pvarn

I've seen these things before and not caused by ASN: 1) You have your desktop and FSX set to two different resolutions. The graphics driver has trouble switching between them. or 2) Your Graphics card/FSX options (particularly texture filtering) may not be set correctly) or 3) You may have a DirectX problem. or 4) Graphics driver not up to date. or 5) The sim graphics just got temporarily corrupted and just restarting the sim will fix it. What's telling is it's just the particle effects giving you trouble. The clouds and scenery look fine. As mentioned above, the particle affects (in your Effects Folder) are not controlled by ASN. -Pv-

I get these over the Western US and Eastern England which are of average density or more. I'm hoping more people who have experienced this problem will share their observations. Every setting in AS has its trade-offs which is why they're there. -Pv-

Very aggressively trying to find and solve the problem. On Sunday I had the flip using 6 minute updates on a flight where I had not had it before flying from Guam to Honolulu. I then flew the same flight again using "Normal" mode and although the flight was not "normal" (wide, non-smoothed temp variations) I did not get any flips (which is what I expected. I then flew the same route Monday with the new SP1 feature "Local Station Writes with DWC" and had a very nice flight. All temps were within expected ranges and no flips. -Pv-

HiFi has been very aggressive on this issue. Unfortunately, the few people affected (those that know it at least) the complex combinations of environment data and program settings have made this very hard to nail down. This is why I have started a new thread after the old ones died in hope of getting others who have seen the problem to contribute, compare observations in hope of gaining more insight. The closer to the ground and slower, the less likely to see the affect of a brief disturbance. 99.9% of the aircraft out there have been made so forgiving (especially the engines) it might look more like a weather burp to most people where the engines surge or lose power momentarily. Because the temp change at high altitude and speed is so drastic ( change of 50-100C and back again) AND the limited part of the world affected, many pilots will not see it at all. -Pv-

Even with the slider at zero, I still had another +15C episode at cruise, so now back to testing an older theory that it's related to download interval. In airliners, the default interval of 10 or more works fine (or should.) In the case of the SR71 which covers 33+ miles a minute, it doesn't take long to fly past the FSX in-air weather radius of 30 miles which means an external weather program must update the weather in FS frequently to avoid FS generating Clear and Calm if there isn't replacement weather available for the next geographic area. Damian informs me DWC updates the weather every 300 ms from available download weather cache. When I have used 6 minute download interval (which means AS is gatherin new weather reports every ~200 miles of SR-71 cruise distance) I have not had any what I call temperature "flips" (ground temperature at cruise altitude.) These "Flips" can be transitory (1 second or less) or last for several minutes. They can appear randomly (it's possible to fly the same flight plan many times and see the flip only once. However, there are geographic areas of the world, where if I fly it often enough, I'll eventually get a flip and when I fly anywhere else, I never get a flip. Why? Who knows. Some observations: 1) I always use a flight plan. Is there a negative influence on the downloaded weather sent to FS based on the plan (misinterpretation of the plan so the required weather for an area isn't available to FS? Perhaps there are weather holes created by the interpretation of the plan where a slight deveation in flight causes a miss? 2) Is there an interaction problem in FS where something prevents one or more of those 300ms updates from "taking" and AS doesn't know about it? 3) I also use FSUIPC. I see in the V4.827 notes there are recent fixes where AS and FSUIPC communication has been improved. However, supposedly AS doesn't use FSUIPC to transfer the weather, but uses simconnect. 4) I do used FSINN because I fly on the VatSim network. At this point, we "Vat" flyers use Squawkbox of FSINN and the later is the most stable and useful of the two. I've pretty much ruled that out as a contributor. 5) Because these flips are tied to geographic areas, I suspect there may be data in those areas either FS itself, or the combo of AS DWC is a trigger. 6) FS's won internal "Jeppeson" weather simulator/data never triggers the Flip. 7) AS's "Normal" mode (most like FS's Jeppeson) never triggers the flip. Note: DWC is focused on writing "global" weather, while "Normal/Jeppeson" style simulation actually write individual stations. FS's global behaves in two ways: a) When written on the ground, the created environment is truly global. That is, with no more weather writes, the player can fly the entire world with no change in environment. B) When writing global while airborne, FS creates that weather within a 60 mile circle of the current position of the aircraft. Fly outside that circle, and if there is no geographic weather for that specific area, FS will revert to it's default clear and calm (which if the created weather you were flying in was quite different, the impact on the aircraft can be quite jarring.) 8) When FS internally reverts to clear and calm, one layer is created with +15C on the ground (as observed in Downson's Weatherset program.) This is also what I see when I get the flip in AS flight (where normally AS generates multiple layers.) This suggests, FS has detected no current weather for the area, and substituted C&C until it gets new valid weather data for the area (whenever this occurs.) 9) There are only 3 areas of the world where I get the flips. Season is not a factor: a) US mountain area timezone (mountain states: Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada) b Canada New Foundland area c) South Eastern England This is all I know for now. Other player experiences are welcome. -Pv-

You'll see this issue discussed elseware in topics close due to age. Others who fly airliners at the typical 30K-40K ft have noted this problem in advanced aircraft which are sensitive to excessive heating and shut down the engines at cruise. The SR71 I fly will lose an engine when the engine intake exceeds 450C as it does when the +15C hits. Although I'm using FSINN, it's weather feature is tuned off. I typically fly between 60K to 85K ft where the real world temps are between -50 to -80C. To get +15 at 80K ft isn't season related. It's simply impossible in the real world. I have been researching why AS generates this temperature since the Fall and have narrowed it down to this setting. In my opinion, this slider should be removed or disabled from AS when using DWC since it has no positive effect. In "Normal" mode it can have a SLIGHTLY positive effect in helping to prevent jarring and sudden changes in weather since FS itself will gradually morph the weather between what it has and the new load. However, this is at the cost of creating unrealistic weather at times. In Normal mode, this setting has not caused any +15C jumps at high altitude. Those who have FSUIPC and use the smooth winds feature, can get rid of the wind direction jumps without using the Dynamic Rate of change in Normal mode. Turns out it isn't AS generating the anomaly, but FS, I believe, but this setting triggers it. -Pv-

For those struggling with suddenly unrealistic +15C temperatures at high altitude, I've been testing this problem for months and have something for others to try. I've not seen this problem except while using DWC, so if this is you, try setting the AS: WX Options: Dynamic Rate of Change slider in Active Sky to zero. This slider also moves the same feature in FSX: Display->Weather->"Rate at which weather changes over time." What this slider does is allow FS to internally morph whatever weather is loaded into it (whether it's the built-in weather themes, weather you created as custom yourself, weather saved with a flight, or downloaded weather.) The further to the right the slider, the faster the changes occur, so those using low setting may appear to have random results. I used "20" which is the lowest setting in AS which results in the lowest setting above zero in FS so my morphing was happening between 40 minutes to an hour into the flight. My theory is this morphing can create the single layer of +15C ground temperature used as "Clear and Calm" which sets the entire FS envirnment to one unrealistic temperature at all altitudes for a random period of time. This may affect ASE also. See if this helps and let us know. Thanks. -Pv-

That looks like it's working. Thanks for the help.-Pv-

I wish there were a way to prevent AS2012 from overwriting the FSX runway textures when "Install AS2012 Graphics" is used? The FSX default runway texures look better and have better frame rates. I restored the runway textures from the AS backup directory, and now want keep them.-Pv-

Submitted this information as follow up to ticket JJT-228-57342 already submitted.-Pv-

I forgot to mention the flips occur at the same times as or within 1 few seconds after the downloaded weather message appears on the screen. Also, the pressure gets set to 1013.0, regardless of what it was formerly. If in addition to the temp change, the pressure change is also large, the disruption is multiplied.-Pv-

I've been complaining about this issue for weeks. Now that my complaint is public, let's see how the response is after the holiday. I'm hoping one solution for the ultra-cold problem is they set the top layers in the -70C to -80C range instead of the -75C to -95C currently used above 60K ft, then fix the flipping between ground temperatures and current altitude over areas of the world where it may be that certain metar data or coordinate locations trigger a fault in the generator. There is also the possibility speed through the data locations contributes to the problem.Also, I have experienced the smoothest weather transitions in high speed aircraft when the FSX Graphics weather changes slider is set to low. It took a lot of experimenting to discover how to get ASE to set the slider in this position. When Dynamic Rate of Change was set to 10% or higher, ASE would use Medium which produced unwanted weather jumps. A setting of 6 or lower set the slider to none which depends 100% on the accuracy and effectiveness of the weather generator (ASE) to produce smoothing. A setting of 7% finally convinced ASE to set the FSX slider to Low which is my preferred setting. Time will tell if this is consistant and the slider will stay there. Although not 100% accurate at high speed and altitude, I would rather have morphed/stable weather at cruise than 100% accurate to metar reports which are highly unpredictable both in their consistency and accuracy and change too frequently at high speed. Using the Low setting allows FSX's internal "smoothing" to reduce the jarring effects of high speed cruise.Finally, I take issue with FSUIPC's so-called temperature and pressure smoothing settings. These checkboxes do not affect the weather environment the plane is flying in at all. Rather, they modify the weather data being sent to the panel instruments which (in the case of pressure smoothing) causes the outside environment pressure to be sent to the Altimeter in increments rather than suddenly. The environment pressure HAS changed unsmoothed and the plane has reacted to it with instant air speed changes. The Air Speed Indicator by responding slowly, gives the pilot the impression that pressure is changing smoothly because the altimeter is changing slowly and if flying under AP control, the AP reacts slowly. This is an illusion of smoothing, not the real thing. As far as temperature, I've seen no evidence in the couple years since this feature was introduced, there is any environment temperature smoothing at all.This is all to stress how important it is that the weather generator provide these very important temperature and pressure transitions, and do it well. Otherwise, it isn't going to happen. Allowing FSX's internal "smoothing" (taking the weather data given to it and reducing the rate at whihc is data is interpreted) is a poor, temporary, but necessary work-around.-Pv-Gustavo,Do the two pinned forum posts: "Stuck or invalid winds" or "AS2012 Hotfix" address your issue?-Pv-

I have the same trouble when flying the SR-71 above 70K ft in certain areas of the world. These troublesome areas include:North-Central Atlantic Ocean half-way between waypoints 50151 and COLORUS Rocky Mountains states.Directly over the entire Newfoundland area of Canada.When flying these areas, the temperature rapidly flips between -90 Deg C and +15 deg C.For one, the temperature ASE sets for altitudes between 60 and 80K ft is WAY too cold by at least 20 degrees from real world average values.Two, the extreme switch between these two extreme temperatures (when displayed in Weatherset, 15C shows up as the next to top temperature layer and -70C as top)my plane gets swatted out of the air like a fly as the air speed drops and increases by 200 knots instantly. I tried the Beta and it has the identical problem.I would consider the upgrade to 2012 if I knew the issues with high altitude temperatures and extreme high altitude temperature flipping was fixed.The easiest way to see the problem is to position over coastal Newfoundland and slew to over 70K ft. Another way is to fly my SR-71 model (fsx20121.zip available as "new" and "hot" files by Paul R. Varn on Flightsim.com library files.) By contrast, I find the default Jeppeson weather emulation in FSX much better behaved as far as correct temperatures at high altitude.-Pv-