Apply attempted white-out fix

[George McComb]

Hi Pete,

It’s me again with another question. First of all I am using Active Sky version 6 for weather… and again I have a purchased version of FSUIPC.

While reading the FSUIPC Users Guide…specifically page 19 (the Miscellaneous tab) paragraph heading "Apply attempted white-out fix", I noticed that I am getting an exact reaction as describe in this paragraph while coming out of clouds. I get a lot of soup and can’t really see the runway or VASI lights until I am within a few miles of touch down, however, it clears fairly well as I get lower and closer to the runway.

I find this unusual as when I taxi to parking and check the local weather (in this case) it is as follows: Wind-191 @ 3 mi, Visibility- > 20 miles, Sky- few clouds @ 6k-8k scattered, Temperature- 28/14, Pressure- 3003.

As you can see when clearing the lowest cloud layer I should have a visibility of…as advertised > 20 miles.

I also noticed that the last sentence in this narrative states that “It is definitely fixed in FS2004”.

My question would be; why is this happening, I may very well have something set incorrectly, however, I have no idea what that might be.

I am still looking and reading into this, but I thought, to not reinvent the wheel I would ask you, the expert for help.

My Specs: Windows XP-SP2 Professional

ASUS “A8N-SLI Deluxe” NVIDIA nForce Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 2.8 GHz 1MB Cache 64 Bit Processor

Dual (2 ea) nVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Video Cards

4GB PC3200 DDR RAM

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS 7.1

Dual Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10000RPM 8MB Cache HD

I would appreciate any help you can give me and I will be more than glad to supply additional information.

Thank You

George

[Pete Dowson]

While reading the FSUIPC Users Guide…specifically page 19 (the Miscellaneous tab) paragraph heading "Apply attempted white-out fix", I noticed that I am getting an exact reaction as describe in this paragraph while coming out of clouds. I get a lot of soup and can’t really see the runway or VASI lights until I am within a few miles of touch down, however, it clears fairly well as I get lower and closer to the runway.

That's not the problem that the "white-out fix" fixes then -- that problem certainly does not happen in FS2004.

I find this unusual as when I taxi to parking and check the local weather (in this case) it is as follows: Wind-191 @ 3 mi, Visibility- > 20 miles, Sky- few clouds @ 6k-8k scattered, Temperature- 28/14, Pressure- 3003.

As you can see when clearing the lowest cloud layer I should have a visibility of…as advertised > 20 miles.

You get visibility quoted like that ">20 miles". That's rather unusual. METARs usually give 10SM (10 miles) for anything greater, or 9999 (metres) in metric areas. Possibly some Wx stations with manually measured values give more, but not the automated ones as far as I know.

Unfortunately, if the visibility is set at less than about 10.4 miles in FS2004, you get grey skies and a bland look to the underside of clouds. But that's another story. Before FS2004 that used to happen at about 4 miles, which was better.

My question would be; why is this happening, I may very well have something set incorrectly, however, I have no idea what that might be.

Sorry, I've no idea. I've never seen any incorrect/stuck visibility in FS2004, and no one has ever reported such to me before (and remember, FS2004 has now been in use for nearly 3 years). If you'd limited visibilities in FSUIPC's options, then they wouldn't suddenly clear -- unless, that is, the cloud cover changed too -- FSUIPC provides different limits for Clear, Cloudy and Rain/Snow.

You say you are using ActiveSky 6. Have you checked its options? Did you notice what it was telling you about the weather before you landed? If you are flying in an area of dense WX stations, you can get changes more often especially if the different WX reports from near stations are from different times, as they often are it seems.

You might wish to direct your questions to the ActiveSky forum -- there are folks with more weather expertise than I there, I assure you! ;-)

Regards

Pete

[quantumleap]

You get visibility quoted like that ">20 miles". That's rather unusual. METARs usually give 10SM (10 miles) for anything greater, or 9999 (metres) in metric areas. Possibly some Wx stations with manually measured values give more, but not the automated ones as far as I know.

In Canada most of the automated ones give a maximum of 9 SM and in the US it is usually 10 SM.

For manually measured ones however, in Canada the usual maximum is 15 SM (for I'd estimate 95% of them), with a few giving maximums greater than that.

In the US, 10 SM is the normal maximum for manually measured ones (i.e. same as automated ones for the US) however in some areas e.g. military bases in the desert areas of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and California, you'll can sometimes see visibilities in their METARs of 30 SM and above.

[JSkorna]

Hi George,

Looks like a settings issue in your ASv6. Please drop me a note and attach your ASv6.ini file to jim@hifisim.com

Thanks!