Weather sync with PE controllers?

[BluesmanEP]

Hey All,

I've been thinking a lot about the weather in X-plane with the release of the FS Global Real Weather plugin (has anyone tried it?). I realize, even when using the x-plane 'download real world weather' there is a delay between the sim and the real-life weather conditions. However, (and please correct me if I'm wrong) I believe that the PE controllers are looking at the actual, real-world, up to the min weather conditions. Correct? Because of this, I often find that my sim weather doesn't match the weather that the controllers are looking at. Normally this isn't a problem, but several times recently I've been assigned a landing runway that gives me a fairly significant tailwind in the sim. I can't ask for the opposite runway because all the other traffic is using the runway I was assigned. I also don't want to pause my sim, and try to manually correct the weather to what the controller gives me, cause that would cause real problems for other pilots and the controllers.

Is there any way to sync the sim weather and the controller weather? At least as far as wind speed/direction and baro pressure? I'm less concerned about cloud cover / rain etc. I don't believe the PE client pushes weather (like VATSIM for example), so I'm not sure how to get the controllers and the sim to match up - since both are as 'real-world' accurate as we can be.

I also realize that people will often set different weather in the sim, but they say so in their flightplan and the controllers are aware. I assume that without a note saying otherwise, the controllers act as if your sim weather will match what they're looking at on the scope.

Sorry for the long post - does anyone have any ideas about this?

Thanks!

[tshuff]

You can always ask for a different runway. In general, as long as it isn't something like opposite direction at SNA/LAX/etc, the controller can accommodate. I've never heard a reasonable request flat out denied, though you may expect some delay vectors if there is traffic around.

[Keith Smith]

I know I've posted this in other threads, but I'm skeptical about any weather plugins for X-Plane. None of them have the ability to set cloud layers the way X-Plane's native engine does. That means you'll be giving up some functionality that is unique to X-Plane by swapping to a weather plugin.

To your question, X-Plane pulls the weather every hour (the clocks starts when you first launch X-Plane). The weather it attempts to pull is ~2 hours old if memory serves. It never tries to pull the absolute latest weather because the way weather trickles into the weather server (from which x-Plane and PilotEdge pull the data), if you only pull once per hour, at a random time during the hour, not all of the weather stations will have sent in their weather reports, and you'll have incomplete data.

So, the answer is, the controllers see weather which is usually 1 hour ahead of what X-Plane probably seeing, coupled with the fact that X-Plane's weather refresh is once every hour, and almost never at the top of the hour.

It's pretty rare that this will have much of an operational impact on your flight, but if you need a specific runway, then ask for it. Outside of scheduled events, it shouldn't be a problem.

[BluesmanEP]

That's great. I didn't expect that the opposite runway would be available by request. Thanks, I'll be sure to ask next time.

Thanks all!

[mm007.emko]

Yes, it is possible. You can also set your sim weather to CAVOK and ask for visual approach (if you tell the controller that you have VMC in the sim) and you'll get it.