I know there are many weather engines for X-Plane that are designed to represent the current weather as accurately as possible in real-time. However I'm not looking for real-world weather, but rather a configurable semi-random weather generator. Basically I want to be able to choose roughly what the weather is going to be like, but not details like the exact height of each cloud layer, the wind direction down to a single degree, the exact temperature and so on. I still want to be surprised by the weather (maybe the wind is slightly stronger than expected, it's hotter than I thought, or there are some rain showers even though I selected a warm summer day, and so on). When you create the weather yourself in the sim, there are no surprises like that, you always know exactly what the weather is going to be. Real world weather on the other hand might not always fit with what you actually want to do in the sim that day.

Maybe it's because I started flight simming with Flight Unlimited III, which always had that option:

Is anything similar available for X-Plane? If not, is there something like an archive or .rwx files for various conditions that I could download and categorize for my own use based on the type and severity of the weather?

Edited August 24, 20196 yr by AdvancedFollower

I'm not aware of a weather add-on that works that way in X-Plane, maybe someone else knows of one.

You could do it manually by rotating through a series of .rwx files like you said, but you could also use an add-on like ActiveSkyX to set that up.

There are three weather modes in ActiveSkyX -- Live, Historical, and Custom. The Custom mode lets you paint weather zones on a map that can be separate or overlapping, and specify all the conditions. Then you can save the current weather in the plugin's native weather format. Set up a bunch of different weather conditions, name the files with numbers instead of descriptive file names, and load a file manually. You could even simulate what a random weather generator would do, by tossing dice to pick a numbered file.

This approach is more flexible than just finding a bunch of .rwx files with different conditions, because the saved weather can incorporate different zones you fly through, changing weather several times along your flight in one weather file.

Probably your best option is to use the XP built in weather engine interface, and just like Parafin suggested above, "paint" your weather in terms of cell paterns - that being the case you want to simulate - winds and gusts as well as variability, rain type and intensity.

But I agree that having something like we have in default FSX / P3D - Weather Themes - would be nice.

ActiveSkyXP, also as Parafin suggested above, offers some sort of "theme-based" weather shaping.

And, btw, thanks for bringing that great flight unlimited 3 simulation from my deepest simmer memmories... How advanced it really was for it's time, with frontal weather, thermals and ridge lift, precipitation levels of severity and so on... Wow!

When using ELITE or PSX I tend to pick the place to fly from  / into from Skyvector, or by searching in, say, BadBadWeather.com for a specific type of weather, and then place my aircraft at a nearby airfield and operate from there. The same can be used with any flight simulator that does Real World Weather.

Edited August 25, 20196 yr by jcomm