Detecting lightning strikes

[bcs112]

Pete,

I am planning on building a stormscope. For that I need to be able to detect and locate lightning strikes. From what I have read on this forum this not possible with FSUIPC, but is it possible to detect CB's ?

If I could detect CB's however I could expect that there is some lightning activity going in inside this cloud and thus "guess" where the electrical discharges should be.

So here's the question, can I detect and locate CD's using FSUIPC ?

Thanks for the help,

Björn

[Pete Dowson]

I am planning on building a stormscope. For that I need to be able to detect and locate lightning strikes. From what I have read on this forum this not possible with FSUIPC, but is it possible to detect CB's ?

Lightning, like clouds themselves, are placed randomly in the graphics and effects routines of FS. There's no way I know of getting precise data for either, other than the general weather settings for each nearby weather station.

To see if there are any storms nearby you would need to read the cloud data for each nearby weather station, checking the cloud type for CB ("storm"). You'd need to search the FS weather station lists to determine valid nearby weather stations -- check the Weather folder in FS.

FSUIPC does allow you to read weather at any weather station given its ICAO id, or, in fact, weather near any point given a latitude and longitude -- but the weather describes that for the locale, so a storm cloud listed may simply be within several miles of the station or point.

Regards,

Pete

[bcs112]

Thx Pete,

Need to think about an efficiant way to do something with the available data, I'm sure I wil find something in the end ;)

Björn