Still Vanishing Overcast Fog

[HamSammich]

Frank,  et al,

Thanks for the quick turnaround on 3.32. Unfortunately, the fading overcast issue still exists. Climbing makes it disappear. And you can't see the undercast beneath. Here's a link to a new video illustrating the problem. And, attached, are the appropriate logs.

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AkWaL-UKxyqJlagTLyaK8QZr2ZSL0A

 

Best,

Marshall

 

Log.txt

METAR.rwx

[jaborandy1]

the same is happening here.

 

[sundog]

4 hours ago, HamSammich said:

Frank,  et al,

Thanks for the quick turnaround on 3.32. Unfortunately, the fading overcast issue still exists. Climbing makes it disappear. And you can't see the undercast beneath. Here's a link to a new video illustrating the problem. And, attached, are the appropriate logs.

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AkWaL-UKxyqJlagTLyaK8QZr2ZSL0A

 

Best,

Marshall

 

Log.txt

METAR.rwx

First, let me remind everyone that SkyMaxx Pro and Real Weather Connector don't control the visibility and fog effects in X-Plane. All they do is create and place clouds. The issue here from our standpoint is that X-Plane is representing reduced visibility, but we aren't getting any clouds that coincide with that area of reduced visibility. So once you get above the ground fog and look down in this particular case, there are no clouds sitting on the ground to obscure your view of the ground.

The METAR data for UMMG you're finding online doesn't match what X-Plane was receiving at the time. Here's what's in  your METAR.rwx:

UMMG 120300Z 00000MPS 0400 R17/0900 FG NSC 14/14 Q1020 NOSIG

What we changed in SMP 3.3.2 was to look for "vertical visibility" information (the VV003 you saw online) and create low clouds when that is seen. That fixes the case you originally sent in. But there is no VV entry, or any cloud coverage information at all in what's published here. I would guess that the information you were looking at was more current, and if you were to fly an hour later the vertical visibility information that was later added to the weather report would have flowed into X-Plane, and your flight would have looked as you expected.

In SMP 3.3.2 you should expect ground fog to work better when VV is indicated in the METAR. This case is different - all we have to go on is the "FG" (fog) entry, but there is no information as to how thick the fog is, so we don't know how to create the clouds that are behind the ground fog.

I suppose we could just guess; it might not match exactly with the thickness of fog that X-Plane represents, but it would probably be better than nothing. I can take a crack at that for the next update.

Bear in mind though this is a different, very specific additional case you've uncovered. Usually FG is accompanied by some sort of cloud cover or vertical visibility information that we can work with.

 

Edited September 12, 2016 by sundog

[sundog]

Alrighty, the fix for this new case (METAR reports where fog is indicated, but no cloud cover or vertical visibility is indicated) has been coded up and tested. Here we are looking back at UMMG using the METAR.rwx file you provided:

This will be included in our next update. Thanks again for the detailed information.

Edited September 12, 2016 by sundog

[HamSammich]

>> The issue here from our standpoint is that X-Plane is representing reduced visibility, but we aren't getting any clouds that coincide with that area of reduced visibility<<

Frank,

Thanks, first of all, for these quick fixes.

Thanks, especially, for recognizing that despite the handicaps X-Plane presents, you and other third-party weather apps do face a commercial reality. Essentially, like it or not, in the consumer's mind you've "replaced" the existing weather system. I know I'm using the term loosely, but that's the perception. From a user's standpoint, you've replaced the X-Plane weather depiction, with the promise of improving it. Which means you now own it, problems and all, like it or not. 

Which can suck, having the perception of your product at the mercy, sometimes, of limitations not of your making. What I truly appreciate is that you're embracing the challenge. With any luck, others will see it, too.

Best,

 

Marshall 

 

[JohnMAXX]

Marshall although I appriciate your perspective your tone implies a more negative response to SMP from the community.

Nothing is further from the truth, SMP is very well received.  Also keep in mind it's just me and Frank, so rare circumstances like this specific METAR report sometimes go unnoticed until reported by the community.  We are extremely thankful when this happens so thanks!

We do own SMP and we also own delivering the best cloud representation in X-Plane.  That's why updates are numerous and released quickly and that's why we take the community seriously.

Ok and finally with that said, personally I find your tone towards Frank in your last reply a bit, I dunno what's the word, condescending yeah that's it..... It's nice having a voice but keep in mind he's been in the software biz a long time I'm sure he's very knowledgeable in market dynamics.  I will also say he does an awesome job at addressing issues fast and he driven to constantly improve upon our core product. Sorry if that doesn't meet your expectations or this fictitious perception the community has.

[HamSammich]

John,

 

Apologies, not my intent at all, which was supposed to be unadulterated praise. 

Sorry it came off otherwise

 

best,

 

marshall

[JohnMAXX]

"Essentially, like it or not, in the consumer's mind you've "replaced" the existing weather system. I know I'm using the term loosely, but that's the perception. From a user's standpoint, you've replaced the X-Plane weather depiction, with the promise of improving it. Which means you now own it, problems and all, like it or not. "

 

This is what tweaked me right here Marshall, we know what we've gotten into with releasing SMP and we like it for sure as,a matter of fact we love it....

[JohnMAXX]

"Essentially, like it or not, in the consumer's mind you've "replaced" the existing weather system. I know I'm using the term loosely, but that's the perception. From a user's standpoint, you've replaced the X-Plane weather depiction, with the promise of improving it. Which means you now own it, problems and all, like it or not. "

 

This is what tweaked me right here Marshall, we know what we've gotten into with releasing SMP and we like it for sure as,a matter of fact we love it....

[HamSammich]

Again, sorry. I love that you love it and am marveling at the quickness with which you're diving into this

[HamSammich]

4 hours ago, JohnMAXX said:

we know what we've gotten into with releasing SMP and we like it for sure as,a matter of fact we love it....

And, again, my admiration of that spirit was what got lost in my words. I was merely trying to acknowledge that you've set your customers' expectations high; that this is a risk because of factors in Laminar's control, not yours; and that you're treating it as a challenge, not an excuse, which is deeply laudable. In short, I'm delighted at your approach and sorry that this did not come through in prior messages.

Best,

 

marshall

[flyingcom]

Thank you for the new update! I am loving it, smoother and more realistic. [emoji1360][emoji4]

Kind regards

Flyingcom

https://vimeo.com/182661688

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[flyingcom]

[emoji7]

https://vimeo.com/182661981

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[qdavweb]

Hi Sundog.

Upgraded to SMP 3.3.2 with RWC and was trying out the fog / vv representation. Any chance you could use the attached metar.rwx and look at airport PAWI to see if its working as intended ? When I load up x-plane with real weather at PAWI with this metar.rwx which reports no clouds but shows FG and VV002 - (2016/10/04 04:53
PAWI 040453Z AUTO 24003KT 1/2SM FG VV002 02/02 A3008 RMK SLP187 T00220022 TSNO VIA AUTODIAL), I get no representation of ground fog. Just the standard x-plane reduced visibility below the 200 foot level then clear above that.

Now what's got me excited here is that if I then switch x-plane to 'set weather uniformly for the whole world' (which defaults to whatever the real weather had set the variables to), I get a fantastic representation of fog by SMP as an overcast layer. So, I see that SMP can do a great job, but it doesn't seem to trigger for this type of metar in real weather mode...

METAR for PAWI fog example.rwx

[sundog]

4 hours ago, qdavweb said:

I get no representation of ground fog.

Thanks for providing all those details. You've hit upon an edge case and gave me the info needed to track it down.

Short answer: if you switch the overcast representation in SMP's configuration to "sparse particles" or "dense particles", you should at least see clouds on the ground to represent the ground fog in this case. And the reason your ground fog layer wasn't on the ground in this case will be fixed in our next update.

Long answer:

So here's what was happening under the hood... I'm explaining this mostly to emphasize that this only happens under a very specific set of conditions.

The entire surrounding area of PAWI was reporting fog in some way. RWC saw that you wanted our "solid stratiform" overcast representation, and went ahead and created a solid stratiform layer just above the ground across the entire scene as it should.

However, a few surrounding weather stations were also reporting scattered clouds at low altitudes. I'm guessing their intent was to indicate broken fog, but RWC takes the report literally and tries to create some scattered cumulus clouds near the ground in response to these reports, over the stations that are reporting them.

The way SMP draws solid stratiform clouds does not interact well with cumulus clouds when they intersect. You can end up seeing the tops or bottom of cumulus clouds sticking out of the top or bottom of the stratiform cloud, which looks weird. So to prevent this from happening, SMP goes through all of the cloud layers in the scene, and moves the stratus layer up or down to prevent such intersections. In this particular case, it moved the stratus layer up to around 5000 meters in order to avoid it intersecting with those scattered cloud areas nearby. So, your fog bank was there - but it got pushed up to around 15,000 feet! 

The "broken particles" and "solid particles" options for overcast layers play nicer with scattered or broken cloud layers, and so this shuffling of layer heights to avoid intersections doesn't happen when you have either of those options selected. That's why solid or broken particles works around this particular issue.

For our next update, I've changed the way RWC handles stratus / cumulus layer collisions by simply removing the offending cumulus layers. That way, the stratus layer remains where it should be, and the reported cumulus clouds that would be inside that fog bank are just discarded. I think this keeps the scene closer to reality.

Again, thanks for providing your metar.rwx file so I could track this down and fix it.

 

[qdavweb]

Thanks Sundog.

Great to hear you are working on this. SMP with fog looks brilliant.