FS Meteo and Weather Display

By John Dale (13 February 2004)

FS Meteo

FS Meteo along with Weather Display and the new FS2004 GPS

The two programs are separate purchases and prices can be found on the web site. The first point to make is the question that comes to mind immediately: Why should I buy two additional weather programs when FS2004 has now incorporated a weather program? The simple answer is this. If you are an occasional user and do not fly cross country IFR flights and are not bothered by levels of realism then you do not have a need for FS Meteo or Weather Display. If you are a little bit fanatic and a perfectionist and enjoy complex IFR flights and want FS2004 pushed to a higher level of realism then these add-ons are for you. The price may seem a little high but are not out of line with add-on prices, which do seem to be climbing. I have used FS Meteo itself for years and found it very useful to increase the weather realism. I have used a second monitor for so long in flightsimming that I cannot imagine flying without it and that is where FS Meteo sits.

FS Meteo downloads all forecasted winds aloft data. It will then download the remaining weather data for the weather station (ICAO) closest to your plane's current location as obtained from the flight simulator. FS Meteo will continue to update the weather data for the ICAO nearest your plane's location every 6 minutes. Thus FS Meteo will reflect the weather at your plane's location as close to actual as possible. Upon arrival at your destination airport the weather will reflect the current condition. The effect to the virtual pilot is becoming so much like the real thing that I am aware of small changes in winds aloft or in weather off to my left or right and it is so much closer to the real thing.

FS Meteo v6.4 has a number of refinements and now incorporates multiple weather station inputs so that you can view a certain weather pattern off to the left and a different one ahead. You can incorporate a flight plan from FS2004 and it will go ahead and seek multiple downloads of stations ahead and change as you fly. There is a flash on the screen as a new weather system gets uploaded. It is not annoying and it would be extremely hard to make the weather changes seamless. The interface is, as always FSUIPC and the latest version is always recommended. This is an essential add-on for FS2004 anyway as soon as you wish to get a little complex. FS Meteo works with all previous versions of Flight Simulator as well as FS2004.

One new feature is the enroute flight advisory which can pop up in the text window. It can be tuned in for voiced weather via a com frequency in addition. The METAR updates can be activated and you can instruct FS Meteo to inform you by beep of a weather update. It does set origin and destination weather any time you give it the destination ICAO ID and then as we fly along in our Learjet, we can get both weather displays shown in the second monitor.

Learjet 45 with weather set

We are flying from Williams Lake to Castlegar and FS Meteo has picked up Kamloops as the nearest station and Castlegar as the destination.

We can at any time request decoding information on the local station or destination. The teaching ability for learning METARS and TAFS is great and you get to see the exact weather as well. Naturally a high-speed connection is pretty essential.

FS Meteo in close up.

Coming in to land at Castlegar B.C., we find the weather as forecast, with broken at around 4000' and broken at around 7000' and although visibility is at 15 miles, it is somewhat miserable below the clouds. There is some haze with the winter snow.

The actual Castlegar weather, middle of December 2003, textures by Ruud Faber FScene.

The picture landing at Castlegar BC does illustrates the actual weather and also incorporates another view of the textures of Ruud Faber, of FScene fame. (For web page check http://www.fscene.com) These additional textures have also become one of my favorite add-ons and were recently reviewed in an excellent review by Terblanche Jordaan.

So what else is incorporated in FS Meteo v6.4? Well we have options to incorporate turbulence, winds aloft, gusts, correct temperatures, visibility, the addition of realistic rain, thunder and snow, wake turbulence when near another plane, microclimates for aircraft carriers, flight plan importing, temperature transitions, compatibility with Win 95, 98, ME, 200 and XP. The program does not affect frame rates. If I have any criticism of this program at all, it would be that unlike FSNav, another of my all time favorites, it interrupts FS2004 when you are questioning it or doing a METAR decode. It will run quietly in the background if you just set it and leave it alone and it will upgrade all weather enroute, but if you want a decode or want to change any settings it stops flightsim, I find this annoying, because I am spoilt with FSNav which lets me look at ILS frequencies or airport runway diagrams, much as I would pull a chart to peruse whilst still flying.

www.fsmeteo.com

Weather Display

[Windowxx] file=fs_meteo.bmp, size_mm=220,248, windowsize_ratio=1, position=0, visible=0, ident=125, gauge00=fs_meteo, 0, 0,220

After that there is a new option in the "Views"-"instrument panel" tabs and the Weather Set will then be an option in any plane you set it up in. So place it in your favorite IFR aircraft. There are a couple of ways that you can view it as can be seen in the enclosed images.

This shows floating install.

This shows second monitor display.

Weather Display can be resized, undocked and moved at ease. Winds aloft can also be shown in Weather Display (below right).

   

Weather Display also has one advantage over its partner FS Meteo in that you can click on the lower right corner and cycle your winds aloft at take-off airport and destination airport without interrupting the flight. Weather at origin and destination will be seen as enclosed, once you request it from FS Meteo (above left). FS Meteo in fact only interrupts when you are changing parameters or wanting a decode. They both run flawlessly in the background. Do we need either with the new and improved FS2004? Yes, these two programs, especially FS Meteo still offer many advantages to the purist.

www.fsmeteo.com

John Dale
jrdale@netidea.com

Dr John Dale has been flying in Canada for 32 years and currently flies a Cessna 210 and organizes tours to the Yukon and Alaska in the summer. Check http://www.flynorth.com for details.