Fly2 and winds aloft...

[Guest jcomm]

I am trying to set winds at various levels, something very easy to do in Fly2, but I don't know:1) What does the "create shear level" option mean?2) Apparently, if I set a wind at ground level, it is propagated to the higher flight levels, and even if I redefine the wind for any of those levels, I still get the same ground wind? Is this a bug/limitation, or am I missing something?3)When I was an MSFS user I used to set my weather through FsMeteo, a great add-on that downloads METAR and higher level winds data from the INTERNET, and using Peter Dawson's FSUIPC, sets it for fs2002. Is there any way of doinf the same in Fly2? I believe InfoMETAR only sets low level wind layers?Thx in advance for your answers!

[Guest DSandberg]

I don't happen to know absolute answers to your first two questions, but I'll take a shot.I did myself have a lot of trouble successfully using the Fly II UI to set winds aloft manually, so I can't help you much. My recollection is that it only seemed to work if you set the wind layers in a specific order. However, it is known that winds aloft can be set very successfully via the SDK.My best guess is that setting a shear level creates an abrupt wind transition altitude between two layers, as opposed to a smooth transition from one layer to the next. If someone knows for certain (or has contradictory information) I hope they'll jump in and correct me.There is at least one add-on utility available (at least I assume it is still available), based upon the Fly II SDK, which randomizes the upper level winds in a fairly realistic manner. But to date, to my knowledge, no add-on has been written that actually attempts to import real world winds aloft predictions or soundings. Since Fly II doesn't support the import of any such file formats (not in the way it can import METARs) such a utility would have to do its own decoding and then plug the data in via the SDK at periodic intervals based upon location. That's not impossible, but it's enough of a task that no one has yet gotten around to it. I hope to do something like this myself at some point.When the current version of InfoMETAR was written, Fly2K was the newest version of Fly!, and it still only supported ground level wind data. The utility hasn't yet been updated for Fly II, and I'm not yet certain if it will be updated in this particular area or not, as supporting real world winds aloft would be a different type of task (SDK-based rather than METAR preprocessing). A suite of cooperating programs may be required to do all of this well.I hope this helps.[table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0][tr][td width=320]http://www.usinternet.com/users/mystic/infomsig.gif[/td][td width=170 align=center]Godspeed to the brave crew members of the space shuttle Columbia.[/td][/tr][/table]

[Guest jcomm]

David,thanks A LOT for the precious info. as well as for InfoMETAR - A great Fly add-on!!!

[Guest Josve]

We do have the nice little Winds aloft program though....http://ftp.avsim.com/library/sendfile.php?DLID=18560Johnny"I'LL BE BACK"[div align=center]http://www.avsim.com/hangar/fly/josve/zone.jpg ][/div

[Guest DSandberg]

Yep, that's the one I was referring to. Tony Crider, who created it, did a nice job researching this portion of the SDK. When I finally do make my own real world winds aloft add-on, I'll owe Tony props for his pioneering efforts on this stuff (in fact I wasn't even sure that the winds aloft portion of the SDK was functional until Tony got in there and confirmed it).[table cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0][tr][td width=320]http://www.usinternet.com/users/mystic/infomsig.gif[/td][td width=170 align=center]Godspeed to the brave crew members of the space shuttle Columbia.[/td][/tr][/table]

[Guest jcomm]

David & Johnny,thanks a lot for your precious information!!!I do believe the Fly2 community is getting itself in a very ggod shape for the future. I strongly hope that many new/re-born projects florish in the near future... After all, from it's kernel to what Fly2 already is there is A LOT to profit from the very well designed simulator Fly2 is...