Clouds not showing in some areas

[Thiago Sobral]

Good morning!

Firstly I would like to congratulate the team for both recent updates of SMP, as well as RWC. The immersion in X-Plane was certainly increased!

I have a doubt regarding the cloud rendering in very northern areas, as well as in open ocean areas. In this context I am not using any weather injectors, only X-Plane's real world weather mode.

I usually perform a flight between Kangerlussuaq, Greenland (BGSF) to Kastrup (EKCH) according to the route SF 67N050W 67N040W 67N030W 66N020W 65N010W 62N000E ZOL L621 AAL T551 TESPI. The clouds depiction in the origin airport is accurate. As the plane starts getting far from the airport (close to 67N040W), I noticed that the skies became completely clear, although the visual metar representation in XPlane suggested a very cloudy area. In another flight segment, close to the Westfjords in Iceland, although the METAR depicted a very cloudy area with some light precipitation, the skies persisted clear. As I approached ZOL, the clouds started being rendered again, although the METAR representation was quite cloudy along the whole route.

I am using the 'Automatic' mode in RWC, despite trying to switch it sometimes to Always, but it remained the same. After reading some posts here and checking my X-Plane logfile, I noticed that the internal coordinate system changes quite frequently in those very northern areas, although I don't know if that could be the issue. I attached some screenshots below. Any help would be much appreciated.

Clear skies close to 67N040W, although the METAR suggested a very cloudy area

Clear skies close to the Westfjords in Iceland, with the METAR showing a very cloud area with some precipitations

When I switched the camera view to the closest airport (in this case BIIS), the weather was pretty accurate when seen from the ground.

My SMP settings. I tested different stratus/overcast representation, as well as increased the distance to the maximum.

 

I noticed that the same happened in other areas. For instance, when crossing the southern Atlantic Ocean towards Europe (e.g. through airway UN873). After a while leaving Brazil and going to open ocean, the weather became clear skies, although the METAR indicated some cloudy formations. When I'm flying inside continental areas, I can see the cloud formations normally.

I tried to re-download and re-read the METAR sometimes, to no avail.

Maybe I am doing something wrong?

Thank you very much for your attention! Keep up the great work.

Thiago

 

 

Edited April 18, 2016 by Thiago Sobral

[sundog]

You're not doing anything wrong; it's just that there are no airports in the middle of the ocean reporting METAR data! Clearly the manner in which X-Plane's built-in weather guesses at the weather in these locations differs from our own (we try to sync up with the closest station, wherever that may be.) So X-Plane's weather display doesn't match with what we're showing in this case.

Neither representation is necessarily correct, as METAR just isn't a good weather source for oceans. 

This might be a good case for purchasing an external weather add-on like FSGRW. It basically fabricates weather stations around you no matter where you are, and would result in better correlation.

We're also talking with Laminar about a longer-term solution to sync up their weather display with our clouds.

[Thiago Sobral]

4 minutes ago, sundog said:

You're not doing anything wrong; it's just that there are no airports in the middle of the ocean reporting METAR data! Clearly the manner in which X-Plane's built-in weather guesses at the weather in these locations differs from our own (we try to sync up with the closest station, wherever that may be.) So X-Plane's weather display doesn't match with what we're showing in this case.

Neither representation is necessarily correct, as METAR just isn't a good weather source for oceans. 

This might be a good case for purchasing an external weather add-on like FSGRW. It basically fabricates weather stations around you no matter where you are, and would result in better correlation.

We're also talking with Laminar about a longer-term solution to sync up their weather display with our clouds.

Thank you very much for the information! I've been looking forward to buy FSGRW, so maybe this will be the right opportunity.

Thanks once again and all the best.

Thiago