coastaldriver

This discussion has been going around and around since P3D and MSFS etc years back. The issue of translating weather reports/forecasts into recreating simulated weather. The limitation of METARS is precisely that they are a meteorological report and the reporting is focused on the airport weather - after all that is the critical interest for the flight crew's operational decision making. The limitations are spelt out in any met document that will tell you that the CAVOK criteria will result in cloud above not being reported - as for winds - very few but some do actually report a 2000 ft AFE or 4000 ft wind on some metars where they get the data from a local met station (radiosonde anybody) because that is significant but it is not common. Same with cloud could be OVC above the 5000 ft level but still reported CAVOK - the metar will just not give you the cloud amount - and let us not also forget the rounding rule for observations that is the largest amount is reported first so other stuff may be there and not reported. All the rest comes from forecasts and those forecasts are dependant on the scope of the forecast - a small local or geographical area or a large geographical area, below F180 or above. So you just cannot get a 100% accurate picture to present in the sim. I think they do a pretty good job with what they have. Then again time is a bust as well, forecasts are issued for long periods of validity (about 8 hours) and will not be reissued unless there is signficant change or differences - lost count of the number of times when I was flying the weather forecast was spot on and others where it was fine and good yet the forecast was doom and gloom. You live with it but keep a keen eye on the metars for the minimums (Cloud and Vis) because that will tell me if I need to plan or conduct and instrument approach and whether I need an alternate as a result. Now if I was a VFR driver then what concerns me is completely different - I want less cloud and good vis and the ability to traverse an area visually and legally (distance horizontaly and vertically from cloud). If the forecast is non VMC then you either do not go or wait! But you would get your chops busted if you set of VFR into NON VMC forecast weather - even if you could say but it is not. Ultimately and it is in all the rule books the PIC is responsible for assessing whether the vis and cloud in flight for all the above reasons! Now squaring this up for simulated flight is a might big ask! I think it is pretty word not allowed good really for a representative experience. Finally as an example of how good - looks like Laminar nearly have rainbows sorted. This picture was at Avalon in Victoria Australia. Coincidentally in my local area and same sort of weather low cloud with breaks towards the sun setting - I saw rainbow in real life and well this is pretty close to being a rainbow:

Nice tight 2 shots a day policy keeps it slick and tidy. Very much visited and enjoyed by XPlane users. This one did not make the cutoff today - night time, illustrative - pretty impressive really - about to roll at Seattle in Washington State. Thats it for me - back to What Plane Did You Fly Today!

Observation - this iteration - overall performance deterioration. At say a large international terminal lot of AI traffic max weather rendition with a reasonably complicated model - boom down to 22 FPS can only double that with something less ornate and then in a rural area maybe 45 fps. Do not notice any so called stutters, anti- alias seems to be worse or the changes have made it worse. Light bloom in daylight is excessive. Sim program runs smoothly does what it should but noticeable lag now and then say with calling up a menu or similar. Zink on or off no difference on an NVIDIA card. As I have no idea if any of the models I use on a Win operating system has zink - I just keep it unchecked again. Why add a superflous routine. But in 3 betas I have gone from 60-80 FPS to 20. Graphically quite impressive as a few other shots about have testified too! Think XP Reality has become problematic with the old Carenado PA31 - marginal on XP12. Rotate MD80 remains a complete bust! Everything else - good and working as expected.

Yep bug reports submitted! I would be happy with some basic functionality just for the immersive factor sometimes. I recall that even in FSX I could do nothing with ATC at all until about 50 nm from destination then file a plan and get vectors to an ILS (not always successfully in all places - cannot achieve that in XP. I have no idea what XP ATC is doing - the example I gave of Tamworth in Australia which has a tower!. Starting from the GA parking and requesting a VFR departure I was instructed to basically zig zag back and forth across to cross runways when the correct route was a clear straight line to a parallel taxy way then to a holding point.

There has been a feature of not being able to tune the COM1 to ATC- ATIS on this system for a long time. - Has to be done on COM2. - Maybe. Now getting ATC services is fraught in other words I have no idea what they are attempting to do in terms of lets say taxy instructions (even if I have the airport diagram open to help). Then you will transgress and immediately get bombarded by messages from ATC to return hold or whatever. Here is another one - flight is VFR you check in on the ATC freq for flight following - do the bits and squawk the code. Oops this one does not have a transponder in the aircraft or it does not select properly. You are now bombarded with messages to squawk the code etc ad nauseum. Change the frequency manually on the radios - that will shut it up - wrong XP will then autoselect another ATC freq override what you have set and continue with the same nonsense. Basically I view the XP ATC and ATC AI as a complete useless mess! ATC has been a mess in all sims since ATP Sublogic and has stayed like that. A small glimmer of hope came in the last days of FSX with an xml based addon program that never got updated and basically that was it. P3D or XP ATC is just rubbish. So i fly without it no choice it is totally unresponsive to what is happening in the sim or the situation.

well given mSparks little test video - I am impressed! May not have the complete vortex look of the real thing but hey pretty impressive! Weather or cloud and lighting gets a tick from me - real weather west of Tamworth NSW today about 1700 LST. Looked like that out the window! Still continue to be impressed with the intertia management or control responses now.

It is clear that there are a lot more changes to this version upgrading it or changing the way it works for me. B3 now gives me the zink connector back and a significant improvement in FPS in fact FPS is very healthy nearly 90 in some places depends on the model even heavy weather and complex model I was getting 40-50 FPS. No stutters. Weather handling is pretty accurate and well cloud and light fits the bill. Lighting or brightness this we will have to live with that depends on whether you look into or away from or down or up sun! So you can see what it is doing and correctly changing the overall light ambience dependant on the direction and you and the sun! Noted that there is a change in the behaviour or perceived responses of various models to the size and mass of the aircraft - that is C172 feels like a C172 and a MD-80 feels like an MD-80 would - its not just a perception thing but clear from the VC to the exterior visuals. No ideas what changes were involved but just say seems good and I have not had a need to spend time setting and resetting control sensitivities for different models. Night lighting is properly scaled and luminescent! Stars still need a little oomph! and so does the milky way! Turbulence - hard to compare there are changes to the way a model responds to turbulence and while reasonable it is still not that good. Roll pitch and ROC changes were better managed but until they can manage mass v up/down then a way to go - i mean mod to heavy turb in a C172 would be a light chop in a B737. Seem to have had some mesh interpretation changes snuck in and some places the auto gen is now very different. Yorke Island in the Torres Straight now has palm trees and small houses and the large water collection reservoir tank, no more street lights on the road to the airport and a properly fenced apron area, the runway now has undulations in it that were not there before, they are incorrect - Yorke Islands is as flat as they get! Bunch of tools and some things have needed a fix or update, like ground equipment stuff, some orthos for sceneries (if you use them) - SimHeaven will remain out for me except for Asia. X-Roads no longer works and has to be removed. Some bugs now with Marine Traffic. Live Traffic is functioning fine and as I have only SGE as a lua cannot say about any other scripts. 90% of my payware has been updated via the Skunkcraft process - and that remains a pain for many then requiring reactivation via the keycode route, while others do not - still time consuming and a nuisance especially as 12.1 now has had 3 updates to B3. No issues for me except on one payware jet that will not play the game and even thought XP12 certified - will just not connect the electrics and hence do anything in my sim - just hangs the whole sim program - go figure!

Just to clarify - have the MD80 enhanced and the MD90 modded version both are excellent but perhaps not 100% cockpit switching and systems functionality. What does not work is mostly minor anyway. I have had the Rotate MD80 for two months now and have yet to get it's electrical systems to function in XP12.1 so while I would love to give you an honest comparison I can not. Why do I persevere? well I love the old DC-9 30 in FSX and P3D and this is as close as once will get for the time being. More than happy with the improved version and the modded MD-90 version as well. At least I can get them started and flying!

True - I only use this one now as I cannot get Rotates MD 80 to play on my system (switching failures etc and to date no sane response from Rotate on fixing it or even to give me a fresh activation code)

Two very different simulation runs. Feedback is simple. 1 GA daytime country VFR. 2 Heavy Jet Transport Intercontinental night IFR. Apart from a drop in frame rates at big city spots and general loss that has no effect on the sims screen performance to my eye. Lights and shadows are good and weather renditions acceptable and realistic. Wind seems correct and rain in IMC was normal for night with lights on! Weather downloads were done correctly. Neither aircraft simulated model exhibited any quirks or errors! Apart from the changes to objects the additional big shift is lighting or light management- hard to tell but to my eye perhaps slightly overdone in brightness. Night lighting is good. ATC is still useless. At least in FSX and P3D you could lodge a plan on the fly, get a clearance and get a reasonable vector to an ILS. I cannot even achieve taxying to the departure runways without it giving useless and unrealistic instructions! Seems a lot of the airport AI has stopped having collisions with aeroplanes and each other thats good. Happy to see a line of trucks etc finally hold while pushback was excuted and tow disconnected then then resumed. Neat! So it seems to me there have been a lot of tweaking done in the AI area. Sim handled my LiveTraffic connections and traffic representation very nicely without issues. Again AI flow was a lot smoother and realistic. I am not sure why but control sensitivity seems to be matched to the model or aircraft type a lot better, so the C337 gave feedback in motion and response to what I would expect a 337 to be like on the controls and the same with the Boeing, gave a response that was a lot stiffer, heavier and as a result impression of a large aircraft and speed. Sim ran constantly on the international flight for over 4 hours, no lags no stops and fluid throughout. Side note - no issues with memory and could easily multitask into different Win programs as the Pacific Ocean was traversed in the sim - switch back and forth and no errors or stops in the sim.

mjrhealth - noted yes it is Laminar's gui. Have given a better workout using area I know well that had some poor weather today (CB's etc) Now I look at it I noted the sim has more little things in it - objects such as parked planes, tractors etc a fair few really that has added to the ambience of the stock airport (A mid size rural in Australia). FPS held good for a flight to another town at about 45 FPS. Same at the next sport more stuff just a touch but has taken off a bare look I guess. Otherwise noted AI outside is about and moving and better relational speed - suprised to see a freight train on the go where they normally operate as well. Road traffic seemed to be moving at a more real pace!. A payware twin (Thranda C337) worked flawlessly thought you can only put the ATIS on COM2 bug remains. Cloud shaping and shadow was pretty good but also being able to compare with a real view out the window makes for a valid comparison a little less cumuluform curves than I was expecting even if bulk is good and shadowing from thick cloud realistic - visibility was well managed no precipitation encountered. Others may have different views but this is a step up again in fidelity!

The option to have no zink as in a Win system is provided to improve framerates. Unticked Zink framerates more stable still in high density external environment - big city big airport dense traffic getting throttled to about 30 FPS. Go fly and once you pass about 10000 ft the frame rate ramps up to 40 for me and maybe a little more. Stable. Lights - gone at last the ghastly light balls of ramp lights that could be seen 30 nm at night. Whew! Rest seem fine to me! Undid SimHeaven addons for time being, They and the ORBX forests need to be aligned with new autogen that has come in as well. What I would like to see - with the light sorted the little tool sunglasses works a treat as a quick filter - like to see some ability to redo this filter same as sunglasses do polarised or broad spectrum shading. Weather renditions seems ok real time but again limits there are the real time data sources - apart from local metars the remainder is spaced over hours - they are a forecast - inflight met reports could be injected I suppose like the transition to metar conditions. Have absolutely no complaints at all. Works as a simulator for me. Play machine - if you want!

Ok we are now on 12.1,02 (beta). Two immediate issues for my system (Intel 5090 and RTX 2070 Super) - Light glare in full or strong light conditions sun seems over done, In external view if I use the sunglasses option, it tones it down and cleans up the clarity but if you return to the cockpit you need to take them off again. No issues with dark cockpits and for most models AA is fine in fact a huge improvement. Clouds and weather dynamics unable to say still chasing down real time weather where I can really assess this, superficially seems good. The big issue for me and it is reported at the Org is a significant drop in performance (FPS) in high density landscapes or airports (Major cities and large airports) I am seeing the system struggle to get above 25-30 fps. I tried a number of different locals and sim models and on my system the average drop is about 30 fps on all situations everywhere. Sim flow is smooth but no stutters. I used to easily get 60 -80 FPS with previous versions but this one is a real memory hog. I also noted I am getting ground texture blurries which suggests a VRAM issue has developed as well (bottleneck?) and had to wind back all the various loads on the graphics sliders to get some clarity back. I also noted that there is a new tool to basically give you camera style focal control of the visual picture (F stops) and change of focus (depth of field) - interesting but what is the point unless I want to take a special screenshot? Seems there may be additional issues for addons impacting performance negatively now - like ORBX forests and not sure where this all goes in terms of some changes to stock buildings etc with SimHeaven and some issues there as well. As it is Beta - none of the above are bad or showstoppers but the performance bust is a big surprise!

Good tip!

Nicely done and picks up the MD80 very nicely. I just updated the Laminar version and did not bother creating a new model as suggested. The only downside is XP updates will want to put back all the old files. Otherwise is good!

So cloud drift in front of the moon - XP12.09 - it does it! Yes this is insanely realistic! and dawn in the New Mexico Area

Does one presume 12.1 refers to a release date December the 1st? Seems that is the schedule. Not that I am overly concerned - the program achieves its objective already - to provide a acceptable representation of the real world and aviation. Scenery is not bad just needs tidying up, default in most places is accurate and realistically plausible - thats fine its not the real world. Flight modelling - goes with the aircraft concerned - so good as you want bad as you want. I know it has a rich development culture and well there must be a dollar or two because we have more high level aircraft to engage with than they do at MSFS - simple fact! All the Boeings, Airbuses, Embraers, Bombadiers, McDonnell Douglas, Beech, Cessna, Piper and so onto General Aviation. I am actually spoilt for choice and selection of very high quality simulator models and renditions of a variety of aircraft from the early years of flight until today! So yeah I can wait until December for some overhaul,

Natorden - sorry no cloud brightness at night is a function of the way light is produced, represented and manipulated in the sim. Whether or not V6 does this any better I cannot say as I have moved away from P3D for good and now only use XP12. XP12 does a much better job of light control and cloud representation without the need for any form of addon to manipulate the look.

Sounds like a job for this guy

OFT - this one used to live at Hoxton Park and then later Camden. Flew once or twice IRL myself. As for XP12 this is an XP11 model yet to be upgraded to functionality in XP12 . That is XP's greatest issue to my mind! That and the need to revamp the drag/weight couple (the lift calcs are fine but there is no corresponding drag curve, so as to get inertia response correct for all aircraft so the flight model is very very good but still a WIP (That would be a whole thread on its own).

Well it was an impressive screenshot of XP12. Model, Sky and Scenery almost picture perfect and the light-shading balanced and correct. Yep Alas a bit longer for some still a curates egg - good in parts bad in others! So no super screen gloss for me yet or have not found it overall more like this for me. Goran would appreciate this one he's been there!

Well curious to see how it goes. Not such a big fan of the Dash8 Q400 either. Still waiting for promised XP12 updates for some of their other wares - so till they are done it is a hold for me! That's all I can about support!

Me too interested how you go with it. Be aware we all struggle with control sensitivity and hence hardware-software connectivity with this sim. So is it realistic yes but getting the right 'feel' especially with yaw and hence rudder is difficult in this sim, there are some built in tricks re differential braking and rudder as well which make life challenging with a tail drager. In RL Rudder does not do much except move and really work as a control until it gets a good amount of airflow over it compounded now by slipstream effect. Of course it provides lateral directional balance as lifiting surface in its own right! I find it rudder overly sensitive with only a stick controller with a yaw twist ring! and very difficult to tune down so basically do nothing and then a little bit and maybe more when on the ground and not dance about once the tail comes up for flight! Same old same old though dont slam the throttle open on take off and expect to stay straight - you wont' gotta balance it it smoothly. Trickier in a cross wind too!

It is an honest replica (more right rudder?) Bonus lot of nice paints about for it as well

Yep there are a few about. The default Piper Cub is ok but there is a mod about to give it small wheels not tundras - flies realistically and well built default model as well. Default wise there is also the Stinson (bit of a truck on the ground and in the air really). I get into the Piper Cub a lot just for the fun of it simple aeroplane, good taildragger and well no AP so you have to hand fly it - no dramas. There is a freeware Cessna 170 that is very nicely done as well. Nice moderate size taildragger. Few biplanes about as well, mostly old Bellancas, There is a Citabria Decathalon as a freeware not bad either. Might even be Sukhoi aerobatic about as well not seen the Pitts Special or similar. If your into the oldies there is the AWX Tiger Moth which is first class, no brakes and skids on the ground (be warned) even seen some WW1 types like the Sopwith Camel. If you want STOL there is a very good Fiesler Storch as freeware, not to mention the RV10s etc which are about and well done as well. And of the course the veteran DHC-2 Beaver, free ware and payware for XP12 both are great. So all up really quite a few and all are fine in XPlane12. Reasonable amount of heavier metal available to, such as the Lockheed L10, the DC-3 and C-47.