I've been a user of Flight Simulator since it before it was even an MS product, when it was SubLogic Flight Simulator, and in all that time of using flight sims, I've always wished one of them could do real weather justice visually. Well it just managed it when I flew around this massive thunderstorm over China...

 

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by Chock

Thats very awesome! Did you just go around or can you ask for vectors to avoid? Probably giving to much credit to the ATC on that last one but Im curious.

18 minutes ago, Lotharen said:

Thats very awesome! Did you just go around or can you ask for vectors to avoid? Probably giving to much credit to the ATC on that last one but Im curious.

Kind of, you can ask for direct to another waypoint, or an altitude change, but bear in mind that in real life, it is up to the pilot to determine whether a command from ATC is the best course of action.

In the case of that shot, I just went right at a hole in the clouds and then skirted around some of the big thunderheads to get a look at them, so it wasn't really an issue on this occasion. I'll worry about requests for heading changes for weather to ATC when TPDs start putting improved ATC into the sim.

Having once been (stupidly) flown into a thunderstorm by an instructor, who then 'froze up on me' when he realised he'd messed up, forcing me to take over and get us out of it, I thought it was cool that a sim could present a similar situation to me. On the occasion where that really occurred (in an SZD 50-3), I couldn't bail out because - being catatonic - the guy sat behind me would have died, so I had to just 'fly the plane' with the hand that was dealt to me. Obviously we made it or I would not be around to be telling the tale, but it is part of why I always wanted thunderstorms to be really threatening and dangerous in a flight sim, because they are.

What you can't tell from that shot, is that, out of curiosity, I kept on going for thunder clouds with the airframe icing up really badly, the entire forward fuselage was white (you can see a mild bit of icing on the plane in that shot starting to form), eventually it started losing altitude and then broke up due to airframe stress, which was really quite impressive for a sim, because at the time it occurred in the sim, the aeroplane was going pretty straight and level. Having a sim be able to make weather actually deadly dangerous to your toy aeroplane, is a massive leap forward in realism.

And those clouds do look goddam scary in the sim - they were flashing with glows of lightning all over the place -  anyone who was confronted with something like that in real life, would have been insane to go into them.

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by Chock

That's awesome! I've been mulling over how to handle a thunderstorm in my path since I don't have formal training as a pilot. Wasn't sure if you could just go around it then continue your heading or need to refile a fltpln on the fly. (No pun intended lol)

Very cool Chock.

Well that's the nice thing about sims, you can try this stuff out with no danger. But trust me, if you've ever been in one in a light aircraft, where the downdrafts are forcing you below the height of the surrounding hills and you are concerned that at any moment, a lightning strike might make your aeroplane disintegrate when you are too low to be able to use your parachute, you'd never go near one again and in fact, you wouldn't even take off.

Haven't been brave enough to inject any BIG weather like this for fear of blowing up my GPU.

It's a 780Ti and a 1080Ti is on its way to me. I'd hate not to be able to fly before it arrives next week.

That having been said the 780Ti - though defo punching severely above its weight - is doing pretty good; the plucky fella'.

How are you taking screenshots Chock?

 

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by Will Fly For Cheese

Two tropical storms in the Caribbean at the moment. Marco and Laura.

8 minutes ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

Haven't been brave enough to inject any BIG weather like this for fear of blowing up my GPU.

How are you taking screenshots Chock?

That was live weather by the way. I just chanced on it when I started a flight at Beijing.

If I only want one screenshot, or maybe a couple, I just hit print screen then tab out to Paint.net (great alternative to Photoshop and free) and hit paste, then I save them and upload them to Imgur

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by Chock

2 minutes ago, Chock said:

That was live weather by the way. If I only want one screenshot, or maybe a couple, I just hit print screen then tab out to Paint.net (great alternative to Photoshop and free) and hit paste, then I save them and upload them to Imgur

Chock,

What version are you using (MS or Steam), and how did you get live weatehr working? I tinkered around and eventually got a session to work (and it was incredible by the way!) but now I cannot get the live wx working again. Also I will mention I'm flying in Minnesota USA.

 

Are you having issues with live weather?

Chock,

I have an interesting story about ATC and weather vectors. In real life in the real world a long, long time ago, well before small twins had radar onboard, I was flying charter flights in an Aero Commander 560A and I was somewhere between Dulles and Charlottesville, VA in middle of a terrible line of thunderstorms that were moving fairing fast.  My plan was to stay away from them and I had filed a flight plan that should keep me to the south of the line.

As you might expect, ATC vectored me away from my planned flight, most likely because I was slower than the normal traffic along that vector airway. I was used to flying in Florida where we have thunderstorms every afternoon but we just fly around them, like you did in China.  No so in the Washington DC area.

It wasn't long before we were being pounded with heavy turbulence, rain and hail.  I immediately asked for a vector for clearer airspace.  I was greeted with a curt, "not available", I asked again, and was told "not available at this time".  We flew on, but, it was getting worse and worser so I asked for a specific vector, not knowing if it would be better or worse, but the logic was it couldn't be much worse.  The result was I was vectored, not where I asked but, to the worst possible area of the thunderstorms.

I called ATC and stated:  This is blah blah blah and I am having difficulty maintaining my assigned heading and altitude due to the last vector from ATC. I request a Supervising Controller be assigned to this aircraft.  Total silence. A couple of minutes later ATC asks if I wish to declare an emergency for priority handling.  I say No, but if I am not vectored out of this thunderstorm immediately, I wish the following to be recorded and the tape sealed and put in a safe.  More silence.

I stated, my name, my aircraft ID, and my heading and altitude and said "I am carrying one women passenger with 3 children to meet her husband at an convention of attorneys and if the wings come off or I lose control of this aircraft do to weather, I wish the assigned ATC Controller be investigated for Voluntary Manslaughter.  The lawyers can take it from there.

Within seconds I was vectored about 45 degree to perfectly clean air and nothing was ever mentioned about it again.

True story.

2 minutes ago, KERNEL32 said:

Chock,

What version are you using (MS or Steam)

MS Premium Deluxe version. Dunno what to tell you on the weather, it just works on mine.

31 minutes ago, raymar said:

Chock,

I have an interesting story about ATC and weather vectors...

To be brutally honest, I would have just turned away from it ATC or no and argued it later; it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. 🤣

There's another fun part to that story I mentioned incidentally. When I eventually managed to find an updraft which allowed me to claw up to what I visually estimated to be about 900 feet AGL for the airfield (the pressure had changed so much, the altimeter was useless) and so I gave up on the forced landing into a field I was seriously considering and headed back to the airfield (Camphill Derbyshire, which is in the new sim incidentally, it is about 50 miles east of EGCC. Have a look at it, its mad, up on the top of a hill with vicious windshear on all sides).

I was coming in for a straight in landing heading approximately west away from the storms which were over the reservoirs at Derwent and radioed this to the main field frequency which is more of a courtesy since the field is basically uncontrolled, but at the last second, I noticed the windsock was completely the other way (from the storm having passed over)  and it would have been a downwind landing onto wet grass, so I radioed that I was coming in the other way, doglegged right (it was at this point the guy in the back snapped out of it and said 'what are you doing?' I angrily replied: 'Oh, back with us are we you f*****!? Look at the windsock!' He shut up again.

So I made a short run to just past the end of the field (didn't want to go too far as there are vicious downdrafts on the edge of the hill), then stuck the nose down to get loads of speed and racked the thing around in a steep bank which was probably only about 100 feet above the trees, but as I came in, I saw there were two other aeroplanes coming in toward me more or less side by side with about 250 feet between them. Being in gliders, we were all committed to landing, so I came in between those two and we all touched down more or less alongside one another. The one on my right was an instructor in his own single seater, and I saw he'd forgotten to lower his gear, so I radioed quickly on the airfield's frequency 'Gear!'. but he was too low and landed gear up. When everyone was down, we went over to his aeroplane and five of us picked it up whilst he leaned in the cockpit and dropped the gear. No damage to the plane at all apart from some grass stains on the GRP belly because the field was so wet. I was so mad with the instructor who'd flown us into that storm, that I never even said anything (probably should have).

It was a lesson learned, because I'd been questioning whether we should take off with that weather coming in (you could see lightning flashes on the horizon when we were putting out chutes on), but being inexperienced at the time, I stupidly assumed the instructor knew best.

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by Chock

41 minutes ago, KERNEL32 said:

Chock,

What version are you using (MS or Steam), and how did you get live weatehr working? I tinkered around and eventually got a session to work (and it was incredible by the way!) but now I cannot get the live wx working again. Also I will mention I'm flying in Minnesota USA.

 

Are you having issues with live weather?

One thing about Live Weather... if you already have a sim session running, and  switch to a different aircraft, or move to a different airport, Live Weather will stop working. If you want to insure Live Weather will be active when changing aircraft or airports, you need to exit the sim completely and start over

Live Weather is currently broken when loading into an airport in the US. You will get temperature and pressure, but no winds. If you want to see Live Weather operating as it is supposed to, load into an airport in the UK. It does work there, and probably at other locations in Europe.

 

Yep...had this today..IFR coming into the Soo...got pretty bumpy as well...lightning flashes about three miles out from the outer marker!