Here's another interesting weather situation. Double cloud layers surrounded by thin mist.cheers CG

That last line concerning the sky being unpredictable and challenging utterly captures my thoughts on the weather exactly. I enjoy the immersion factor, but weather should be much more dangerous. All pilots steer far clear of thunderstorms which most likely contain hail, massive vertical wind flow with metal wrenching turbulence, from the 747 pilot to the general aviation pilot, not to mention these monsters can form rapidly depending on atmospheric conditions. The need for thunderstorm avoidance I can only hope will become a reality in the next version. As in real world flying they are unpredictable, dangerous and challenging. I believe the current version of FS has captured the visual beauty of the sky, I'm hoping the next version captures the hidden dangers that lay within that beauty.Ian.

In the photo it's hard to see the ground. looking down at a steeper angle and the ground was quite good visible. Loved to see such weather situations possible in fs.The second picture is for tdragger :-hah The shot was taken at Saanen airfield (LSGK)located in the lovely swiss alps. :-sun1The approach is quite tricky and worth a try.Hope you like it. :-)best regards,CG

CGI Flew a Ski Plane out of Mirabel in the French Alps with an Instructor and it was an amazing experience.Crossing snow covered ridges and landing on Glasiers is another adventure idea.If you could swop the plane and Ski down In FS how neat would that be?:-)Pied Piper ;-)

In fact the weather adds so much to the immersion factor that once you are sweating to keep the plane steady under heavy turbulance, trying to see the runway, keeping an eye on the instruments AND trying to communicate with realistic ATC, that I couldn't care at a point like that whether my scenery had a moving jetway or not :)

Hi Peter,an excellent posting. It would be very interesting to know more about what is planned for the new weather engine.Weather is - together with the aircraft aerodynamics - im my opinion by far one of the most important things about a realistic flight simulator. FS9 was already a great enhancement over the previous FS versions in terms of weather modelling, but it has limitations which even very sophisticated weather addons like ActiveSky cannot iron out completety (e.g. the sudden weather shifts which are annoying since FS8, or lack of overcasts).What I'd like to see most in FSX - besides the correction of old and obvious weaknesses like those mentioned above - is a realistic way to model turbulences and thermal lift - updrafts and downdrafts, ridge lift and so on. Some of the recently screenshots for FSX show a high-performance sailplane, this may give some hope that Microsoft will take care about weather and aerodynamics much more, because flying a sailplane in the current FS9 weather model doesn`t make much sense (way too easy and boring, no challenge of finding updrafts and avoiding downdrafts...). The 'spririt' of flying a sailplane or a motorized plane below the size of a commercial airliner can only be achieved by useful improvements in the field of weather modelling.Panther

tdragger wrote:>Naturally real pilots and experienced simmers know this but>how do you make it relevant to the average user? What are the>weather scenarios that an average player would appreciate?-More weather themes.-Ability for FSX to change between weather themes whilst flying, dramatically, so the average user notices in his average flying time of 30mins.-More weather eyecandy, such as rainbows and visible ice effects.I don't think the average user cares about the accuracy of the weather, so long as it looks good and "pulls" not "pushes" him into the immersion of the sim.

"Naturally real pilots and experienced simmers know this but how do you make it relevant to the average user? What are the weather scenarios that an average player would appreciate?"Everything challenging you can throw at them 'tdragger' that would be relevant in the real world (let's say a much improved ASV type default weather generator, nothing canned or static). Now you've just made the sim that more challenging and the adrenaline pumping. A realistic challenge will always sell a product.