Two questions about the default X-Plane weather:
1. Weather tends to clear up on me throughout the flight. I'll manually set global weather around minimums, and somewhere in the climb the cloud layer disappears and it's clear skies again. Sometimes the weather reloads on the approach, but more often I end up turning off my top monitor with the visual. I have cloud detail set around 30% and I get decent frames, usually at least 30+. Anyone have similar issues?
2. Is it possible, maybe through an existing plugin, to use real weather except set clouds and visibility globally? This seems like it would be ideal for IFR training on PilotEdge.
Weather Questions
Re: Weather Questions
This is an example of the disappearing weather, but usually it clears up even more and for longer. Note the difference between the weather at the start and around the 33 minute mark. My weather was set so I should have been solid IMC the whole way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ogQtTJD84
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7ogQtTJD84
Re: Weather Questions
The NOAA Weather plugin provides some of this functionality, I think. It uses real-time NOAA weather, and it seems to update my weather 3 times an hour or so. (I certainly don't have any problem with weather improving rapidly; if anything, bad weather is annoyingly persistent!) Anyway, you can uncheck some facets of its updates and leave others on. I recently experimented with unchecking clouds but leaving turbulence and wind intact, and then I set my own cloud layers mixed with the plugin's actual turbulence/wind. It seemed to work.
http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app ... mentsStart
140-page support thread here: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?sho ... 3&page=140
Alternatively, there are rumors that X-Plane 10.40 will contain an improved weather-update system.
http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app ... mentsStart
140-page support thread here: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?sho ... 3&page=140
Alternatively, there are rumors that X-Plane 10.40 will contain an improved weather-update system.
Re: Weather Questions
Thanks Geoff, not sure how I never came across this! I'm always impressed by how much great free stuff the community has produced for X-Plane.
Re: Weather Questions
I hope it helps. Let me know if you have trouble getting it to run properly.
I just tested it, and you can indeed set it so that you'll always have IFR conditions of your choosing. There are two fields at the bottom of the "configuration" UI of the plugin. One provides for max visibility in statute miles; the other for max cloud height in feet. Those two parameters can give you all the IFR you want, I think. Just type in the numbers you want. You can even specify, say, 0.01 statute miles visibility; the box will round this down to 0, but it still seems to function as .01.
In theory, you can selectively enable and disable other parameters: temperature, wind, turbulence, air pressure, etc. But in practice, I find if I uncheck one of these, the weather quickly reverts to reflects the actual NOAA METAR for your current position anyway. Even so, using the "max vis" and "max cloud height" fields seems to do the trick for me. I'm sitting on a taxiway in Houlton, Maine, and I can barely see 15 feet in front of me. And that hasn't changed in the past 20 minutes or so.
I just tested it, and you can indeed set it so that you'll always have IFR conditions of your choosing. There are two fields at the bottom of the "configuration" UI of the plugin. One provides for max visibility in statute miles; the other for max cloud height in feet. Those two parameters can give you all the IFR you want, I think. Just type in the numbers you want. You can even specify, say, 0.01 statute miles visibility; the box will round this down to 0, but it still seems to function as .01.
In theory, you can selectively enable and disable other parameters: temperature, wind, turbulence, air pressure, etc. But in practice, I find if I uncheck one of these, the weather quickly reverts to reflects the actual NOAA METAR for your current position anyway. Even so, using the "max vis" and "max cloud height" fields seems to do the trick for me. I'm sitting on a taxiway in Houlton, Maine, and I can barely see 15 feet in front of me. And that hasn't changed in the past 20 minutes or so.