FREE EFASS UltraWX Weather Engine RELEASED

[HarryCYUL]

FREE WEATHER ENGINE    GO GET IT!

 

http://ticket-system.org/efasswiki/index.php/Ultra-WX_Weather_Engine

 

Features

• Framerate Friendly (mostly the Framerate even gets better than with XSquawkbox/X-Ivap weather)
• Cloud Simulation
• Surface Wind Simulation
• Upper-Winds Simulation
• Wind Smoothing
• Cloud Coverage Control
• Precipation Simulation
• Temperature/Dewpoint Simulation
• Pressurization Simulation
• Anti-Lag Update intervals configurable
• Works brilliant with Clound Enhancement plugins like SkyMaxx
• Works with 32 and 36 Bit

Installation

1. Make sure to use EFASS in single PC Mode. UltraWX will not work on Multi-PC setups!
2. Close X-Plane
3. Open the EFASS-Settings
4. Click the UltraWX tab
5. Click Install XPSM Plugin and select your main X-Plane installation directory (Example: D:\X-Plane). Follow the instructions.
6. Tick the Enable UltraWX checkbox and click Save
7. Run X-Plane (as administrator!)
8. Disable all other Weather Plugins and X-Plane's native Real-WX auto update (on X-Ivap click System->Preferences and turn IVAO WX to OFF!)

Customization

• Wind-Smoothing: Move the slider more to the right to get more smoothing. The more smoothing you have, the slower wind transition will be performed. Moving the slider full to the right is recommended. Example: You fly from an area with winds from 270°/5kt into an area with winds from 090°/40kt. With Wind-Smoothing, winds will turn slowly, so that your autopilot will have enough time to react on this weather change. Without Wind-Smoothing, winds will change nearly immediately and this may result in structural damage on your aircraft.

• Cruise-Update Frequency: This slider sets the interval on how often UltraWX will gather new weather data during your cruise flight. Due to the fact that X-Plane has short lags/freezes during cloud updates, it is recommended to leave this slider in the default position (Update every 15 minutes). Moving it more to the left, will increase the interval of updates which might end up in many short stutters of your simulator.

• Cloud-Coverage: This slider affects the cloud density. If you experience Frame-Drops, move this slider more to the left. In some situations you won't see an effect immediately.

• Airport-Lock-Distance: This slider sets the distance to your origin and destination airport (in case that a flightplan was filed), where UltraWX should load the linked METAR. This prevents having lags/freezes/stutters during departure or landing. Note: In case that the METAR of the desired airport changes, the WX will be updated immediately, even if it is locked.

• Challenging Weather Factor: This slider defines the intensity of turbulences and windshear. Attention: Some Addon-Aircrafts react very sensitive on this value. Tuning this slider too far to the right might result in a structural damage of your aircraft in some weather situations.

• Ground-Lock Altitude: (in meters!) Below this altitude, UltraWX will not allow any weather changes. Only applicable if Lock weather on ground is checked.

• Reload on Taxi-Out: This will force UltraWX to make a weather update when your flightstage changes to Taxi-Out. This is useful, if you make many flights without restarting EFASS, so that locked weather will be updated. Unfortunately, this will produce a short lag of X-Plane when starting your taxi.

Look and feel

UltraWX changes X-Plane weather to the real world weather, but not the look of the clouds or something like that. To tweak the look and feel, we recommend using the following addons

1. The FlyByLua based Haze plugin (Freeware, this does not affect your framerate, it just changes some art control settings to make it look much nicer - especially in higher altitudes) Just copy the folder from the ZIP to your <X-Plane>\Ressources\plugins directory. If you previously installed FlyByLua, just copy the files from the scripts folder.
2. SkyMAXX Pro (this is payware but a very nice addition with many settings)

Framerate tuning

Well, that's hard, because there are too many aspects that can infuence your FPS. UltraWX will not touch your frames, because it has an intelligent algorythm to free non required ressources. Refer to the forum to get tips, by posting what addons (Scenery, aircraft, textures,....) you are using.

[dwayne299]

Looks cool. Does the haze simulation from the engine affect the art controls?

[HarryCYUL]

Looks cool. Does the haze simulation from the engine affect the art controls?

haven't installed it yet, away from my XP10 rig   will test it in a few hours.

[dwayne299]

kk

[Push_IT_Up]

Interesting!!

[czoog]

Very cool indeed.

 

Well it seems to work well.  But the weather was extreme where I was flying today.  Yes, there were storms in area in real life, but i don't think they were this extreme....my 727 was knocked out the air twice, like blown upside down, completely unrecoverable.    I wasn't in a deep stall or anything either.  The poor thing looks like it was being bent in half from the outside.  Winds said about a 20k crosswind, turbloc was at .5.

 

 Now I can't tell if it was that weather engine, or my rookie abilities with the 727, but once i went back to the default x-plane weather engine, "downloading" real weather, things went smoothly.  

 

looking at the docs, I think i need to move the challenging weather factor more to the left then the default 10 

[jettojig]

I'm pretty sure setting extreme weather to 10 is... well, too extreme! 

Edited May 28, 2014 by jiggyb2

[Ironmaiden]

I am trying it now. seems to be working 

[Mik75]

Very cool indeed.

Well it seems to work well. But the weather was extreme where I was flying today. Yes, there were storms in area in real life, but i don't think they were this extreme....my 727 was knocked out the air twice, like blown upside down, completely unrecoverable. I wasn't in a deep stall or anything either. The poor thing looks like it was being bent in half from the outside. Winds said about a 20k crosswind, turbloc was at .5.

Now I can't tell if it was that weather engine, or my rookie abilities with the 727, but once i went back to the default x-plane weather engine, "downloading" real weather, things went smoothly.

looking at the docs, I think i need to move the challenging weather factor more to the left then the default 10

I had the same happening tonight as well at takeoff and initial climb at ULLI. So I had to disable it. I reengaged it on descend, where everything worked flawlessly and very smooth, and it created some seriously good looking weather.

[Mik75]

Somehow, I can't edit my post. I forgot to add that I tried to set the challenging weather slider to 0, but that didn't changed anything. turbulence value was still at 0.5000

[czoog]

Somehow, I can't edit my post. I forgot to add that I tried to set the challenging weather slider to 0, but that didn't changed anything. turbulence value was still at 0.5000

 

I moved it to 5, and it seemed to be OK, but I was flying a different plane (CRJ200)...it could be very specific to the plane...not sure.

[Push_IT_Up]

I gave the EFASS UltraWX weather a try yesterday in the Carendo B58 Baron with the latest XPX beta  and used its' default clouds, I was pleasantly surprised with its rendition, The real weather in the area indicated thin layer of light patchy clouds at 06,000ft, winds between 10 to 15 mph below 04,000ft on final, which was exactly what the EFASS engine was producing.(I didn't experience any abrupt wind directional changes or excessive high winds, will continue testing) 

I will also install a second XPX beta testing copy and try this with SMP clouds and post some SS.

 

[MercuryMat]

The fog/haze rendition seems really identical to the real terra haze addon that can be found on this website for free (or somewere in other forums). And of course it manipulates datarefs...at least give a bit of credit to the real terra haze authors...

Sent from Mad iPad's Tapatalk

[Mario Donick]

The fog/haze rendition seems really identical to the real terra haze addon that can be found on this website for free (or somewere in other forums). And of course it manipulates datarefs...at least give a bit of credit to the real terra haze authors...

 

If this is true, then the developers should not only give credit, but read Ben's blog posting where he says that all these terra haze dataref manipulations should not be done, because these art controls will most likely change in the future:

 

http://developer.x-plane.com/2014/05/art-controls-are-an-active-volcano/

[czoog]

If this is true, then the developers should not only give credit, but read Ben's blog posting where he says that all these terra haze dataref manipulations should not be done, because these art controls will most likely change in the future:

 

http://developer.x-plane.com/2014/05/art-controls-are-an-active-volcano/

 

I don't think UltraWX does anything at all to art controls, it just injects weather.  In the docs it recommends  using SMP and Fly with LUA to get the look in the screen shots.

[MercuryMat]

It uses fly with Lua to manipulate datarefs to make the haze appearance like that.

Sent from Mad iPad's Tapatalk

[Pivot]

Well I have given this a try and can't seem to get any clouds injected. I get good haze though. I  get a wrong IP error to even though I set the IP to my Sim PC can't see to get it to accept. Also get a LUA Stopped message top right corner of window. I must be doing something terribly wrong..

[scotchegg]

I get the wrong IP address message too.

[JustinWheat]

Question - when I run this add on what weather settings do I need to have in X Plane 10. I can not click on the grab real world weather from the net and it jumps back to customized weather. Is this correct? To my understanding I need to start X Plane and just click the reload weather in the Ultra WX tab in EFASS, correct or not? I want to fly with real world weather all the time. Thanks,

[Pivot]

FWIW, I found the IP error was coming from the XPUIPC config file. It was hard coded in the config file "not the in game configuration". Unfortunately it didn't help my troubles as all I could get was the Haze. Wound up uninstalling, hope they get it working down the road..

[Jorge Uvo]

Hi guys... This looks a great enhancement. My question is, does it work on Mac OSX Mavericks?

[skiflyzander]

I seem to be having problems getting this to load weather. There is no indication inside x-plane if it is working or not. I had the NOAA plugin installed but removed it to try and get this to work. I've also tried messing with other plug ins but no combination seems to work. Is there a specific directory inside x-plane the plug-in needs to be directed towards? Default x-plane folder? Plug-in folder? Thanks!

[glasscockpits]

I seem to be having problems getting this to load weather. There is no indication inside x-plane if it is working or not. I had the NOAA plugin installed but removed it to try and get this to work. I've also tried messing with other plug ins but no combination seems to work. Is there a specific directory inside x-plane the plug-in needs to be directed towards? Default x-plane folder? Plug-in folder? Thanks!

Hi skifly,

 

There is a plugin that comes with this software. Have you installed it per their directions? It works for me without any intervention on my part. The only complaint I have is the weather changes way too rapidly. You can go from overcast to no clouds at all in an instant.

[skiflyzander]

Hi Glass I actually started fiddling around with settings and plugins and got this to install! Thanks for your reply though. The results are pretty good.

[Tom Knudsen]

Awesome news, will give it a try