Live weather data already contains some sort of gradient in itself so we’re not applying anything on top of it.
Regards,
Sylvain
ok so if we want to tweak a FM for 28kts xwind, live weather 28kt on ground remains 28kt on ground? vs UI being gradient?
You see why I ask this.. we might be doing wrong tweaks with manual weather vs live weather.. I am trying to understand what we would see..
Metar says 25kts, you guys applying the full 25kts? or also there is some sort of smooth process.. this is important for US as airplane developers as we might fall into traps.
Typical problem:
You go custom preset, set your wind at 30kts and practice aproaches, you tweak your ailerons and rudder to that..
Live weather applies to users.. and those 30kts are not really 30kts.. our calibration is busted.. you see what I mean?
I am trying to understand if live weather is also smothering from air to ground and ground to air.. like the UI does..
R.
You do realize that a METAR represents the wind at a height of 10 meters, right? It doesn’t indicate what the wind gradient may be during the descent/approach.
Sylvain already said that they do not apply any gradient on top of what is already there. Is what you are really asking is how closely live weather matches the METAR report?
You should be able to check that quite easily yourself. I would do it for you, but I’m out of town. Only if MSFS applied some constant wind difference to the METAR for live weather would I expect you to want to change the airplane’s crosswind capabilities. And I can’t imagine why that would be the case.
I would certainly expect some differences between live weather and the METAR, and maybe more than would exist in the real world, but as a developer, that would not cause me to tweak any rudder/aileron capability.
This is a big problem for aircraft developers actually.
I had to redo my flight model last night, because setting 28 knots of wind of ground, doesn’t give you that, instead is gives you around 12-14kts.. you tweak the surfaces of the plane to work like this not realising it..
Testers hit few days ago 32 kts gust at terboro with live weather and they ended out of the runway during take off due to lack of rudder authority.. and I was puzzled since I know the plane is capable, tested again with custom wind, and everything was working, not realising the sim is “lying to me” is not 28kts.
Nobody is opening simconnect or simvar watcher to check the winds when they are doing tweaks to the FM, they trust the UI on the sim, where you setting your weather parameters for your developing session.. it said ground level wind 28kts.. you trust it..
To see 28kts, you have to set it to 58kts on ground.. this results on the desired wind on ground, but in the air, it is actually 58kts.. (even an airbus would struggle with this) the crabbing I had to put on this light jet during the approach to sustain that is ridiculous and not what would happen IRL either.. I tried merging multiple wind layers and could not manage to get reliably 28kts in the air + 28kts on the ground.. it shift, throws you out.. etc.
So it “seems” live weather indeed sets the winds at ground level to what metar indicates, no gradients.. while custom, doesn;t.. and we end up with a discrepancy that can cost a badly configured flight model.
In hence my question to Sylvain, I need to understand the intention from the “design” of the sim, before passing feedback and requesting tools to allow us work better, it is very hard to try to tweak an approach with 60kts in the air, to experience 30kts on the ground.. hope you guys see what I mean and this makes sense.
Best,
Raul
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Raul,
I am a developer and the originator of this thread you are hijacking. If you read through it, you will see that I do open and use simvar watcher while I am working on our flight models. I find that to simply be a prudent thing to do. That is how I was able to see the issue with trying to use custom winds when developing our airplanes’ crosswind capabilities.
After some discussions (and some needless distractions), Sylvain explained how the custom winds work in MSFS 2024 (which is different for some reason than how they work in MSFS 2020) and how to set the custom winds to get a fairly constant wind level between flight and ground level. This should provide you with enough information to tweak your flight model to get the capabilities/characteristics you want in the true crosswinds you are looking for. I still recommend using simvar watcher to confirm you achieved the desired crosswind level.
If you set the winds up as Sylvain described, you won’t have 60 knots crosswind in the air and 30 on the ground. You can have fairly constant crosswinds from at least 3000 feet to the ground level, which should be sufficient.
Since the custom wind behavior is not intuitive (and I still can’t understand why it was set up like this), it might be advisable for Asobo to add the information Sylvain provided above to the SDK to minimize the number of other developers who are tripped up by this.
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1st not hijacking, I was trying to find information to report the problem, found this post.. and is what Asobo recomend, to avoid double post.
2nd, I am highlighting to the team, this is counter intuitive.. developers coming to the space, are going to set the wind UI and expect that to follow.. and althought you open simwatcher, not everyone would do the same leading to the issue. The objective of the SDK is to make our life easier, and help new developers to come into the space and create content.
Having an UI saying something (wind ground 30kts) and doing half, is not really helping.. is missleading, not only developers but also users, imagine a user setting winds on its sim to simulate winds, thinking oh wao, I am able to handle 30kts xwinds..! in reality, is handling 15kts.
We can discuss this for ages, but if an UI interface says a value, and is doing the oposite, the sim is lying to developers and to the users.. either the UI explain this, or the UI represent this better, or a different approach is needed.
In any case, my question to Sylvain stands, what live weather does from the design, vs custom presets, then I can continue on the suggestion topics to ask way to reliable help developers to set weather environments to develop our flight models correctly.
R.
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