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Reloading real weather produces better results!

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Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby gsagostinho » Mon May 11, 2015 12:44 am

Hi all,

Discussing with LesterBoffo about some beautiful weather he gets on his screenshots, he pointed out to me that using Advanced Weather, he first loads the sim with real weather and then open the weather dialogue and click apply. I tried doing this myself and the difference is huge. Below there are pictures from three different airports, left is before clicking apply and right is after clicking apply:

Image

Is this behaviour intentional? To me, the shots in the right column are absolutely better than the ones in the left column. So why isn't this the behaviour automatic once loading the sim with real weather?

I am using FG 3.5 from git, launching it via fgrun with "Real weather fetch" toggled. On those shots, I believe the weather tile was set to "METAR".

Cheers,
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby LesterBoffo » Mon May 11, 2015 1:34 am

Hi Gilbert

That's only part of what I do. I usually check for a metar string that includes extra detailed info about clouds. Some of the local Vosges and Rhine Valley airports are doing some sort of partial report with the words cavok and nosig in their string. These I avoid using. I try to find airports reporting more than one layer of clouds, then spawn near them and have Advanced Weather on with terrain sampling enabled. Then, after the terrain and weather loads, and the frame rates settle down, I re-initialize AW by clicking 'Apply' in the AW GUI box. It seems to load better looking, more complex cloud images, and builds groups of them.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby gsagostinho » Mon May 11, 2015 1:37 am

LesterBoffo wrote in Mon May 11, 2015 1:34 am:after the terrain and weather loads, and the frame rates settle down, I re-initialize AW by clicking 'Apply' in the AW GUI box. It seems to load better looking, more complex cloud images, and builds groups of them.

That's exactly what this post is about. Why aren't these better looking and more complex clouds loaded automatically without needing to reinitialize AW?

That's only part of what I do. I usually check for a metar string that includes extra detailed info about clouds. Some of the local Vosges and Rhine Valley airports are doing some sort of partial report with the words cavok and nosig in their string. These I avoid using. I try to find airports reporting more than one layer of clouds, then spawn near them and have Advanced Weather on with terrain sampling enabled.

That's all good advice, I will surely try it out.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby tikibar » Mon May 11, 2015 1:45 am

As far as I know, the advanced weather needs to be started manually each time you start FG. Otherwise, you're looking at the regular weather even if you have AW checked in the dialog. Probably you could add something in a startup script that kicks it on automatically.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby LesterBoffo » Mon May 11, 2015 1:48 am

Probably have to ask Thorsten about this, I'm not sure why it initializes with the lower resolution clouds. It's not much trouble to do though.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby onox » Mon May 11, 2015 3:53 am

What's even more ridiculous is that there are 3 buttons "OK", "Apply", and "Close", of which 2 seem to represent the same action. This should be at most 2 ("OK"/"Apply"/"Save" and "Cancel") or even better just 1: "Close". IMHO it should be like the Rendering Options window where the GUI reflects the current state of the simulator. If I see "Atmospheric Light Scattering" checkbutton is enabled, then I know ALS is active. If the button is unchecked, then I can click on it and ALS immediately becomes active.

The weather dialog should work according to the same principle. If I open it and see "Detailed Weather" radiobutton is checked, then Advanced Weather should currently be running. If "Basic Weather" is checked then basic weather should be running. If I then click on the radiobutton of "Detailed Weather", then it immediately activates Advanced Weather. This way it is much easier for users to see what the actual state of the simulator is. + you only need a single "Close" button.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby Thorsten » Mon May 11, 2015 6:18 am

As far as I know, the advanced weather needs to be started manually each time you start FG.


That is quite correct. AW doesn't run unless started explicitly.

There's a reason for that, which is that some developers were concerned about loading a large chunk of Nasal code at startup (which isn't done if you don't select AW in the dialog) and about automatically executing it - so AW got 'quarantined' into the present setup. The current weather GUI was fought over quite hard.

I have a personal opinion on that (which you may guess :-) ) After a few years of running without essential problems, perhaps that quarantine assessment can also be revised.

Historically, the AW GUI is a launcher while the BW gui is a 'respond to changes as soon as you make them' type thing. That reflects the underlying philosophy - BW is a descriptive system in which changing wind modifies wind only - AW uses wind in an integrated simulation and wants to re-compute cloud patterns and front layouts because the lee distribution of downstreaming air might have changed for instance, so it waits for whatever else you may want to adjust before starting to compute a weather simulation. You might also note that from the point where you start it, it takes half a minute (or so) to compute the complete weather situation all the way out to 120 km distance, even though you see the weather in your vicinity change immediately.

This is why AW is actually different from ALS in that it can't simply be switched 'on' from one frame to the next and why a radiobutton does in fact not work.

I don't think anyone is happy with the current GUI (it was sort of the common denominator for everyone to swallow) - if you have a good idea for a better design that accomodates the internal constraints of the weather systems, feel free to propose it.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby abassign » Mon May 11, 2015 8:31 am

I confirm the problem that I find anachronistic, if startup may be an option that loads the advanced weather and enough! Without ever having to turn it on manually.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby bugman » Mon May 11, 2015 10:11 am

Why not just start with the radio button on 'Basic weather'? Then it will be clearer to users that they need to manually turn on AW each and every time.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby bugman » Mon May 11, 2015 10:34 am

Or what about some special settings in the 'Advanced settings' window. For example that the user can manually select: "Automatically initialise Advanced Weather at start up". And "Automatically restart Advanced Weather for each METAR change". This could be a good testing ground for eventually setting these as defaults for starting with 'Detailed weather'.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby gsagostinho » Mon May 11, 2015 12:54 pm

I agree the buttons Apply, Ok and Close are confusing, particularly since Ok is the same as Apply + Close. Also if Advanced Weather could be made persistent that would be wonderful, but I understand there may be some technical reasons behind the current behaviour which I certainly cannot see right now. But I believe most people using it want to use it all the time, so saving it for the next flights would be fantastic.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby Thorsten » Mon May 11, 2015 5:27 pm

I agree the buttons Apply, Ok and Close are confusing, particularly since Ok is the same as Apply + Close.


I was under the impression that is the standard convention, but okay...

I can't claim I am any good in GUI design, but I have made my fair share of mistakes and had my discussions. So I just want to outline the challenges:

It doesn't do to suggest a GUI which is better for your use case - other people have other use cases. For instance, using real weather is just one possible way. I pretty much never do that, I always take 30 seconds before a flight to configure what weather I'd like to have. Also arguing 'most people use AW anyway' is bad - we don't know that, and judging from screenshots posted, I don't think it's actually true. If you want to automatically start AW and have no METAR, you need to define what's supposed to be happening then.

It also doesn't do to add an option for every special use case - this makes for a confusing GUI - one design requirement for the main weather GUI had to be simple.

Finally, what's intuitive for you isn't for the next person - see above.

So don't turn this thread into 'this is how I would like to have the GUI' - that's not going to translate into a case that will change anything. If you think you can do better, come up with a GUI that's intuitive for a large number of possible use cases except your own.

And "Automatically restart Advanced Weather for each METAR change".


Why on earth would I want to have that behaviour? It defeats the purpose of the whole system to not change the weather everywhere but only at the reported location.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby gsagostinho » Mon May 11, 2015 5:46 pm

Thorsten wrote in Mon May 11, 2015 5:27 pm:It doesn't do to suggest a GUI which is better for your use case - other people have other use cases. [...] Also arguing 'most people use AW anyway' is bad - we don't know that, and judging from screenshots posted, I don't think it's actually true. [...] Finally, what's intuitive for you isn't for the next person - see above. [...] So don't turn this thread into 'this is how I would like to have the GUI' - that's not going to translate into a case that will change anything."


Steady on, Thorsten! I simply said I find the current three buttons unintuitive, nothing else. For instance, sometimes I open the weather dialogue, set the weather as I like and wait for it to load, and then (by mistake) I click on the Okay button instead of Close just to have it reloaded again. Certainly that's my personal opinion, but I never tried to sell it as a universal truth.

Also, I didn't say most people use AW, I said that most people using AW would probably like to have it loaded by default, meaning that those of us who always fly with AW (whatever percentage of the community that is) have to manually click on Apply before every single flight. So just a misunderstanding here.

I totally understand that coming up with solutions is much harder than criticizing, and I am sorry if my post came across simply as an annoying complaint, that was not my intention. To be frank, once I learned that AW is not automatically loaded (even though the weather menu says so when I open FG) my problem is solved. Now the question is how to either improve this behaviour or make it clearer for other people who might not be aware of that. So one option would be to have AW load automatically if the user has previously set it on, and another is to make the AW option non-persistent so users will know about this (and surely there are tons of other options that I can't think of right now!).

Cheers!
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby bugman » Mon May 11, 2015 5:56 pm

Thorsten wrote in Mon May 11, 2015 5:27 pm:
And "Automatically restart Advanced Weather for each METAR change".


Why on earth would I want to have that behaviour? It defeats the purpose of the whole system to not change the weather everywhere but only at the reported location.


That was probably just a bad choice of words. It was just in response to not having to reinitialise AW each time you reset or change airport:

LesterBoffo wrote in Mon May 11, 2015 1:34 am:I try to find airports reporting more than one layer of clouds, then spawn near them and have Advanced Weather on with terrain sampling enabled. Then, after the terrain and weather loads, and the frame rates settle down, I re-initialize AW by clicking 'Apply' in the AW GUI box. It seems to load better looking, more complex cloud images, and builds groups of them.


These were just some crazy ideas to have some options as a way to slowly shift out of quarantine, to allow a bit of testing. If it was a serious suggestion, I would have sent a message to the devel mailing list for detailed discussions. I would guess that there are much easier ways to test an always on and correctly set AW.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby Thorsten » Mon May 11, 2015 5:57 pm

It's a genuine question, not critique. See it as a request to thoroughly think through what you expect from a weather GUI and most importantly why.

I don't know a good answer - I just know all the arguments which were exchanged back and forth to arrive at the current GUI. So if one of you has the brilliant insight which I don't (GUI is definitely not my area of expertise) maybe we can make it better.
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