FS Meteo and wind transitions

[hendis]

I use FS Meteo 6.4 (with Weather Display) and FSUIPC 3.202 in FS 2004.

My problem is with wind transitions. Very often the wind changes so quickly that it looks as if I suddenly gave full rudder for a brief moment. This happens with 2-10 minutes intervals, or thereabouts.

Occasionally, the transitions come in very quick succession, about once per second, with what appears to be random values. When that happens the aircraft becomes impossible to control until I kill FS Meteo.

I have set FSUIPC's "Smooth wind changes near aircraft..." parameter to 1 degree per second, but this doesn't seem to have any effect. In FS2002 it always used to work very well.

I have noticed that the FS Meteo flag "Disable Wind Transition" is set and dimmed and that the manual claims that this option is no longer needed with FS2004.

Please advise.

[Pete Dowson]

My problem is with wind transitions. Very often the wind changes so quickly that it looks as if I suddenly gave full rudder for a brief moment. This happens with 2-10 minutes intervals, or thereabouts.

The timing will depend upon the closeness of different weather stations. It seems to be a bug in FS2004 -- the wind actually reverses (180 degrees) in certain circumstances, related, it seems to whether the wind changes upwards are clockwise (okay) or anti-clockwise( problem!). The same occurs, reproducibly, even with FS's own weather downloads.

Flying in areas with few nearby weather stations should reduce the problem. The only other way to get over the FS bug, will depend upon actions taken in the Weather programs to ensure clockwise winds only, and possibly to do some smoothing of their own between nearby stations.

I think the authors of both ActiveSky and FSMeteo are working on this, but I have no idea how it is progressing. Sorry.

I have set FSUIPC's "Smooth wind changes near aircraft..." parameter to 1 degree per second, but this doesn't seem to have any effect.

As it says, that option along with all the other smoothing options (except visibility) only applies to Global weather. Unfortunately global weather doesn't actually work (it doesn't STAY global!) in FS2004, and the newer weather programs set local weather stations, and on the whole this works a lot better.

In FS2002 it always used to work very well.

In FS2002, and before, only Global weather was being used by any of the weather programs. it was possible to control this 100%. Not so in FS2004.

I have noticed that the FS Meteo flag "Disable Wind Transition" is set and dimmed and that the manual claims that this option is no longer needed with FS2004.

Well, the wind transitions facility in FSUIPC was added to deal with a bug in both FS2000 & FS2002 whereby the wind could reverse when flying between or near the altitude at which one wind layer definition ended and another began. The FSUIPC transitions took care of that. Certainly, that bug is fixed in FS2004, so that reason for wind transitioning is no longer valid. The other reason it isn't implemented is that it isn't possible using local weather, and global weather doesn't stay global in FS2004.

BTW there has been lots of questions and discussions about this over the last 8 months and all the resulting threads are still here. It may be informative for you to browse through some of them.

Regards,

Pete

[hendis]

Thanks Pete. Sorry for asking what I now understand is an FAQ issue. I did perform a search before I posted, but the keywords that I could think of resulted in either no hits or far too many hits.

A quick look at the ActiveSky 2004 FAQ revealed that they already do address this problem in various ways, including a "counter-clockwise winds fix".

Maybe it's time I tried that one, unless Marc Philibert comes up with an encouraging answer to the support request I mailed him.

Thanks again, and for FSUIPC too.

[Pete Dowson]

Maybe it's time I tried that one, unless Marc Philibert comes up with an encouraging answer to the support request I mailed him.

Please let me know what you get from Marc. I've not heard from him in a long time. Perhaps "real" work is taking him away from FSMeteo developments.

Regards,

Pete

[hendis]

Please let me know what you get from Marc. I've not heard from him in a long time. Perhaps "real" work is taking him away from FSMeteo developments.

I will.

In the meantime, I can tell you, and others whom it may interest, that I took the plunge and bought ActiveSky 2004, and that I had nothing but smooth wind transitions on my first test flight.

[hendis]

I just received this reply from Marc:

***********************************

Hi Henrik

I'am working on that fs2004 bug right now.

Stay tune

Best Regards,

Marc

***********************************

[Pete Dowson]

I just received this reply from Marc:

Thanks. Coincidentally, he's discussing it with me too now! :wink:

Regards,

Pete