Stearmandriver

Can't figure out how to replace a quote that got accidentally deleted. Ah well... I'm confused as to why you'd see these as "most closely resembling thin cumulus" though, when you then go on to agree that they aren't cumulus because they're missing the only thing that could make them cumulus? To me, the transparent appearance clearly says ice crystals which means cirrus (which the altitude supports), and the wavy pattern says cirrostratus undullatus.

A cumulus cloud is a cumulus cloud until it is flat... then it's a stratus cloud. THAT is the reality of our language. You certainly can use any words in any order you'd like for anything, but probably shouldn't be surprised or offended when people point out they're incorrect...

Ah man, this is nothing but entertaining at this point. I do enjoy watching people cling tenaciously to a position that has no hope of being supported though... "flattened cumulus." 😁

"Critical stuff." Yes, clearly lift cannot be produced if you must enter your own flight plan. 😁 It may surprise you to learn that many airlines in the world do not use any datalink options for route and perf init. Mine does, but I mean... manual entries aren't too hard, if dropping a file in folder is too rough...

Huh? True or false: all clouds are condensed water vapor? If true, then - true or false: the differentiation between stratus and cumulus clouds is the absence or presence of an updraft creating visible vertical development in the condensed water vapor? If true, then - how can you "trim away" the updraft and vertical development, and be left with a cumulus cloud? You seem to be claiming that you can remove the very things that define a cumulus cloud, and still have one. This is where I'm having trouble...

Yup, this is about right. Wx radar in FSX and P3d works just like the nexrad radar display in the non-WASM planes in MSFS: it just shows a top-down view of precip. In reality, that IS what the nexrad display should look like because it's a product assembled from numerous, powerful, large-antennaed ground radar stations. (In MSFS it's clearly assembled from known areas of rendered precip rather than any real-world product since it matches precip exactly and exists where there are no real-world radar products, like PNG.) But airborne weather radar can't paint the same type of picture, because you're dealing with a low-powered transmitter using a very small dish, mounted on a moving platform, and only looking at weather from one very narrow aspect. You're transmitting one narrow beam which is easily attenuated (the beam runs out of energy to see through to the other side of a strong storm, so you have blind spots). The advantage of airborne weather radar is that it's really, truly live (any datalinked product is 5-10 mins old). The general workflow is to use the big-picture datalink for strategic decisions: "I see on my ipad's WSI app that there's an area of supercells popping west of Waco... if after HRV we deviate down towards SAT and then cut back towards ELP when able, that would keep us clear." Then you'd use your airborne radar to pick your way through anything that happened to pop in front of you. The thing was, weather never worked correctly in previous sims, convection especially. The sim would just draw a random-shaped blob of rain, and so that's what the airborne radar would show. But in reality, using airborne radar requires a little more knowledge than just "stay out of the red". You have to know a bit about the life cycle of a thunderstorm and thus where the hazards are likely to be: certainly severe up-and-downdrafts in the precip core, but also mid-level inflow jets, hail and downdrafts well downwind under the anvil, even rear-flank downdraft if you get to close to the upwind side... etc. But none of this stuff existed in old sims. Thunderstorms weren't shaped correctly and didn't have life cycles. So even if the airborne radar had been simulated properly, it wouldn't have mattered, because the weather wasn't simulated properly either. In MSFS, weather works much better. I mean there's limits of course; in reality it takes literal supercomputers to accurately model the energy exchange that occurs inside a single supercell thunderstorm (you're talking the equivalent of multiple nuclear weapons detonations every second). But convective cells DO seem to have life cycles. Turbulence does seem to extend farther downwind than upwind. I've seen RFD, visually apparent by its affect on the precip core. So, more realistic wx-avoidance tactics might apply. Now, how realistically can an airborne radar simulation model things like attenuation and the other limitations of a low-power, narrow beam from a single aspect? I'm not a programmer so I have no idea ;). I would imagine anything CAN be done, but again - how much available performance resources will it consume? It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

Cirrostratus undulatus, to be very specific. A type of stratiform cirrus cloud that appears to undulate in repeating waves. It typically marks an area where you'll feel some wave action near the top or bottom of a jetstream. Could be bumpy, could be smooth with rythmic airspeed fluctuations.

Oh, let's use the actual term that was used: "flattened cumulus." I love this term because there couldn't be a more extreme oxymoron. 😉 But when you guys figure out what exactly that is, be sure ya let us know...

This was my thought too. The thing is, Ketchikan is kind of a special place. The runway itself is level, but the terrain slopes steeply away from it on 3 sides. The terminal ramp and parallel taxiway are well below the runway, and the taxiways slope up to both ends of the runway. There's a lot of mesh weirdness to cause an issue. He also floated much too far; in reality that would have been a go-around for sure. So he touched down in an area of the runway he probably doesn't usually touch down on, maybe explaining why he's never seen the bug there before.

Gotcha. So the speed in the box for that leg should be coded at 140kt, that's what I was wondering (though if you're already configured at landing flaps, VNAV will just command target speed). The previous post made it sound as if there was some sort of arbitrary 170kt restriction on RF legs in general, which obviously there is not. It's all procedure-specific.

1. This still doesn't make sense. You could claim any status cloud in reality is just the middle slice of a cumulus cloud... it's all the same water vapor after all ;). But without a defined updraft and visible vertical development, a cloud cannot be considered cumuloform. It just... can't. 2. This is zoom of the OP image. Zoom in further on it. Note the yellow line. Note the repeating wave pattern in the clouds.

RNP procedures are just RNAV approaches with certain nav monitoring requirements. They require special authorization in reality, but you can do anything in a sim ;). Some (certainly not all) RNPs have special curved segments called RF (radius-to-fix) legs. The PMDG box doesn't draw these yet, but their navdata emulates it with a series of faux waypoints. Functionally speaking, it works well. I had all the Alaska proprietary RNP procedures in Southeast Alaska working well in the PMDG back in FSX.

Entering a manual RNP has no effect on navigational accuracy; all it does is calibrate the nav performance scales to show an exceedance if ANP reaches your entered value. It's simply a monitoring tool; important in real life because the entire point of RNP procedures is that they're only safe if you continuously maintain a required level of nav performance. With the quality of GPS coverage today, it's quite rare to ever see ANP drop below about .05nm. Why would starting an RF leg at 170kts be out of correct procedure? What speed was the box calling for at that point?

This doesn't make sense to me. The literal defining characteristic of a cumuloform cloud is that it contains an updraft and is vertically developed. If you agree these lack any vertical development, how could they be any kind of cumuloform? You might as well say that any cloud you've ever seen in reality is some kind of cumuloform... some are just "flattened" ;). You can easily see the wave pattern in the original pic. Regarding my linked images, the main one is the closest to what we see here; the point was to show the variety of possible cirrostratus clouds. Too often people hear "cirrus" and immediately think classic mare's tail, but there are so many different forms these clouds can take. To be very specific, what we're seeing here is closer to cirrostratus undulattus, but the very smooth, gentle flavor of those, vs the hard chiseled ridges.

Man, these shots really look good. I might have to try Rex. Any downsides?

They're wavy stratus; cirrostratus I would guess. They lack any vertical development or defined updraft that would brand them as cumuloform. Examples: https://www.google.com/search?q=+cirrostratus+from+air&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwjoq7Tq3573AhXEGDQIHU-xCesQ2-cCegQIABAB&oq=+cirrostratus+from+air&gs_lcp=ChJtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1pbWcQAzoHCCMQ7wMQJ1CSCViNDWCpEWgAcAB4AIABaYgBqwOSAQMzLjKYAQCgAQHAAQE&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-img&ei=9vFdYujYFMSx0PEPz-Km2A4&bih=630&biw=360&client=ms-android-verizon&prmd=isnv#imgrc=OkRdXU1FzxbkSM

Lenticular clouds are often seen at the crest of wave created by jetstream interactions. Terrain not required, I've seen them over the mid-pacific. I wouldn't call the clouds in the OP lenticulars, but again, there's nothing wrong with them. They very much look like a common type of cirrus layer, as opposed to the stereotypical mare's-tail variety.

Agreed. I was just surprised at the amount of anger expressed over what is a perfectly valid depiction of a cloud layer. I can understand appreciating variety, but there isn't anything actually wrong with this. Their current weather engine actually does have the ability to understand atmospheric stability. Whether they make use of it or not is a different question, but the meteoblue model does model lapse rate at least, and I think CAPE as well. Their website produces faux SKEW-T charts created from their predicted lapse rate / stability data. So the info is accessible to MSFS; we'll see what they choose to do with it. Obviously the weather system isn't complete yet.

The Max is also just a 737. Don't raise the start levers until "Motoring" disappears, don't turn on the pack until the red line disappears from the EGT gauge, and don't take off until the oil temp is at least 31c on both engines. You're now qualed. 😉 (Honestly, the avionics look different but it doesn't fly differently in any way that would be noticeable in a sim.) The point, of course, is that it will be nice to have the best simulated version of a 737 in what is the best current sim platform. If you don't want to sim a 737 then no, I don't suppose you'll like it...

But... you can easily see literally these exact clouds in real life, right? I mean I climb through them frequently. I agree more variety will be nice, but what is "unconvincing" about depicting a type of cirrus that often exists?

Highly agree here; no reason not to try the maps replacement mod. That's not to say that Google is better everywhere, but when you find a region where it is, the difference can be quite striking. This includes most of the US. It's also nice that the new version allows the use of up-to-date Bing imagery as another option.

But I mean... it does to me, in the sense that it's representing a high, thin, transparent layer. What *specifically* are you seeing wrong with it? Are you operating under the assumption that cirrus always has to have the stereotypical wispy look?

So... I'm staring at the circled area in the pic, trying to decide what is wrong? I'm looking at it on my phone, so maybe I'm missing something? But it's not at all uncommon to have a high, thin, transparent layer. That's exactly the kind of layer we would joke about if it's in the mid-20s: "still above -40, do we need anti-ice? Does this count as a cloud?" What specifically are you seeing wrong with it?

I mean that's a fine conspiracy theory and I know people enjoy those, so despite the complete lack of evidence for it, knock yourself out, I guess. But it has nothing to do with the post of mine that you quoted, correcting the false claim that terrain display doesn't currently work in the NG3.

I don't expect the PMDG tomorrow or anything, but I've seen several times where people claim the 737 won't have a working terrain display. It does, we've already seen it in their videos. Terrain display is not related to weather radar; it's not a "radar", it's just displayed from a database.