Hi Pete,
I checked the update of the weather station 100 miles around the plane, but I'm not happy with this.
1. The first update of the stations took 30 or more seconds, because in US there are places where there are several hundred stations around
2. FS2004 updates the weather for every station on the screen in real time, so there is some flickering of clouds etc.
3. A update of the weather in flight give heavy stutter and fps drops to single diggits
Currently I try to minimize the overhead and reduce the number of stations, but a radius of 80 miles (or km?) is needed, because the clouds could be draw to this distance. A progrssive update isn't very usefull also, because you see clouds up to 80 miles away (if you set the distance slider in FS2004 to the rightmost position). So if I update only the stations 10 miles away and the user take an ATIS report of a station 20 miles away, he will get false informations. So I think the update radius must be 80 miles and the update should be as fast as possible. Esp. if you fly a very fast plane (like the Concorde) the update will occure quite often.
So I have some questions to you:
1. Is there a way to update the stations without redraw in FS2004?
2. Do you know the location where the complete weather is in FS2004 memory space, so I could maybe update the weather at once (I think the NewWeather structure is the one MS2004 use internal?)
3. Could you speed up the update of single stations?
4. How can I update a station without the IPC interface? You say that it be possible in youre first answer.
Bye
Markus