Gregory Abbey

Hello.. I currently run FS2002 with FSUIPC 2.975 and recently added FSMetar 1.54 (also 1.55b) -- close to registering FSUIPC finally!! My question is pertaining to FSMetar. In FS8, ATIS is not correctly reporting the Temp and Dew Point, nor does the destination airfield know it's wind direction. It cannot clear for landing properly until in the local zone. Is FSUIPC 3.51 able to rectify these issues? Are there any known problems with registering FSMetar (1.54 or 1.55) in the newer versions of FSUIPC? Lastly, in FS8 with Wx region changes.. many times the winds will shift 180 deg or even 270 deg and then shift back aGaiN. This can play havoc with airspeeds while cruising. Sounds like a fix in 3.51? Thanks for any replies. Enjoy Sim regularly!! -Gregory

Hi.. Have found setting hot keys for the following three functions is useful : * Clear Weather * Set Standard Barometer * Set Sim Rate 1x The question is.. what are typical key assignments for these? For instance.. it's recommended that Ctl+Shft+W be used to `clear weather'. What about the other two? I had them set before and did not learn them.. or note it. Now I cannot recall and fear a conflict. Please sudgest your hot key assignments for Baro and Sim Rate. Regards, -Gregory [/p]

Thanks everyone for the replies.. it's a valuable learning experience. There's a good chance that I'll be getting FS2004 as a holiday gift from my lovely CoPilot.. who bears Sim gifts every year at this time.. : ) Amusement Now let's have some fun.. here's a screen clip from segment #2 in the above `title bars' graphic. It's looking `out the captains window' departing the island of Mallorca.. then ~150 mile leg across the sea to Spain. Notice the winds are zero here as when GLOBAL is in effect. This is defined as the `rear view' { numpad 2 } where the angle has been carefully set to look about right. The port-side engine is just out of sight. It's my Boeing 727 aircraft!! :) Keep up the good work everyone.. and enjoy!! -Gregory [/p]

Thanks Pete.. it makes sense. The flight from Hamburg to London passes right nearby Rotterdam.. and I make that trip repeatedly. Sometimes the weather changes several times in one minute. Often it goes back to EHAM momentarily.. which is the departure airport. : ) departure from Hamburg, Germany with FSUIPC... Another funny thing.. once out over the Channel.. the weather goes back to `all clear' so to speak.. like going to `GLOBAL nothing'. It re-appears over England. There isn't any weather over the oceans.. it seems. Ok.. will look into the logging feature.. now what about injecting a `representative' temp and wind profile into Global such as prior to departure?? .. so that at least there are some temps available when `outside the triangles'.. ie: FS goes weather braindead? :? -Gregory [/p]

:?: Is this to inject GLOBAL weather ? I'd like to set at least a `seasonal' temp profile into GLOBAL so that my engines see realistic OATs. :?: Can Weatherset do this? Apologies but I haven't figured it all out yet.. : ) -Gregory

Hi Frank.. Thanks for the info.. I think this FS2k2 weather can be out-smarted or at least analyzed to the extent that it can be made useable. The reason I'm concerned about the temp layers is because me and a couple other chaps have spent a lot of time making a new engine TBL set for the JT8D. Temp plays a roll in the thrust levels.. so (somewhat) accurate sky temps are necessary. Wind is somewhat important as well.. however the contrails are unaffected. This definitly makes sense.. I've clipped it to a text file. That's what's happening.. GLOBAL weather is being presented in the FS scene (which is no weather) std atmosph all the way up.. ie 15C etc. I must tell you that while pulling the WEATHER menu down over France (where the default GLOBAL prevailed - nothing was rendered) the LOCAL weather was rich with temp and wind layers.. it was simply not being utilized. This is the issue.. what is stopping the LOCAL weather details from being involked? ICAO codes? hmm? Here is an intersting scene for you to view.. a 2560 x 1024 screen cap of entering a LOCAL weather region south of London (the destination) whereas NO weather was rendered AT ALL over France.. despite LOCAL weather menu being rich with data. :arrow: See this dual 21" view : 2560 x 1024 screen cap (1.2MB JPG) In order to prove local weather was present but not utilized.. I'll need to fly it aGaiN and screen cap the weather menu dialogue box.. : ) -Gregory

Winter in New England Wishing all in the Sim community. . . and their families, a happy holiday!! -Gregory

[p] New fixes work great.. The new fixes in FSUIPC 3.1x have solved the VIS issues wonderfully that recently came up. A number of flights have been made with widely changing weather conditions and the horizon / memory / acceleration problems have not come back. { smile } No weather in route Today I made an IFR trip from the Mediterranean across France and into London.. a 760 mile flight over 2 hours. Taking off from LEMH.. the weather details were visible in Weatherset.. however when crossing into France.. no weather data was seen in the weather utility.. no temps - no winds - no pressure. The was no weather in the FS2002 scene either.. except the VIS which seemed work fine. No temps aloft or winds.. but lots of data was in the LOCAL menu of FS2002.. which I reloaded a number of times from MS. { very perplexing } Stuck in GLOBAL over France The several hundred miles over France showed `Global mode' the whole way.. and I futzed with ever possible setting and loaded real weather over and over. Finally when crossing the English Channel.. ICAO codes started to appear in Weatherset and temp/wind profiles came back as did pressure. Captured screens Here are a few Weatherset title bars clipped out to illustrate this as follows segments of the flight: 1) takeoff.. 2) climb.. 3) in route.. 4) descent.. 5) approach.. 6) landing as seen in the summary composite below. Trying to understand I'm trying to understand what's happeing with FS2002 weather.. is it the ICAO codes over France? Have read the FSUIPC doc.. especially the last section `More about FS2000/2002 Real Weather’ but things are not fully clear. Unfortunately a weather group in avsim.com was closed because of so few posts. Where does one go to discuss weather?? Not easy to find knowlegeable folks on this topic. -Gregory [/p]

I've found that reducing LOCAL weather VIS from `unlimited' to 50 mi (the next lower step) in combination with jogging the DISPLAY properties slider lower will clear up the black areas and horizon boundary `on the fly'.. most of the time that is. On the Fs2k2 box the spec is: 8MB 3D hardware accelerated graphics card. If done right.. I think it can work ok with 32MB 3D accel card. Nvidia 55.03 just came out.. however that driver would not tolerate the Matrox PCI card in the same mainboard. Went back to 45.xx as per the `Windows Update' webshell.. but that produced strange results.. like see-thru and the smoketrail turning into rotating squares 5/8" in size. Am back to the 44.03 drivers. Pete and I have had a number of offline correspondence on this.. and he has remedied the situation.. at least thus far in Simflight tests. It seem he found that `real world' weather data from MS has changed.. or returns very large VIS numbers.. 100's of miles.. that FS2k2 is not expecting.. maybe to satisfy FS2k4. In any event.. these high numbers were causing FS2k2 to attempt rendering the `outside world' beyond the hard limit set in the DISPLAY properties menu. December horizon before: 32MB nVidia - 44.03 There was also a problem with the (excellent FS Skyworld) cloud layer.. and I posted on this before in other forums.. but there was no reply.. or we didn't understand what was going on. December horizon after (120 mi): 32MB nVidia - 44.03 Here's some other scenes with FS2k2 VIS enforced to 150 mi : http://www.edwinn.com/flightsim/unlim_vis001.jpg http://www.edwinn.com/flightsim/unlim_vis002.jpg It's my feeling that limiting VIS sufficiently can reduce graphics RAM requirement.. and obscure issues at infinity. In any case.. I believe Pete has somehow made FSUIPC enforce the maximum DISPLAY limit in FS2k2 of 150 miles. That way It cannot get `messed'. This may not be the exact explaination.. but it's close. Pete can expand on it more if he chooses. I haven't been a registered user.. going with 2.975 and FS2k2.. but the expertise Pete has shown in solving the problem certainly prompts me to register his new utility. : ) -Gregory

Hi Pete.. We had taken this one off-line for a few days.. and thanks to your investigations it looks like a solution is near. I have a number of test-flights to run now and will be letting you know the results. It seems the default MSFS weather downloads include extended visibility numbers (100's of miles).. that is.. distances that are greater than expected. Not as hazy in the winter time.. is it!! : ) - Gregory

Hi Pete.. I feel like I'm causing a disturbance in here. The tiny screen caps don't do justice to the issue. I understand the 327 part and am not worried about that. : ) When you say `resolution'.. what do you mean?? because the Sim is on a 21" monitor in 1280 x 1024 with -32 color selected .. and spanned over to another 21" screen for 2D views (PCI slot). Last night I installed the nVidia 53.03 drivers and will see what it does today. My rather old TNT2 video card cannot do AA so maybe a more advanced one will help. The reason for a post in your forum was to ask about a 2.975 setting that would limit the range for LOCAL visibility regardless if the `real world' range is unlimited - IOW force a reduced visibility limit!!. I mean.. something is out of control here. If it cannot be mitigated then I'll look into building custom weather sets manually and forego the `real world' thing. Cutting VIS would be the best way to mask a really bad horizon-earth boundary.. I mean the clouds could at least blend it a bit. Sometimes I can see stuff `underneath' in that aweful boundary region.. like a 2nd exterior view hidden below and leaking through'. Thank you kindly for taking a look at this one.. if you'd like to see the full 2560 x 1024 dual 21" monitor screen caps.. they are here: http://www.edwinn.com/flightsim/fsscr209.jpg - (925k) http://www.edwinn.com/flightsim/fsscr211.jpg - (865k) Again thank you kindly.. -Gregory

- Example of visibility issue Hi aGaiN Pete.. After the first post.. I changed the settings per our discussion.. and the corrupt horizon came back.. only this time with a general darkening and corruption of all the ground textures. Below is a before clip when changing weather regions and moments later fixing it by a) setting LOCAL VIS from UNLIM to 50.. and b) jogging DISPLAY max visibility slider a notch. Could be more serious I'm thinking now that it could be drivers.. or the video card has only 32MB of memory. It could even be Active Camera or simply pulling the NVidia card out and re-seating. Maybe a reinstall of FS2002 would do it. Is there a reduced quality mode that it go into if video load is too high?? Lastly.. can someone point me to a GOOD link or doc on manually setting weather? After this gets messed up.. trying to set wind layers in flight is also a pain. Three layers instantly get wiped out to a single one at 100,000 ft and 11 kts. It's being really uncooperative. -Gregory

Hi Pete.. Thanks aGaiN.. yes of course.. I mean unlimited. Many of the DISPLAY settings are reduced such as texture size because the hardware is five years old.. a dual 500MHz Xeon workstation. It can run FS2k2 pretty well but the framerate is limited as a function of features. It would simply mean that the graduation effect would still be in operation at your cruise altitude. The more important value is the "upper visibility" you have got set for the graduated visibility. Have you set that to 110 miles? If so, reduce that until your horizon looks okay. The default of 60 miles should have been good. Here are the INI values.. I could not recall the numbers.. GraduatedVisibility=Yes LowerVisAltitude=6000 UpperVisAltitude=25000 UpperVisibility=9000 ExtendMetarMaxVis=No With the fine info that your provided.. I can likely solve this.. it's been bad enough so that a few times I just CTRL-C'd the flight. I've not yet gone ahead with FS2k4 because of the older hardware.. and the re$ources situation being on `extended vacation' for over two years. Having fun with Sim in the meantime.. : ) -Gregory

Thanks Pete for the very fast reply.. In reading through similar threads.. I might have found a clue. In FSUIPC 2.975 the gradual VIS was set (now that I think of it) over a range of 6,000 to 25,000 ft. Typically I fly the Boeing jets at FL310 to FL330 cruise. Then when going into a new region which has infinite VIS.. Weatherset 1.65 shows the 327 number and the horizon goes to holy hell (heck that is). I'm mean this is an ugly gross scene!! I can always get a small screen clip if necessary as an exhibit. How about if I set the gradual VIS upper limit to HIGHER than my typical altitude? Would that force FS2002's local `real weather' to behave..? I'm not sure what causes the VIS to go INFINITE even when DISPLAY is set to a limit of 110 mi. Please excuse if I'm not fully comprehensive on this. Having a lot of fun with it though. -Gregory

Hello.. I'm running FS2k2 and FSUIPC 2.975 and enjoy Simflying in `real weather' conditions. There is some anomaly with the visibility in many regions. Perhaps it has to do with the time of the year.. and very clear skies. With the visability (VIS) setting in the DISPLAY menu set to a limit of 100 or 110 mile and Real Weather enabled.. often times the VIS parameter goes up to 327 sm and an UGLY, jagged line forms at the horizon. It's worse because the cloud decks are flat and the horizon is curved.. or vise versa. It's almost a show-stopper!! I'm using Weatherset 1.65 to monitor the weather data and can see when the VIS range ramps up high. Soon the horizon is shot. Problem is.. no setting in FSUIPC can override this.. and I must keep going in and knocking down the LOCAL weather setting for VIS to 50 mi. Sometimes this manual change doesn't work.. and I must go into DISPLAY properties menu and jog the VIS slider by one or two notchs. Please suggest what is causing the aweful horizon situation.. and what can be done to control this problem. Thanks..