Weather

Weather support has gone beyond mere 'defaults' to 'current conditions', right down to the ATIS. The reference of the weather system being re-written 'from the ground up' takes added meaning in this discussion. Specific details follow.

Andy: Just like the terrain system and the graphics engine, the weather system has been totally rewritten from the ground up. Not a stitch of old code is left. Some of the things you get out of that are as everybody always asks – "Are the clouds better?" – YES! The clouds as you can see are much, much better. There are the right levels of transparencies, you're not limited in the number of layers you can create as they were in prior versions. They can be any thickness, there can be any coverage within those layers as from 1/8 all the way up to 8/8 totally overcast.

There is no hail, but snow and rain. Snow and rain are covered, lightning, thunderstorms are covered, different kinds of clouds such as Stratus, Cumulus, and Cirrus clouds at various levels. We have a live weather feed from Jeppesen where we get all the METARS, winds aloft, temperature aloft data and there is a single button in the weather UI that says "real world weather". You click it and your machine connects to the Internet if it's not already, hits our server, grabs the package of the latest set of stuff, puts the weather all over the world in terms of what is really going on outside right now. You can then browse around on a map all the weather observations in the world and see what is going on at any weather station which we have reported data. You can change it if you want to, if you don’t you just leave it alone and just go fly around in that picture of the world. As you fly from place to place the weather will transition between what it is supposed to do at each of those reported points.

Bruce: There is also a whole new interface for setting up the weather so its much easier if you want to create your own weather. You can create a cloud layer by clicking a graphic then dragging it and then selecting the type of clouds you want. How much coverage you want, if you want precipitation, what’s the rate of precipitation, all done very easily with sliders. You really don’t have to go in and punch any numbers. With the clouds you’re getting a much more realistic look with the Fog and the Haze and so forth. It’s going to look really good.

Andy: This is a great example of a place where Flight Sim works really well for both the casual user and the people who want to use it for more serious, in-depth, kind of pursuit. There is a list of parameters where you can have a cloud layer variation over time. You can say: 'the height of that cloud layer or its bases will vary by some number of feet'. It could be 20 feet or 1000 feet. This is very useful for doing things like instrument approaches where you're going to fly an ILS and you set up the cloud layer to be at exactly the minimums of the ILS. When you fly down and get to the minimums of the approach you don’t know whether you’re going to break out or not. If you set it up yourself and it was always the same, than you would know - OK I’m going to break out everything is going to be fine. But with that variation, it throws the element of randomness in there and teaches you to react in the appropriate way. You get to the minimums, you look outside, if you don’t see, you have a missed approach, go around and do it again. But this time you get around and come back down and the layer may have moved up and you may have broke out this time and be able to land. Is Joe average ever going to use this? Probably not! Does it get in his way? Certainly not! But the level of depth is there for the people who know how to take advantage of that and want to do that sort of thing.

We shouldn’t mislead you on the downloaded weather. The data that comes down will stay exactly the way it comes down and it will not change over time unless you go download it again later. If you want to setup situations like having a variance in cloud layers there is the capability to do that. It’s not automatic. If you’re trying to setup a very specific training situation you can do that.

Bruce: We can refresh the data. The data will be updated typically about every hour at least for the METARS, the winds aloft forecasts are on a different schedule but the data will be updated so you can just click the button again, in another hour and see how it changes.

We updated the ATIS in conjunction with the real world weather. We went to the company that actually makes automated weather observation systems, and we’ve got the computerized voice files that they use. So when you tune in an ATIS and get the current weather you’re going to hear exactly what a real pilot would hear, tuning in a digital ATIS or AWOS.

Andy: It crackles more as you get further away. When you’re right on the airport, it’s nice and strong, very clear signal. But, as you get further and further away you start hearing grunge and less voice and eventually you’re too far away and it just squelches out. It’s a really nice effect.