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Running Real World Weather offline

UncleTgt

SOH-CM-2025
Kelti, saw your post in the Maskrider thread & thought I would start this thread rather than hijack Chris' stellar screenshots.

You can have realistic weather offline.

Get hold of a copy of the freeware programme FSMETAR. The last version was 1.55beta (which I have). This is the only address I could find that is still live & it's v1.54
http://web.archive.org/web/20120323061633/http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/web/fsmetar/

Now, on your internet machine go here, & save any one of the observation files (simple txt files)

http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/observations/metar/cycles/

You can build a store of files if you save each into a separate days folder.

FS METAR needs to be running when you are running CFS 2

In FS METAR you have the option to navigate to where you stored these files & pick one to load. Now, when you return to CFS 2 & launch a mission, QC or Free Flight, it will load weather observations from the nearest location in the table. If you fly a long way, the weather will/may change as the weather station used by FSMETAR as reference changes.

Not real time weather, but offline (safe), & as good as!
 
I'll try it!

Kelti, saw your post in the Maskrider thread & thought I would start this thread rather than hijack Chris' stellar screenshots.

You can have realistic weather offline.

Get hold of a copy of the freeware programme FSMETAR. The last version was 1.55beta (which I have). This is the only address I could find that is still live & it's v1.54
http://web.archive.org/web/20120323061633/http://personal.telefonica.terra.es/web/fsmetar/

Now, on your internet machine go here, & save any one of the observation files (simple txt files)

http://weather.noaa.gov/pub/data/observations/metar/cycles/

You can build a store of files if you save each into a separate days folder.

FS METAR needs to be running when you are running CFS 2

In FS METAR you have the option to navigate to where you stored these files & pick one to load. Now, when you return to CFS 2 & launch a mission, QC or Free Flight, it will load weather observations from the nearest location in the table. If you fly a long way, the weather will/may change as the weather station used by FSMETAR as reference changes.

Not real time weather, but offline (safe), & as good as!

WOW! My, thank you UncleTgt! :encouragement:

Does this FSMETAR impact fps negatively? Clouds do tend to slow down my framerate, have you ever found a cloud texture pack that is not a frame hog?

Is there any setting in CFS2 weather that needs adjustment or everything happens on its own?

I just downloaded both 1.54 and 1.55beta. Down to the 03/11/04 announcement this link:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120323...a.es/web/fsmetar/downloads/FSMetar155Beta.zip

allows downloading it. I'll try both versions.

Cheers!
KH
:ernaehrung004:
 
Stefano,

I never had any reports that my own cloud pack :biggrin-new:affected Frame Rates adversely, but I guess it can depend on the system hardware...

Either of Lindsay's clouds would be a second choice for me.
 
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