Pilot’s FS Global Real Weather for P3Dv5

[JRBarrett 3,070]

Purchased and installed the V5 upgrade version. Unfortunately, just like with P3DV5-enabled versions of Opus and FSXWX, winds aloft injection is not stable at all. Speed is fine, but direction changes constantly. Though I can't be 100 percent sure, it appears that the wind direction aloft is linked to the surface direction of the closest METAR station, and I think this is a bug in P3D, not of FSGRW or any other weather engine.

I just completed a 90-minute flight from KCLT to KELM, at FL350. Before departure, I loaded my standard PFPX flight plan for this route into FSGRW, so I could see the forecast winds aloft, the actual injected wind and the closest METAR reports while enroute in the FSGRW interface.

Once I climbed above about 2000 feet AGL, the wind direction started getting unstable. The temperature, cloud conditions etc were all fine, as was the wind velocity. Climbing above FL 180, the wind velocity had picked up to about 50 knots, and it was in perfect agreement with FSGRW's wind aloft forecast, as was the outside air temperature. But I noticed that every time the "closest weather station" METAR report would change, the wind aloft direction would instantly snap to whatever that surface report wind direction might be, and the faster I flew as I climbed, (meaning the closest surface METAR would change more often), the wind aloft direction kept shifting, making the aircraft very difficult to control.

I found one interesting thing in the FSGRW menu under "tools", and that was the option to disable the injection of winds aloft. Maybe that option has always been there, but I can't be sure since I haven't used FSGRW in P3D for a long time. The developer may have recently added it, knowing that upper wind direction is unstable in the initial P3DV5 release.

While still in flight, I  disabled winds aloft injection, re-loaded the weather, and from that point on, everything was great. With upper winds turned off, the wind velocity drops to zero, and the temperature changes to the standard ISA temperature for the current altitude. Cloud injection continued working well. I did an ILS approach at the destination through a low overcast with rain, and it was excellent in all regards. The surface winds appear to kick back in at about 2000 feet AGL.

This is the third weather injection engine I have tried, and all use a different injection methodology, and all show problems with the direction of the wind, so I am convinced that this bug is in P3DV5 itself.

TL:DR As long a upper wind injection is turned off in the FSGRW Tools menu, the rest of the weather works fine as far as clouds, temperature precipitation, baro pressure etc...  

[JRBarrett 3,070]

14 minutes ago, MindYerBeak said:

I got the invitation the other day.No demo possible with them.Since I cannot test myself if that software is plagued by cloud shifts and draws the only word I could think of was shove.

Just finished my first flight. I did not see any cloud shifts to speak of, but definite wind shift problems. Clouds and precip actually were quite nice. 

[jzimmermann 238]

3 hours ago, spock5401986 said:

Has anyone managed to get this to work? I updated to the latest version, installed the free version of FSUIPC 6 but can't seem to transfer the weather to the sim, it's only giving me an option for v4.5 not v5

 

You haven't been sipping away at some disinfectant or been hit by hard light I hope!

You cannot update to FSGRW for P3Dv5, but certainly upgrade to it, it's explained at the PILOT'S website.

[jzimmermann 238]

6 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

Just finished my first flight. I did not see any cloud shifts to speak of, but definite wind shift problems. Clouds and precip actually were quite nice. 

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the feedback, good to hear. The new atmospherics with trueSKY in P3Dv5 are still in Beta, so it's not surprising that some areas such as wind shift may have a few bugs that LM still needs to iron out.

Cheers,

Jerome

[Mroberts95 136]

1 minute ago, jzimmermann said:

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the feedback, good to hear. The new atmospherics with trueSKY in P3Dv5 are still in Beta, so it's not surprising that some areas such as wind shift may have a few bugs that LM still needs to iron out.

Cheers,

Jerome

The wind shift issue happens using the old weather system as well. Not just a true sky issue

[JRBarrett 3,070]

3 minutes ago, jzimmermann said:

Hi Jim,

Thanks for the feedback, good to hear. The new atmospherics with trueSKY in P3Dv5 are still in Beta, so it's not surprising that some areas such as wind shift may have a few bugs that LM still needs to iron out.

Cheers,

Jerome

I was using the standard clouds with my tests. I know there will be some changes to both types of weather with the advent of True Sky. Everything works great with FSGRW injected weather with the exception of wind direction, but since the FSGRW interface has the ability to disable upper winds, it’s not a major issue.

I guess we’ll see if the upcoming hot fix for P3DV5 addresses this bug.

[YoYo 374]

32 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

...wind injection...

Thx for nice text! Is it with TrueSky=ON only or with OFF the same issue?

[jzimmermann 238]

26 minutes ago, Mroberts95 said:

The wind shift issue happens using the old weather system as well. Not just a true sky issue

Hi Mark,

The wind shift issue was identified by LM as an old legacy bug and has been fixed a while ago.

Cheers,

Jerome

[Mroberts95 136]

12 minutes ago, jzimmermann said:

Hi Mark,

The wind shift issue was identified by LM as an old legacy bug and has been fixed a while ago.

Cheers,

Jerome

What do you mean fixed? People are getting this issue in both the old weather and the new true sky. So I’m not sure when it was fixed however it’s not working correctly in V5

[JRBarrett 3,070]

24 minutes ago, YoYo said:

Thx for nice text! Is it with TrueSky=ON only or with OFF the same issue?

This is with True Sky off. I haven’t tried a high altitude flight with the new clouds yet, as I find them too bland looking, and apparently (at the moment), limited to only two layers. 

[jzimmermann 238]

1 hour ago, Mroberts95 said:

What do you mean fixed? People are getting this issue in both the old weather and the new true sky. So I’m not sure when it was fixed however it’s not working correctly in V5

Hi Mark,

The issues and bugs relating to this where submitted to LM in a detailed report and addressed and fixed.

What information do you have to substantiate "People are getting this issue in both the old weather and the new true sky", not only is this very vague, this is simply not true.

Cheers,

Jerome

 

 

[JRBarrett 3,070]

43 minutes ago, jzimmermann said:

Hi Mark,

The issues and bugs relating to this where submitted to LM in a detailed report and addressed and fixed.

What information do you have to substantiate "People are getting this issue in both the old weather and the new true sky", not only is this very vague, this is simply not true.

Cheers,

Jerome

 

 

Fixed in the upcoming hot fix? The wind shift issue definitely exists now in the initial public RTM release of P3DV5, with any weather engine. I never saw this problem in any previous version of P3D. The just-released FSGRW for V5 works very well, but upper wind direction changes constantly in flight and it’s not a smooth change in direction - it changes instantly, and appears to be linked to updates in current METAR from the closest ground station. All other parameters are injected correctly.

I’m not saying this is due to anything wrong in FSGRW itself - it appears to be a bug in how P3D is processing wind direction.

Even without any external weather engine - just running the default “fair weather” theme in P3DV5, (which should provide a constant wind of 270 degrees at 25 knots at higher altitudes), shows an intermittent fluctuation in direction two or three times each minute. Running the same theme and aircraft in P3DV4.5 has no such problem.

My only current add-ons in P3DV5 are Orbx textures and land class and FSUIPC 6.04. I have been using the FSW Lear 35 and Falcon 50 for test flights at higher altitudes, but the wind direction shift problem also exists in the default F-35.

I have not tried using FSGRW with True Sky - I will do so on my next flight.

FWIW, my settings in “old style” P3D weather are: cloud draw distance 110 miles, cloud detail slider to max, and “rate at which weather changes with time” set to zero.

[Mroberts95 136]

35 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

Fixed in the upcoming hot fix? The wind shift issue definitely exists now in the initial public RTM release of P3DV5, with any weather engine. I never saw this problem in any previous version of P3D. The just-released FSGRW for V5 works very well, but upper wind direction changes constantly in flight and it’s not a smooth change in direction - it changes instantly, and appears to be linked to updates in current METAR from the closest ground station. All other parameters are injected correctly.

I’m not saying this is due to anything wrong in FSGRW itself - it appears to be a bug in how P3D is processing wind direction.

Even without any external weather engine - just running the default “fair weather” theme in P3DV5, (which should provide a constant wind of 270 degrees at 25 knots at higher altitudes), shows an intermittent fluctuation in direction two or three times each minute. Running the same theme and aircraft in P3DV4.5 has no such problem.

My only current add-ons in P3DV5 are Orbx textures and land class and FSUIPC 6.04. I have been using the FSW Lear 35 and Falcon 50 for test flights at higher altitudes, but the wind direction shift problem also exists in the default F-35.

I have not tried using FSGRW with True Sky - I will do so on my next flight.

FWIW, my settings in “old style” P3D weather are: cloud draw distance 110 miles, cloud detail slider to max, and “rate at which weather changes with time” set to zero.

Same question. You aren’t saying if this is fixed in the upcoming hotfix or was fixed in V5. Reports like this are all over Facebook etc and have been reported to LM

[Dexter1979 101]

Well just tested FSGRW for v5 and I can confirm that it has some wind shift issues... The good part is that weather depiction is very good... clouds few,sct,bkn,ovc... turbulence simulation, lighting in the vicinity... rain patches...

Few pics for you guys...

[JRBarrett 3,070]

This is what I just discovered. I am currently flying from KELM to KPWK, FL360 using the FSW Falcon 50.

Flightplan is: KELM ELZ JHW J70 PMM FIYER OBK KPWK.

I entered that flight plan into the FSGRW planning section. I initially enabled injection of high altitude winds in FSGRW. The METAR wind at KELM was 050 (true) 062 (magnetic) @ 5 knots.

Sitting on the ramp, after starting weather injection, the surface wind was cycling back and forth between 061 and 038 continuously.

Then, I turned off “upper wind/temperature” injection in the FSGRW “Tools” menu, and refreshed the injected weather. As soon as I did that, the surface wind became rock-solid at 061 degrees with no further directional fluctuations.

So apparently, the surface and aloft wind shifts occur only when upper-level wind injection is enabled. Again, I do not think this is any fault of FSGRW itself. I’m almost certain this is due to a bug in P3DV5.

I know that jzimmermann said that there was a bug with wind shifts in P3DV5, that was identified and fixed by LM. I have no reason to doubt that. I believe Mr. Zimmermann is a beta tester for FSGRW, and based on his statement, may very well be a P3D beta tester too.

I am wondering though, if he is currently running the same exact version of P3DV5 that the rest of us are? The RTM version released April 14th, version 5.0.21.34709?

If indeed the bug was fixed earlier, and he has an slightly earlier version of the final product, it might not be happening on his particular system.

I have heard rumors that LM was doing new beta builds almost up to the moment the product was released on the 14th. It certainly would not be the first time in large-scale software projects that a bug was fixed, and then accidentally re-introduced farther down the road as a side effect of fixing or modifying something else.

In any case, it appears that as long as upper wind injection is turned off in the settings window, surface winds will be stable, and all other weather functions will work just fine. I am seeing goid cloud depictions and I am not seeing any serious cloud flickering or flashing during weather updates.