3.2 Blocking/Chunking Anomalies

[HamSammich]

Just installed 3.2 and am getting these chunks in the sky. Thought maybe it was an HDR On/Off problem, but it happens either way.

 

This is default settings with the exception of a wider coverage area set.

 

Any ideas?

METAR.rwx

Log.txt

[Cameron]

Almost looks like bad cloud intersections? Multiple layers within one another.

Which airport is this at?

[HamSammich]

PAJN

 Is there an official bug report/ticket I need to file?

Edited June 5, 2016 by HamSammich

[Cameron]

Nope. This is the right place. Frank will have a more definitive answer but at quick glance it looks like some questionable METAR information.

[HamSammich]

Okay. Will experiment in other locales

[sundog]

Yes, it's intersecting cloud layers in the METAR data. SMP tries to prevent this by moving them around if necessary; I think what happened is that by increasing the cloud draw area, it caused SMP to produce larger cloud puffs, and so it actually needed to move them more than before to avoid this sort of thing.

It should be a fairly rare occurrence and specific to certain cloud draw area settings and weather conditions, but in the meantime switching SMP's overcast representation setting to sparse or dense particles should avoid this anomaly entirely. I will make a change for SMP 3.2.1 however to avoid this case better regardless of settings.

Thanks for including your log.txt; it made this very easy to pinpoint.

 

[HamSammich]

Thanks Frank, Cameron!

 

Won't setting overcast to sparse or dense particles, though, basically turn the overcast into "not-really-overcast?"

[sundog]

7 hours ago, HamSammich said:

Won't setting overcast to sparse or dense particles, though, basically turn the overcast into "not-really-overcast?"

It'll represent the overcast cloud with puff particles instead of as a solid slab, but it's the only way to completely avoid these sorts of intersections for the time being.

[sundog]

Just to follow up, I took the time today to reproduce your exact scenario. It was more complex than I assumed; basically the weather stations around Juneau were reporting conditions that were all over the map, creating many cumulus cloud layers at widely different altitudes intersecting the stratus layers at widely different altitudes. It was a very tough set of conditions for RWC to make sense of.

I've coded up some changes that will handle something like this better in our next update, though.

 

[HamSammich]

Thanks, again.

Looking forward to the improvements. To clarify on the overcast representation options, when you said, "It'll represent the overcast cloud with puff particles instead of as a solid slab, but it's the only way to completely avoid these sorts of intersections for the time being," that there's some kind of better method being contemplated and/or coded?

 

 

[sundog]

I just meant that switching to sparse or dense particles is the only way to avoid the problem you're seeing until the 3.2.1 update comes out.

Not quite ready to talk about what's coming up in SMP 4 yet!

 

[HamSammich]

That's quite okay. Deeply appreciate the candor and quick action as it is