Silver Wings Weather

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rdaniell

rdaniell

SOH-CM-2013
I have just found a cd with Silver Wings on it. I never really had any position concerning the autogen part but, really liked the weather themes. I just re-installed them. My memory was correct about how much I preferred them over the default themes. [Note to self: Give yourself an atta-boy for actually remembering something.:applause:]

Romeo-Delta
 
Silver Lining

Well, I agree with the Silver Wings being an improvement, but I prefer to make my own weather. I don't like their themes (sorry). I go to Custom/Advanced and remove the Cumulus at 20,000 ft, and leave only the Sirrus from 25,000 to 40,000 ft ('Few'). Then I set my visibility and wind. Visbility should be 20 miles, and the layer should be from 4,500 ft to 10,000 ft (VERY IMPORTANT TO HAVE THIS LAYER). Now you will fly in what 'looks' like real visibility (haze, etc) until you fly above 10,000 ft and then it will clear up (you can see the ground). If this bothers you then put in a cloud layer of Cumulus from 10,000 ft to 35,000 ft and make it 'OVERCAST'. Interesting stuff if you play with the different combinations / options. In fact you can spend a whole MONTH playing around with visibility alone.
Chuck B
Napamule
 
napamule said:
Well, I agree with the Silver Wings being an improvement, but I prefer to make my own weather. I don't like their themes (sorry). I go to Custom/Advanced and remove the Cumulus at 20,000 ft, and leave only the Sirrus from 25,000 to 40,000 ft ('Few'). Then I set my visibility and wind. Visbility should be 20 miles, and the layer should be from 4,500 ft to 10,000 ft (VERY IMPORTANT TO HAVE THIS LAYER). Now you will fly in what 'looks' like real visibility (haze, etc) until you fly above 10,000 ft and then it will clear up (you can see the ground). If this bothers you then put in a cloud layer of Cumulus from 10,000 ft to 35,000 ft and make it 'OVERCAST'. Interesting stuff if you play with the different combinations / options. In fact you can spend a whole MONTH playing around with visibility alone. Chuck B Napamule
Click to expand...

What you have described is what the weather is typically like a lot of the time here in South Georgia. Most of the time the visibility is only 10 miles. I have also used the custom weather feature on FS9. I like to have some wind and it not always blowing from the north. If I really want to be creative, I sometimes call the local AWOS station and just duplicate as much as FS9 will allow.

Romeo-Delta
 
atta boy, R-D!
i know exactly what you mean.

personally, i prefer to set my weather to
Real-world weather (updated every 15 minutes)
i just don't think i can do better than the real deal.
 
I like using FsMetars to pull down real world weather reports from the closest weather reporting station. The stations change as you fly from place to place. It's free, low resource usage, and pretty darn accurate. When I fly in my home area, what I see in sim is pretty much what I see looking out my window.

OBIO
 
smilo said:
atta boy, R-D! i know exactly what you mean. personally, i prefer to set my weather to
Real-world weather (updated every 15 minutes) i just don't think i can do better than the real deal.
Click to expand...

It adds some more reality to a simulated flight that's for sure. As I said above, it is a very rare day when it is CAVU where I live. Usually scattered to broken with 10 mile visibility. Sometimes it is overcast with a ceiling of 1500 feet and visibility of only 5 miles. That is still VFR weather though. When I fly in reality, I don't usually get very high anyway. Stay below 3000 feet and then you don't have to remember things like should I be at even or odd thousands plus 500 feet.

I seem to remember one day many years ago when I climbed all the way to 7500 feet. It took my little Luscombe 8A with a 65 hp engine almost half the trip just to get there....LOL..

Edit: DD posted ahead of me while I was typing...DD what is a jet stream?

Romeo-Delta
 
Still have Silver wings to set up as I have some nice Canberras to load up. FS9 and GW3 are now running, so Silver wings soon. I installed the themes in all my installs, but tend to use real world like Smilo.

Jamie
 
The jet stream is a band of air (wind) that constantly circles the earth. As air is a fluid it does not maintain the same shape for very long. All kinds of factors dictate how fast it is moving and where it is moving.

Here is a site that shows its current position.

http://www.stormsurfing.com/cgi/display_alt.cgi?a=glob_250

The jet stream as a large affect on what happens to the weather all over the world.

In Flight Simulator it will just give you faster winds at higher altitudes.
 
Dangerousdave26 said:
The only problem with FSMetars is it does not download winds aloft data so you are missing the jet stream affect.
Click to expand...

But for folks like me, who do all their flying well below the jet stream, FSMetars is perfect. All of my flying is below 10,000 feet, and mostly below 8,000 feet...unless I have to get up over some mountains.

Romeo-Delta

A Jet Stream is a band of fast flowing air at high altitudes. Flying with a jet stream tail wind really cuts down on the power needed to maintain cruising speed, thus saving a lot of fuel. Flying against a jet stream, however, will increase a planes fuel usage by a large percentage.

Wikipedia is blacked out today in an effort to raise awareness of some legislative proposals that could spell big time trouble for the internet and the sites that make it up, so I could not provide you with a link to a good Wikipedia article on the various jet streams.

OBIO
 
OBIO said:
But for folks like me, who do all their flying well below the jet stream, FSMetars is perfect. All of my flying is below 10,000 feet, and mostly below 8,000 feet...unless I have to get up over some mountains. OBIO
Click to expand...

Now there's a man like me. Heck as I stated earlier, the airplanes I like to fly don't like to get very high. Even while I'm enjoying the priviledges of my PPL, I usually fly around 2000 AGL.

Romeo-Delta
 
FSMetars will update the weather much more often. The stock real-weather thingie is set at updates every 15 minutes, while FSMetar can be set to as low as 1 minute between updates....which is really pointless since weather metars are only updated every 15 minutes from what I understand.

OBIO
 
So other than updating more often, which is pointless as you said, there's no advantage to installing FSMetars? It's just as good to use the FS9 real weather?
 
I'm really not sure...I haven't used the built in weather stuff. I have been using MsMetars since my CFS2 days and simply carried it over to FS9 when I got it 3 years ago.

OBIO
 
Hmmm, it would be interesting to find out the differences. After all, the guy who made FSMetar must have believed he was improving something other than a feature that doesn't really matter. He also made a very good AI program.
 
for guys like Dave and the SOH RTWR Team,
knowing what the winds aloft are is critical.
not only is fuel consumption effected,
but leg flying time is greatly influenced
by a strong head or tailwind.
it can make or break a 2 hour leg limit.
not to mention what a strong side wind
can do to accurate navigation.
 
Heh, REX isn't free.

I've been doing some looking and I think the FS9 weather engine is at least as good, maybe better, than FSMetar. But either is fine for a free RT weather engine.
 
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