No fog without cloud cover?

[sanh 823]

Hi

I am a recent convert to xplane 11.33 and loving it. I have a question though. I just did a flight to VIDP using default real weather and there was no fog on arrival even though vis was 2 miles in the xplane weather screen/ATIS. 

I downloaded the weather again but no luck. I then did some playing around with the manual weather options and fog was displayed when I added a cloud layer and not if I did not have a cloud layer. This was regardless of my visibility settings.

I have no weather addons and I have no scripts or tweaks set.

Is this how xplane works? If my destination airport has no clouds (like VIDP) then I won't see fog even if its foggy there?

Edited May 6, 2019 by sanh
Clarifying

[Janov 2,383]

Hi Sanh,

this is correct - a cloud layer is needed for the visibility to work correctly.

The real atmosphere often has many layers of different visibility - there could be ground fog, or a hazy layer up to a certain altitude and then clear air above that. You can see the fog on the ground when looking down from cruising altitude - and you may be able to see the sun above when standing in the ground fog layer, even though the horizontal visibility is really bad (if the layer is thin).

X-Plane can, however, only do "one visibility" - so in the above situation you would either have "2 miles visibility" all the way to space (and couldn´t see the distant mountains, even from 30.000 feet) or you would have clear visibility all the way to the ground.

The workaround in X-Plane is requiring a cloud layer - which "normally" would block the view from below the layer to the sky and from above the layer to the ground. Now X-Plane can have clear views ABOVE and "hazy view" BELOW the cloud layer, no more conflict.

I hope this clears it up.

Cheers, Jan

 

Edited May 6, 2019 by Janov

[jcomm 5,919]

And fog is always, actually, a low / stratified cloud layer after all 🙂