I wrote a small program that automates the comparison of the in-sim atmosphere to real-life METARs using SimConnect. When I run the program I get some odd readings for sea level pressure and ambient pressure.
I expect to see the sea level pressure in the sim and the real METAR to be close. Likewise I would expect the ambient pressure in-sim and the METAR altimeter to be close. Instead it looks like the real-world altimeter pressure is being used as the in-sim sea level pressure.
Am I reading the pressure values from the correct SimConnect vars?
Here are the SimConnect values I use from reading the atmospheric data using Ruby (code here):
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Absolute Time", "seconds")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Plane Alt Above Ground", "feet")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Plane Latitude", "radians")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Plane Longitude", "radians")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Ambient Precip Rate", "millimeters")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Ambient Precip State", "mask")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Ambient Pressure", "millibars")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Ambient Temperature", "celsius")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Ambient Visibility", "miles")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Ambient Wind Direction", "degrees")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Ambient Wind Velocity", "knots")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Ambient In Cloud", "bool")
SimConnect.add_data(1, "Sea Level Pressure", "millibars")
Here is my program’s output:
Station: CYYZ
Measure METAR Simulator
temp -4.0 -3.0
dewpoint -10.0 NaN
wind_dir 260.0 100.0
wind_speed 11.0 6.0
visibility 15 11
altimeter 1017.0 997.0
SLP 1018.1 1017.6
Station: KDTW
Measure METAR Simulator
temp -5.0 -5.0
dewpoint -10.0 NaN
wind_dir 240.0 100.0
wind_speed 10.0 6.0
visibility 10+ 10
altimeter 1022.1 998.5
SLP 1022.9 1022.0
Station: KORD
Measure METAR Simulator
temp -4.4 -4.0
dewpoint -12.2 NaN
wind_dir 270.0 100.0
wind_speed 9.0 6.0
visibility 10+ 14
altimeter 1023.8 999.3
SLP 1024.8 1023.7