FSUIPC 4.241 - Wind smoothing feedback

[MELKOR]

Pete,

I guess you won't be surprised to hear that "Wind smoothing fix is fully installed" made all the difference in the world!

Using the same testing methodology as before, all wind direction and velocity changes were very nicely smoothed.

Hats off to you, sir! :D

BTW, all of my testing was done with the smoothing thread turned off - I think you can safely default this to "No" in future versions (or elliminate it altogether?)

Now, going to do some "real world" testing in the PMDG 747X...

Thanks Pete!

- Bill

[jannier]

Pete,

What effect/purpose does WindSmoothingThread=No versus Yes have?

Regards

Jannie

[MELKOR]

After some testing with the PMDG 747X, I confirm that wind smoothing is working VERY well! Thank you so much so your diligence in solving this, Pete!

I also confirm what others have seen: in turbulence, the 747X has trouble keeping a heading (HDG Sel, Hold, or LNAV). In fact, it's the oddest thing I've seen the 747X do... with wind coming from the left, the plane banks strongly to the right, then to the left to compensate. How strange!

Turning on variance suppression does NOT seem to help. But, of course, suppressing turbulence entirely does the trick.

Switching to hand-flying in turbulence: with the yoke in a neutral position, and wind coming from the left, the plane starts banking to the right on its own. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that is the expected behavior! Which leads me to believe there is an issue with the PMDG model.

- Bill

[Pete Dowson]

What effect/purpose does WindSmoothingThread=No versus Yes have?

Earlier, before I discovered the extra wind vector values inside FSX, there were a lot of cases where FSUIPC was temporarily losing the fight with FSX over what the prevailing winds at the aircraft should be. This resulted in unwanted wind shifts still "leaking" through.

I made a separate thread which had, as its sole job, re-writing the last values FSUIPC wanted -- at a rate of some 200 times per second. This was in the hope that it would prevent the unwanted values seeping through.

It helped sometimes, but didn't fix it fully. I was still missing something -- and that "something" was the extra set of vectors I found yesterday. So, having found them I was curious to know if there were any more leaks, and if, in fact, the extra thread trying to block them all was now needed at all.

Tests seem to have shown that I have all the bases covered, and that the thread is not needed. So I shall remove it before release.

Makes sense for you?

Regards

Pete

[Pete Dowson]

Switching to hand-flying in turbulence: with the yoke in a neutral position, and wind coming from the left, the plane starts banking to the right on its own. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that is the expected behavior!

It doesn't sound right at all, especially considering that whilst the winds are varying, they are only oscillating furiously about a central value (the normal "smoothed" value, which may of course also be changing at your set smoothing rate). The oscillations will be no more than 1 degree and 1 knot per unit of turbulence, either side of the mean.

Which leads me to believe there is an issue with the PMDG model.

Possibly. But it does suggest that we should find out what the effect of the turbulence on other aircraft, for example the default 737 or 747, is like. I might try that tomorrow ...

Thanks!

Pete

[jannier]

Makes sense for you?

Thanks Pete, Absolutely.

I can also confirm that windsmoothing now works like a charm with FSX+SP2

The odd time that the plane would yaw left and rright about 30' is also gone now when you enable the option Turbulance Suppress.

WindSmoothingThread=No was used durng the testing.

Fantastic Job!!!! :D

Regards

Jannie

[John Veldthuis]

Works well for me most of the tie as well with just the odd little increase/decrease in plane IAS and small deviations to the left right but nothing the AP cant handle.

I have noticed however that the pressure seems to jump wildly that never used to be there. Just sitting at the airport you can hear the engines changing speeds on idle. Look at the altitude indicator and it jumps nearly 1000-2000 feet and then short time later drops back.

This is with the PMDG744X as well.

Have turned on pressure smoothing to see if this helps with the default value of 20.

[Pete Dowson]

with just the odd little increase/decrease in plane IAS and small deviations to the left right but nothing the AP cant handle.

That must be the turbulence simulation. You can turn that off if you don't like it. I didn't do that in FS9 -- the wind smothing there removed all such wind effects, which I didn't feel was right.

I have noticed however that the pressure seems to jump wildly that never used to be there. Just sitting at the airport you can hear the engines changing speeds on idle. Look at the altitude indicator and it jumps nearly 1000-2000 feet and then short time later drops back.

That is exactly what folks told me happened weeks ago and why I also eventually found a way to smooth it. I've never seen it happen here, so I was skeptical. It certainly has nothing to do with anything I'm doing at all. I think it is related to faulty / incorrect METAR data being downloaded occasionally, just like the couple of reports of temperatures of >60C in parts of Scandinavia!

Have turned on pressure smoothing to see if this helps with the default value of 20.

Well, that's why it, and the temperature smoothing, were added.

Regards

Pete