Accessing ALL stations weather data in FS2004

[sanh]

Hi Pete,

For FS2004 i want to write a program which reads all FS weather i.e. a

user downloads real world weather in FS2004 and this information is

then read by my program. At the moment i dont see any support in your

docs to read this information. I am looking to get all weather stations

data rather than just the global or the current local weather station.

Will this be possible in the next version of your SDK?

Many thanks

San

[Pete Dowson]

For FS2004 i want to write a program which reads all FS weather i.e. a user downloads real world weather in FS2004 and this information is then read by my program. At the moment i dont see any support in your docs to read this information. I am looking to get all weather stations data rather than just the global or the current local weather station.

Will this be possible in the next version of your SDK?

Yes. The " New Weather Interface" (NWI) can be used to read and write individual weather stations in FS2004, by ICAO ID. But reading all of them will take a lot of time I suspect, there are thousands -- and you'd need the list. If all you want to do is read the weather files you'd be better off saving a Flight in FS and using the WX file. All the data is in there.

If you want to try the NWI in action now, try WeatherSet2, as provided in the FSUIPC 3 Zip. See the little text file for instructions. You can read and modify any specific METAR station using that utility.

If you want documentation for programming the NWI in advance of the revised SDK, you'll need to write to me on my email, petedowson@btconnect.com, and I'll send some information.

Regards,

Pete

[sanh]

I am going to read it from the .wx file which would be best. I am however having a few problems decoding this file. I think its in binary but i am having difficulty decoding it into readable text. I am a java programmer. Any thoughts from anyone would be appreciated.

[Pete Dowson]

I am going to read it from the .wx file which would be best. I am however having a few problems decoding this file. I think its in binary but i am having difficulty decoding it into readable text. I am a java programmer. Any thoughts from anyone would be appreciated.

Best to start by creating some simple ones yourself. Clear all weather (including dynamics -- you can do this in FSUIPC), and set a single weather scenario for all stations (i.e. global weather). By changing one thing at a time and observing the difference in the saved WX file you should be able to decode things pretty quickly. Hint -- many values are in 32-bit "float" format, not integers.

Once you've got one global station worked out with all its ramifications then extending this to a list of those for Metar stations should be easy enough.

FS2004's format is different to FS2002's. There's some sort of extra header which I don't understand, and they now put the ICAO code in each entry. Previously they used an index into the ICAO lists in the Weather folder.

If you do get stuck write to my email address and I'll try to help, though I don't deal with WX files directly.

Regards,

Pete