Real Overcast for FSX-down to minimums!

[HiFly 16]

After experimenting I have developed a way to manually create a REAL opaque stratus overcast down to Cat III minimums if desired. The images in this post are for a Cat II overcast down to 150 agl at KPIE. I got to thinking after my last several posts (and rants) concerning this problem that flying thru an overcast is just flying at visibility of ZERO! So if I could create a LAYER of visibilty to correspond with my cloud layer and make that layer to minimum visibiliy (1/16 sm in FSX) then I would have a solid overcast. FSX makes it possible to create LEVELS of visibility. Most of us are only familiar with surface visibility but, well, the images tell the story...

This shows the way the weather looks on the surface with rain and 3sm vis.

As I slew upward and begin to enter cloud base at 100 agl.

At this point solidly in the overcast at 200 agl.

This is looking down from on top of the solid overcast. Notice you CANNOT see the ground nor could you on the way up.

This is from on top again but this time showing a different view. Notice no holes. I am going to follow this post with a second one detailing how I was able to create this and hopefully this would provide an algorithm for HiFi to hard code this into a fix for AS2012. Stay tuned. More to follow....

[HiFly 16]

The way that seemed best was to have an overcast layer of cumulus bracketed above and below by a 1000 ft layer of overcast stratus. The inherent problem with FSX is that it refuses to create low overcast clouds below about 4000 feet regardless of the Metar or manual setting but the above pictures (enlarge them and you can verify the altitude at the top of each in red) shows that it is quite possible to do so indirectly. Now to make a true overcast without any holes the final setp is to set a 2nd level of visibility to correspond with the base and tops of the cloud deck. Set the surface visibility to whatever is in the Metar but always set the 2nd visibility to ZERO (actually 1/16 sm in FSX )

Notice my three layers of clouds.

Now this my second layer of visibility. The first layer is squeezed at the bottom since it is only up to 200 ft.Now Damian and Chris, if you could code such a technique into AS2012 as a special process anytime an overcast appears in a metar then it would solve the problem in a big way. You took an extraordinary approach to solving the changing wind issue that had plagued so many of us for over a year so I know that you guys have the ability to code this procedure and thus solve another one of FSX crazy quirks.Merry Christmas!

[jordanal 70]

Very interesting work, Craig. I look forward to reading more in this converstaion as it continues. BTW, out of curiosity, have you tried manually setting these layers in ASE? Do the low-vis results come out the same as when set directly in FSX?

[tohughes76 0]

Craig:I have been using this method for some time. Even though the real time weather in AS doesn't use this technique, you can apply the same idea in AS 2012 by creating situations you described above in the 'Edit Wx' tab and saving them as .AST files for repeated use. For instance, I have a 'Low IFR' situation with a layer of clouds from 200-4000 ft and 1/16th mile vis, then a layer of 1/2 mile vis from 200 ft down to the surface. That gives me a pretty realistic depiction of weather right at most ILS minimums.Once you create and save your weather scenarios, under the 'Map' tab they will be available to you in the Drag and Drop Wx window. Makes it easy to fly where you want with whatever weather you want...much easier than having to manually do it every time in FSX's weather feature.

[tohughes76 0]

Just went back and reviewed my saved wx files and remembered that the clouds/winds were saved in different layers but the vis was a single value. Getting the overcast deck appearance in AS2012 worked best at 1/2 mile vis with a ceiling layer bottoming out at 200 agl. I was remembering my testing back and forth with manual wx settings in FSX...my apologies.What you can do manually in the advanced weather tab in FSX that you can't replicate in AS is the overcast layer with 1/16th vis and have the surface layer with unrestricted visibility (or whatever value you prefer). This gives the "popping out' effect descending or climbing out of the layer. Perhaps adding layers of visibilities in the Edit Wx function would be a good additon in a future SP if it is possible...

[denver69 0]

So how time consuming is this if we have a long flight over many metars using real world weather? For me AS and FSX for that mater is all about real world weather at the time but I am interested in tweaking to get a better depiction.

[tohughes76 0]

So how time consuming is this if we have a long flight over many metars using real world weather? For me AS and FSX for that mater is all about real world weather at the time but I am interested in tweaking to get a better depiction.

The 'cheat' HiFly and I described is workable in the advanced settings tab of FSX wx, but won't work if you are using real time AS weather...this would be a static weather conditon.

[HiFly 16]

Right on Tim. Actually I just did a test flight from a 700 ft ceiling with 2 sm vis in KCLT with light drizzle. Solid overcast up to above 7400 agl and it was as real as it gets. The weather I input was according to ASE metar for CLT at the time I was flying. And to your question, AL, no matter how it is input or saved in ASE or AS2012 it never really creates a realistic low ceiling overcast. So far, to get the effect, you have to input it all manually as I explained. After climbing above FL250, I paused and then started ASE for the enroute portion of the flight. It started up exactly in sync with my static wx input. The reason I went back to ASE is that AS2012 does not have saturated enroute coverage most of the time. It only shows heavy weather in the immediate vicinity of airports with scattered or clear wx in between. By setting cloud cover to 12 in cfg file and using ASE I had accurate depiction enroute. The downside is that prior to descent I had then to input correct wx for my destination KORD which was socked in yesterday with a blizzard, 150 agl ceilings and 3/4 sm visibility. I waited until I had descended to FL250 before I paused for the wx input. Yes, Marc, it was a time consuming interruption but this is all still in the testing stage. Maybe there is a way as you are suggesting, Tim, of preloading both the departure and the arrival as part of pre-flight (remember the old fS98 days?) but in order for it to work for me, I have to close ASE and just use my manual weather or I again get a 4000 ft ceiling and only 1 vis layer.All I can say is that on the approach thru SOLID overcast with 0-0 visibilty and blinding snow from 14,200 down to Cat IIb mins, it was AS REAL AS IT GETS. Its exactly the way it used to look in real life straining to see the runway breakout and then suddenly below the clouds and there it is just in time to complete manual landing!!! It was an adrenalin rush that I never could duplicate with ASE and AS2012 is not even close at this point.

[B777ER 2,484]

Should not the weather program we paid good money for be able to input this until the sim based off metars? At the very least, the lock to destination 128nm away should allow for the arrival field to have this....

[tohughes76 0]

Right on Tim. Actually I just did a test flight from a 700 ft ceiling with 2 sm vis in KCLT with light drizzle. Solid overcast up to above 7400 agl and it was as real as it gets. The weather I input was according to ASE metar for CLT at the time I was flying. And to your question, AL, no matter how it is input or saved in ASE or AS2012 it never really creates a realistic low ceiling overcast. So far, to get the effect, you have to input it all manually as I explained. After climbing above FL250, I paused and then started ASE for the enroute portion of the flight. It started up exactly in sync with my static wx input. The reason I went back to ASE is that AS2012 does not have saturated enroute coverage most of the time. It only shows heavy weather in the immediate vicinity of airports with scattered or clear wx in between. By setting cloud cover to 12 in cfg file and using ASE I had accurate depiction enroute. The downside is that prior to descent I had then to input correct wx for my destination KORD which was socked in yesterday with a blizzard, 150 agl ceilings and 3/4 sm visibility. I waited until I had descended to FL250 before I paused for the wx input. Yes, Marc, it was a time consuming interruption but this is all still in the testing stage. Maybe there is a way as you are suggesting, Tim, of preloading both the departure and the arrival as part of pre-flight (remember the old fS98 days?) but in order for it to work for me, I have to close ASE and just use my manual weather or I again get a 4000 ft ceiling and only 1 vis layer.All I can say is that on the approach thru SOLID overcast with 0-0 visibilty and blinding snow from 14,200 down to Cat IIb mins, it was AS REAL AS IT GETS. Its exactly the way it used to look in real life straining to see the runway breakout and then suddenly below the clouds and there it is just in time to complete manual landing!!! It was an adrenalin rush that I never could duplicate with ASE and AS2012 is not even close at this point.

Craig:What depiction mode are you using-standard, smooth cloud transitions or DWC? Each has their own trade-offs to deal with FSX limitations (wind shifts, etc), but I find standard is most like ASE in its enroute weather coverage.

[HiFly 16]

What depiction mode are you using-standard, smooth cloud transitions or DWC? Each has their own trade-offs to deal with FSX limitations (wind shifts, etc), but I find standard is most like ASE in its enroute weather coverage

Hi Tim! I began using DWC in ASE but found FSX ATC always tangled up the runway assigments on arrival so then I started switching to STANDARD just before I began descent and then since my computer doesn't really slow down that much during wx updates, I decided to keep all my flights at Standard but I reduced the update radius to 200 and set my suppression to 150 so the updates were very fast. When I began AS2012 I continued to use Standard but tried DWC a couple of times. The surface wind was same hemisphere as aloft winds at the time of ATC assignment so whether the increase in "Lock" distance solved the inconconsitency problem = as yet inconclusive. BUT, my disappointment was that AS2012 would not display the clouds as depicted in the metars most times. I did have a couple of great Cb broken layers when I was aloft but the big problem was that clouds would evaporate as the aircraft got close to them. You could always look straight down and see the ground even when the metar was indicating hard overcast. Didn't notice the problem with ASE. The wind-shift problem was resolved with the last Beta of ASE and now with the latest FSUIPC it has become a non-issue for either product. Cloud cover is the serious deficiency in AS2012 over ASE and all too often overcasts are being sent to FSX as scattered or at best broken and even with 20 layers of clouds set and manually adjusting the metars for heavy mulitiple overcasts, most of us are still getting broken clouds at best and overcasts that appear correct on the ground disappear as you climb out. Also I and many others have reported clear skies being depicted while enroute supposedly over extensive overcast areas. For me it is more than that as you can gleen from this thread. I want to be able to fly thru the overcast and break out at the bottom and neither program will generate such a cloud cover. FSX itself will not allow an overcast ceiling below about 4000 ft. and ASE/AS2012 can't even guarantee that on a consistent basis. And yes, Eric, you hit the nail on the head. If the wx generating programs that we are paying good money for can only produce "pretty" scenery and not realistic weather conditions better than default FSX then we are wasting our money. That said, I have great faith in Damian and Chris to tweak their program a little more and, as they did with the wind problem, engineer a fix that in fact will give us REAL wx for IFR flight that many of us are wanting.Merry Christmas!

[jes0811 1]

And all I want to do is turn it on and get an honest depiction of the current weather where I start, and gradual changes as I fly around, wherever that might be. I had ASE dialed-in to the point that I thought all situations were highly believable without tweaking every flight.I'm still tweaking every AS2012 flight. I will eventually get it dialed-in for sure, because everything that made ASE look good was from ASE+XGraphics -- so there must be some formula to get that back.Jason

[HiFly 16]

True overcast seems to extract a heavy frame rate toll, however. Just completed 2nd test flight, this time from Chicago to Minneapolis where the historic wx file I am using from a couple of days ago still had MSP with light snow and overcast with 3 layers of cloud decks. I sure wish I did not have to manually build the file each time but I saved my NGX flight @ FL250 and had to input MSP weather. However, I first used AS2012 with same wx file and exact same Metar from MPS. It would give me NO overcasts only semi-broken and a silly looking scattered stratus and lowest cloud bottoms were at 4000 agl while actual metar shows overcast ceiling of 1600 agl! I then retried using ASE and at least got some good looking broken clouds but same idiotic stratus layer (this time broken, however) and same 4000 ft ceiling. I went back and manually input correct weather using FSX textures and enjoyed another spectacular realistic experience. My frame rates dropped into the single digits on approach though with all the UT2 traffic, dusk, and low overcast. I cut off autogen since vis was too low for any sight-seeing anyway and that gave me about 2 fps. If Damian and Chris do develop a better cloud generation engine we will probably have to pay in loss of FPS when we have overcast skies but it would probably be worth it.

[HiFly 16]

I have tried this method with water graphics set to 1 instead of 2 and I get great frame rates even with NGX. Don't need high graphics when you are in a total overcast. I was under the wrong impression that keeping at 2 wouldn't matter since there was no water in sight. It does, big time! I am hoping this visibility method would get some feed back from HiFi. If I can do it manually, they should be able to set up a subroutine that would do the same thing in AS2012 whenever Solid overcast is called for in the metars. Also still a big difference between density of clouds within ASE compared to AS2012. AS2012 will occasionally give a good broken Cu layer below when enroute but if it is St it just looks like sections of "chiclets" not at all the way true St looks. I understand that the problem of no low atlitude depictions of cloud layers is strictly an inherent FSX issue but, again, my workaround addresses this and produces truly realistic low overcast cloud decks. The problem, of course, is that it requires the tedious process of manual input.

[Zachiii 0]

I have followed Craig's procedure for low cloud/low visibility approaches. It works like a charm.I am also very disappointed in AS2012 overcasts and low altitude clouds on approaches.Surely if we can solve the problem manually, the AS2012 fellows can find a fix for their wx generator.