FSX Wind Shifts - are MS fixing it?

[philbrown 9]

I've not upgraded to FSX yet, but plan to as soon as all my add-on's are compatible.Ventured into the Active Sky forum the other day, to find that the dreaded wind shift problem still exists in FSX, and now cannot be totally eliminated by either FSUIPC or Active Sky.I have experienced this problem in FS9 before I purchased FSUIPC, and it makes flying with real weather a really unsatisfying experience, when you're trying in vain sometimes to stop the aircraft falling out of the sky because you've just lost 50 knots of airspeed due to the wind changing 180 degrees in 1 second. Even with smoothing, the effect is still unrealistic. Many times during the climb, I have to level off, as whenever the wind speed/direction starts changing, I start losing airspeed.Isn't it about time Microsoft overhauled the weather engine to make flying with real weather a bit more enjoyable. I can't say I've ever heard of planes levelling off mid climb because the wind has changed direction or speed. Are they even aware of this problem, and if they are, is anything being done to fix it. At the moment, it's a big turn off for me, and may in the end prevent me from buying FSX.

[jordanal 70]

God, I hope so. That and the clear visability layer @ 10K/ft issue really need addressed in SP2. It shouldn't be up to 3rd party developers to fix the core code with sometimes inadequate work-arounds. I'd personally be interested to know what communications have taken place between ACES, HiFi, & Pete Dowson to finally and formally address these two long-standing issues.If these are core simconnect issues, didn't I read somewhere back in the early days of FSX announcements that regular quarterly-like updates would be forth coming to address simmconnect issues? Wouldn't these two issues fall in this quartely update catogory?

[Guest christianholmes]

In real life those are wind shears, so it's not necessarily unrealistic, but I admit I haven't used FSX much- so it sounds like it might be exaggerated. FS9 did seem to have some weird weather problems, but it's been along time since I've used either.I haven't even fired up FSX since I installed the service pack.

[Mace 1,902]

Yes I wish Microsoft and HiFi would get together and once and for all fix this. Maybe they are/have talked on it. The wind shifts are way too frequent to be like real-world windshear.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[DadJokeCinema 145]

>Yes I wish Microsoft and HiFi would get together and once and>for all fix this. Maybe they are/have talked on it. The wind>shifts are way too frequent to be like real-world windshear.>>Rhett>Are you talking about the phenomenon of new weather loading (or rather, downloading) and having a dramatically different wind speed or direction from what it was before?

[philbrown 9]

That is one example, and it also happens when you transfer from the sphere of influence of one weather station to another, especially if the next station has a different wind.Even with smoothing enabled, for every knot or degree of wind change you also get a knot of airspeed change. If the airpseed starts decreasing, it usually causes the climb to have to stop, and a barking at from ATC.Level D it seems may have found a work-around, as I never experience stopped climbs in their 767, but it happens frequently with PMDG/PSS.

[jordanal 70]

The work-around for this was encoded by Pete-Dowson implementing some FSUIPC3 tricks for ASv6.x in the FS9 series. Now he wants to wait for this simconnect issue to be probably fixed by ACES, mostly becuase ASX no longer uses FSUIPC4 for the pipeline, which means we must wait as well.This is a summerization of the issue to the best of my understanding, and not to quote any one individual or group.For me, the OVC layer completely appears/disapears when transitioning around 10K/ft. The wind-shift still cuases havoc on the AIS at FL's in complex aircraft, including my FSX-LDS767sp1. HiFi has even indicated that this FSXsp1 version of the wind-shift issue has been a pain in their rear-ends. Basically, winds and visibility need to transition smoothly when traversing weather stations in the upper FL's at big-iron speeds. It was broke in FS8, FS9, and now FS10.

[Mace 1,902]

>>Yes I wish Microsoft and HiFi would get together and once>and>>for all fix this. Maybe they are/have talked on it. The>wind>>shifts are way too frequent to be like real-world windshear.>>>>Rhett>>>>Are you talking about the phenomenon of new weather loading>(or rather, downloading) and having a dramatically different>wind speed or direction from what it was before?>>No, I was referring to static weather doing rapid sudden wind shifts about every xx seconds or so.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[Mace 1,902]

>wind shifts>You do realize that we had this problem in FS2004, too...??RhettAMD 3700+ (@2585 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2gb Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8 (1T), WD 150 gig 10000rpm Raptor, WD 250gig 7200rpm SATA2, Seagate 120gb 5400 rpm external HD, CoolerMaster Praetorian

[Guest MauiHawk]

>No, I was referring to static weather doing rapid sudden wind>shifts about every xx seconds or so.In addition from station to station, it happens from layer to layer. Quite a number of times I've been in a situation where a lower layer has a stronger headwind component than the immediately higher layer. Unless I alter my climb when passing though such a layer I get ping-ponged indefininetly: As I pass the boundary of the layer my airspeed drops a unrealistic amount in a split second which turns my steady climb into a sudden descent... but only for a second until I hit the headwinds of the lower layer again which bounces me like a basketball upwards again. Wash, rinse, repeat.It seems the obvious and seemingly easy solution is for ACES to choose the closest 2 stations (or maybe all sations within x number of miles) and average them with weighted values according to their distance from the aircraft. And, obviously, do the same with layers.That cannot be hard to implement.

[RFields5421 1]

Actually FS averages three weather stations within a cell to get the inflight weather.But FS being a literal computer program has hard boundaries between weather cells/ influence areas.It's the boundary crossing which is the issue when the two sides of the boundary have significantly different weather.I don't see where adding a smoothing algorithim for winds shifts would be that difficult to add to FS.Another issue is the very base level flight engine where the KIAS shifts by the amount of the wind change in velocity.This I think is unsolvable without throwing the SubLogic flight engine out the door and starting over.