) United States now, it's hard to think of places that you don't really have radar coverage. Go back in history a bit, and you were in and out, and it was normal. Puts some of the IFR knowledge that seems kinda obscure/odd into perspective in regards to non radar procedures.

Even though the radar depiction is often  a bit “off” on the display with multiple “popcorn” cells, it’s often quite accurate in terms of location. 

I use ForeFlight on an iPad, and program my FS flightplan into its map, using FSXFlight to output the current P3D aircraft position. I use the Nexrad radar overlay and if I am approaching an area of storms, I will usually start to see them on the radar in the aircraft (coming from ASP4), in basic valley the correct geographic locations - keeping in mind that there could be up to a 1-hour delay for thunderstorm reports based on METAR.

Active Sky MIGHT be getting thunderstorm data from more than just airport METARs. In addition to the actual Nexrad graphic feed, NOAA also provides a lower-resolution data feed of thunderstorm radar data based on grid squares. That has been around since at least the early 1990’s. We used to use that at an FBO locally around 1992. We had grid sheets printed up for the local area, and would fill them in with colored pencils for levels 1-6 based on a downloaded text file from DUATS accessed via a dial up modem!