Wind Smoothing... Again FSUIPC 4.x

[Andydigital]

This version certainly doesn't have the severe stutters i had in the previous version of the beta. I did a flight from Newark KEWR to EGCC Manchester today and i didn't see any severe windshift or stutter.

[johndrago]

I will look out for the new version, and give it a spin.

Not wanting to give up without more of a struggle, I've now uploaded 4.175 with a renewed attempt at getting wind smoothing working. I'm managed to reduce the stuttering, but i fear it may also be less effective. I won't be able to do a full flight test on it till later in the week, but please try it yourself and let me know.

Regards

Pete

I will test over the coming weekend. Thanks Pete.

-John

[blueridgeflyer]

greetings,

I have 4.20 installed with wind smoothing enabled within FSX SP2 and get a combination of wind smoothing and wind shifts. However the smothing occurs AFTER the shift in wind. Example: Winds shift from west to east rapidly, then it appears that wind smoothing attempts to correct back toward the west at 2 degrees per second. I guess we are getting real close to nipping this in the bud (fingers crossed). If we could just get smoothing to anticipate and capture the shift. I also report negative stuttering.

Ryan

[Pete Dowson]

I have 4.20 installed with wind smoothing enabled within FSX SP2 and get a combination of wind smoothing and wind shifts. However the smothing occurs AFTER the shift in wind. Example: Winds shift from west to east rapidly, then it appears that wind smoothing attempts to correct back toward the west at 2 degrees per second. I guess we are getting real close to nipping this in the bud (fingers crossed). If we could just get smoothing to anticipate and capture the shift. I also report negative stuttering.

As I said "I've managed to reduce the stuttering, but i fear it may also be less effective."

In tests here I'm getting fewer severe windshifts, but they are still there. On most flights there have been none to upset the autothrottle or anything. The worst ones with the default settings were at most around 110 degrees, whereas before they were often 180 degrees or close (the worst they could be). Most I've seen have been 40-50.

If, in the Logging, you enable "Extras" (or set it to 1 if you have the Edit box showing), each significant occasion of Wind Shear will be logged, like so:

2124468 **** WINDSHEAR: prev ambient wind = 345/34, new wind = 257/34

The only way to make it acceptably effective, I think, (yet still not foolproof) is to reduce the delay to zero AND maybe including the Global weather. In other words, change these two parameters in the INI file (defaults shown):

WeatherRewriteDelay=10

ProcessGlobalWeather=No

I've not found a Delay of 1 to be noticeably better than 10, but do please try it and let me know. The best would be 0, but then you will certainly notice stutters. And it is probably best to ignore the Global weather part -- for proper graduated visibility it seems that is definitely needed, but the stutters are unbearable.

Also, seeing as the other problem is the time taken to scan and update the nearest 9 stations (one of which may have therefore updated its weather 9 x update period ago, or maybe 18 seconds), if you can make it scan and update faster it should be more effective. The problem then is the performance hit. The default period is controlled by the parameter at the bottom left of the Winds page, which is this in the INI:

WeatherReadFactor=2

You can change that to 1 for the fastest scan rate, halving the possible lapse before FSUIPC picks up new WX from a station. But take care not to slow down your FS frame rates. If you install Acceleration (or SP2 when it is released)* it will be twice as fast in any case ("2" will give 1 second instead of 2), so setting it to 1 gives a maximum scan, hopefully, of about 5 seconds per station. I suspect then that a delay value of less than 5 should be about an optimum for stutters versus wind shear effectiveness.

As for trying to detect the weather at a station before it is set at the station, I'm afraid that's impossible. I was hoping that, by changing the weather at stations as far away as 40 nm the weather would be under control by the time you got there. The very nearest is actually processed twice in the scan (so really making each scan 10 stations).

Experiment. Let me know. I can change the defaults if you find better values. Ideally I would like to just process the 3 WX stations which are contributing to the weather at the aircraft, but at present I can't identify them. If I could I could keep them all under watch every couple of seconds. And maybe use a delay of 0 (for one small stutter?) when one of the three changed.

* You said "within FSX SP2". Did you mean SP1? SP2 isn't available yet. Or do you mean Acceleration?

Regards

Pete