FS2k2 and visibility

[Gregory Abbey]

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..

[Pete Dowson]

With the DISPLAY setting in FS set to a maximum of 100 or 110 mile visibility and Real Weather enabled.. often times the visibility (VIS) parameter goest to 327 sm and an UGLY and 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!!

The 327 comes from the value "-1" which FS2002 represents to indicate "unlimited visibility". -1 if FFFFFFFF in hexadecimal, which with older versions of FSUIPC and WeatherSet get truncated to 7FFF which is 32767 (1/100ths of a mile). The visibility isn't really that much, it is just a representation error. It has been fixed in newer versionso of FSUIPC and WeatherSet. I really can't support the old versions.

Problem is.. no setting in FSUIPC can override this.

I don't think the visuals are really to do with this - unlimited is just limited by your maximum you set in FS. It can't get higher.

Certainly a combination of the maxima and the graduated visibility settings in FSUIPC can stop this.

. and I must keep going in and knocking down in LOCAL weather.

.

... ah, except in Localised weather.

Please suggest what is causing the aweful horizon situation.. and what can be done to control this problem.

I really can't imagine what you are seeing with this "awful horizon", unless in FS you have your max visibility set higher than the distance the scenery is being drawn. I would restrict the FS maximum in any case if I were you.

In all the two years I was using FS2002 I don't recall problems as you have described, though the whole visibility implementation in FS2002 was atrocious compared to both FS2000 and FS2004 in my opinion.

Regards,

Pete

[Gregory Abbey]

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

[Pete Dowson]

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!!

There's no such thing as "infinite vis". The -1 I mentioned is FS's way of denoting the "unlimited" setting in its dialogues. However, "unlimited" means limited only by your graphics settings -- which I think you said were 110 miles or similar?

What is probably happening is that your scenery isn't being drawn as far as that. Try reducing the maximum in the FS options first (NOT the weather, the graphics options). Or else find out why your scenery isn't being drawn far enough -- probably something to do with maximum texture sizes and other things. There are also heaps of parameters in the CFG file which change all that stuff. There should be hints and tips some place -- forgive me. I've been working mostly on FS2004 this year so I don't remember all of FS2002's ins and outs any more.

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..?

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.

I'm not sure what causes the VIS to go INFINITE even when DISPLAY is set to a limit of 110 mi.

There is no "infinite" value. The -1 is FS's internal representation of "unlimited" in the weather dialogues. It tells it to set it to the maximum allowed by your graphics settings.

Regards,

Pete

[Gregory Abbey]

There's no such thing as "infinite vis". The -1 I mentioned is FS's way of denoting the "unlimited" setting in its dialogues. However, "unlimited" means limited only by your graphics settings -- which I think you said were 110 miles or similar?

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.

What is probably happening is that your scenery isn't being drawn as far as that. Try reducing the maximum in the FS options first (NOT the weather, the graphics options).

Or else find out why your scenery isn't being drawn far enough -- probably something to do with maximum texture sizes and other things. There are also heaps of parameters in the CFG file which change all that stuff.

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..?

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

[Pete Dowson]

With the fine info that your provided.. I can likely solve this

The 90 miles upper limit in FSUIPC should be taking effect, not the 110 default you've allowed. -- but if not, I think this must be some interaction with your weather source. Are you using FSMeteo, ActiveSky, or FS's own downloaded weather. If the latter then most of FSUIPC's facilities for weather filtering don't work in any case! In that case your solution with lie in reducing the FS visibility and trying to extend the graphics detail distance. There are two parts to that I think -- terrain radius and texturing radius. But I don't remember what the parameters are in the CFG.

If you get nowhere, I'll check into my own settings, which worked fine (but I was always an FSMeteo user with FS2002, didn't like FS downloaded weather at all).

Regards,

Pete

[Gregory Abbey]

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