4 hours ago, anden145 said:

I'm confused. What are these massive issues with A/P, VNAV and LNAV that you keep mentioning??? I've never noticed anything with their planes... but then again, I'm not such a vivid flyer.

Only problem I ever had with the A/P was that on "Realistic A/P" even when withing 5 degrees of the direct to waypoint I could not get the A/P to engage.  I may have been my wonky yoke that was causing the constant disconnects but I ended up turning off realistic A/P on the NG in P3D.  I have since upgraded to a Honeycomb so hopefully that issue is resolved.

13 hours ago, LRBS said:

when all his jets are known to have issues with LNAV, VNAV, A/P I would expect to hear first that those problems are fixed and then fire handles scratches or dimmer knobs.

What are the specific long-standing problems with LNAV/VNAV/A/P?

 

7 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

What are the specific long-standing problems with LNAV/VNAV/A/P?

 

I have no idea.... when I had the old FSX version everything worked amazingly well.

13 hours ago, jrw4 said:

Fair enough, and let's hope that the day will come that weather radar becomes available again. I would be happy with NEXRAD for hobby purposes, as it would give me something to vector around. It's my recollection that we had weather radar for a while in MSFS, but that part of the weather engine changed when we shifted to a METAR-based weather representation. Maybe it was easier to pull the precip mapping out of the METEOBLUE "nowcast" model than it is to find it from the METARs.

In any case, by no means is the lack of weather radar the fault of any of the 3PD add-on developers. One day this will be fixed and all will be right with the flight sim world.

Weather radar has never been available for add-ons written in WASM. It was (and still is) working in default MSFS aircraft written in JavaScript/HTML. The introduction of METAR clouds does not affect radar for those aircraft that have it. The MeteoBlue forecast model is still the core of LiveWeather.

Edited March 16, 20224 yr by JRBarrett

2 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

Weather radar has never been available for add-ons written in WASM. It was (and still is) working in default MSFS written in JavaScript/HTML. The introduction of METAR clouds does not affect radar for those aircraft that have it. The MeteoBlue forecast model is still the core of LiveWeather.

Why would Asobo write the default aircraft in JavaScript/HTML but require all addons to be written in WASM (note - I know zero about programming). 

Edited March 16, 20224 yr by MarkW

2 minutes ago, MarkW said:

Why would Asobo write the default aircraft in JavaScript/HTML but require all addons to be written in WASM (note - I know zero about programming). 

3rd parties are free to write their add-ons in Javascript/HTML.  Nobody is stopping them from doing so.  From my understanding, some of the gauges in the FBW A320 are written in Javascript/HTML, including the weather radar.

Maybe the answer to your question is that a lot of 3rd party devs, like PMDG, have legacy code written in C++.  So for companies that already have legacy code written in C++, they don't want to start from scratch with Javascript/HTML, and they prefer to use C++. And C++ requires WASM.

4 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

3rd parties are free to write their add-ons in Javascript/HTML.  Nobody is stopping them from doing so.  From my understanding, some of the gauges in the FBW A320 are written in Javascript/HTML, including the weather radar.

Maybe the answer to your question is that a lot of 3rd party devs, like PMDG, have legacy code written in C++.  So for companies that already have legacy code written in C++, they don't want to start from scratch with Javascript/HTML, and they prefer to use C++. And C++ requires WASM.

Thanks for this explanation, makes sense even to me.

1 minute ago, MarkW said:

Why would Asobo write the default aircraft in JavaScript/HTML but require all addons to be written in WASM (note - I know zero about programming). 

Most existing 3rd party add-on aircraft are written in JS/HTML too. It makes it easy to use default assets like the new Garmin NXi.

It is the aircraft developer’s choice to use WASM. WASM permits the C++ programming language to be used for development. All of PMDG’s exiting products in FSX and P3D are written natively in C++. Using WASM in MSFS allows them to reuse existing code for the new 737 in MSFS. If they switched to JS/HTML, they would have to scrap 20+ years of development and start from scratch. It would probably be 5 years (or more) before we see any PMDG products in MSFS if that were the case.

Also, C++ is better suited to mathematically complex system emulation. Even the Working Title mod of the default MSFS CJ-4 uses WASM “behind the scenes” for some of the custom autopilot and FMS code they added to the default CJ-4, though the main displays are still JS/HTML.

About the weather radar Asobo wants to make available in WASM, do we know if it's just pixels with RGB value, or if it's raw data, like what you would need to make a detailed weather radar, like the one on the real A320?

22 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

I have no idea.... when I had the old FSX version everything worked amazingly well.

The only LNAV feature that has been missing in PMDG aircraft has been the ability to fly RNP/AR procedures with complex RF legs. Most existing r/w 737NG aircraft in 2022 have been upgraded to have that ability, though not all are certified for RNP/AR. In the real aircraft, it requires upgrades of both the autopilot and FMS software. Late model NG aircraft have had the capability from the factory.

I suspect the initial release of the 737 in MSFS will still lack RNP/AR, but maybe we’ll be surprised.

I suspect the Fenix A320 will have RNP/AR out of the gate.

Oh interesting.  I appreciate your wealth of knowledge Jim!

12 minutes ago, bendead said:

About the weather radar Asobo wants to make available in WASM, do we know if it's just pixels with RGB value, or if it's raw data, like what you would need to make a detailed weather radar, like the one on the real A320?

AFAIK the API Asobo is developing for WASM will permit the extraction of the location of clouds and precipitation from the MeteoBlue weather model. I have no idea how much detail the data might contain. A real weather radar only displays precipitation (clouds containing water droplets above a certain size).

Edited March 16, 20224 yr by JRBarrett

1 minute ago, JRBarrett said:

A real weather radar only displays precipitation (clouds contains water droplets above a certain size).

So, how does a weather radar on the A320 works? Is this interpretation of this data, precipitation, to give turbulence and thunder hazards or is it a link with a weather service?

15 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

Oh interesting.  I appreciate your wealth of knowledge Jim!

I second this! Sadly, my programming skills have withered away, but I was pretty good with FORTRAN 66. Everything since is pretty much a mystery.

14 minutes ago, bendead said:

So, how does a weather radar on the A320 works? Is this interpretation of this data, precipitation, to give turbulence and thunder hazards or is it a link with a weather service?

A real weather radar transmits radio frequency energy that reflects off of water droplets in clouds. It uses an antenna that focuses the energy in a very narrow beam, and is scanned side-to-side (primarily) but also can be tilted to different vertical orientations. The larger and more numerous the water droplets are in a given cloud, the more intense the reflected energy. Advanced radar units can also use Doppler shift to detect the vertical and horizontal movement of precipitation in a cloud, which can predict where there may be turbulence.

This technique cannot be directly emulated in a simulator - the best that can be done is to indicate where the weather system has placed clouds in relation to the aircraft’s current position, I have no idea how much detail will be provided in the upcoming API. Whether it will only indicate where clouds exist, or can differentiate between simple clouds and those that contain precipitation.