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Reloading real weather produces better results!

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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby Lydiot » Sat May 16, 2015 7:02 pm

Thorsten wrote in Sat May 16, 2015 5:44 am:
I'm curious why this would be the case. Did I miss something in the thread?


I guess you misunderstood something about the generic idea of a local weather system, randomness and interpolation across different weather reports. I'm sure the readme will being you up to speed here - it's a bit outdated as to the GUI, but still working okay.


As you may or may not have seen I now read the "readme" file, as well as two Wiki entries. I still don't understand if the behavior is intended and what the solution is. All I know is that

a) behavior doesn't seem intuitively foreseeable
b) me clicking "apply" every now and then seems to result in at least significant cloud changes
c) the documentation, outdated or not, seems to miss some very basic and easy to understand pointers for users

So having said all that, and read all that, could you comment on that which is the gist of my question:

1) Is it acting as intended?
2) Am I 'forced' to 're-launch' AW regularly to update it with METAR info (i.e. is that the currently only or optimal solution)?
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby Thorsten » Sat May 16, 2015 7:09 pm

Let me ask you two questions in return:

1) How many cloud configurations do you think can be described by a single METAR?

2) Where do you think the METAR report applies to?

Okay, I'll spare you the game, though I think either of those can be worked out in a minute.

The answer to 1) is very many, which is why every time you re-start AW you get a different cloud config which is randomly chosen but is described by the reported METAR.

The answer to 2) is at the reported station which is why you get a combination of weather reported in METAR from here and there if you're between stations and the system has other station reports available - which it does not if you restart. So you degrade functionality by periodically restarting.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby wlbragg » Sat May 16, 2015 7:13 pm

Lydiot wrote in Sat May 16, 2015 7:02 pm:b) me clicking "apply" every now and then seems to result in at least significant cloud changes

As far as this one is concerned, that sounds correct.
If this is a launched based system and at launch it configures and computes many values including (randomized) cloud arrangements based on those values, it would make sense that every time you click on it, it is going to regenerate all the data and it will likely never be identical to the prior generation, even in close time proximity.

oops, Thorsten beat me to the answer by the time I pushed submit. None the less, it makes sense to me.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby wkitty42 » Sat May 16, 2015 7:18 pm

from this JANG's view, it seems that if one wants to use Advanced Weather, they only need to go to the ENVIRONMENT->Weather settings when they first start fgfs, ensure the radio button beside "Detailed Weather" is selected, and then click the [OK] button to load/launch the AW engine and close the dialogue... once that's done, just fly and enjoy... is this the correct take away?

Note: JANG == Just Another New Guy ;)
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby wlbragg » Sat May 16, 2015 7:58 pm

I just tried that and yes, that seems to be all that is needed.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby bugman » Sat May 16, 2015 8:00 pm

Yes, and it seems any time you reset or jump between airports as well.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby wkitty42 » Sat May 16, 2015 8:08 pm

@bugman: if you jump? as in changing the location rather than flying there? if so, yes, i can see that... if one is just flying about, the weather should change/blend into the new as needed when new METARs are downloaded... i can also see a reset needing to restart the AW... currently it seems to just be the nature of the beast ;)
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby Lydiot » Sat May 16, 2015 9:55 pm

Thorsten wrote in Sat May 16, 2015 7:09 pm:Let me ask you two questions in return:

1) How many cloud configurations do you think can be described by a single METAR?

2) Where do you think the METAR report applies to?

Okay, I'll spare you the game, though I think either of those can be worked out in a minute.

The answer to 1) is very many, which is why every time you re-start AW you get a different cloud config which is randomly chosen but is described by the reported METAR.

The answer to 2) is at the reported station which is why you get a combination of weather reported in METAR from here and there if you're between stations and the system has other station reports available - which it does not if you restart. So you degrade functionality by periodically restarting.


The short user-friendly answer is thus: once AW has been launched nothing else needs to be done while flying over tiles.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby Thorsten » Sun May 17, 2015 6:09 am

from this JANG's view, it seems that if one wants to use Advanced Weather, they only need to go to the ENVIRONMENT->Weather settings when they first start fgfs, ensure the radio button beside "Detailed Weather" is selected, and then click the [OK] button to load/launch the AW engine and close the dialogue... once that's done, just fly and enjoy... is this the correct take away?


If you're flying with real weather, yes. Otherwise you need to review the settings and define the weather situation you want to have.

I've always seen that as kind of a weather briefing as part of the pre-flight checklist... After all, you should take a look at the weather conditions before stepping into a real plane just as well :-)
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby Thorsten » Sun May 17, 2015 6:15 am

The short user-friendly answer is thus: once AW has been launched nothing else needs to be done while flying over tiles.


Hm... forgive me if I'm restarting the system all the time, and it looks different to if I just let it run. I suspect what I see on re-starting is the normal behaviour, so is there something wrong with just letting it run? is a bit of an odd question, and perhaps deserves a pointer to re-think that kind of question rather than a user-friendly answer.

I mean, if you honestly assume that I code a system that needs to be re-started every 10 minutes to properly work, then you don't have a very developer-friendly opinion of me, no? :-)
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby Lydiot » Sun May 17, 2015 4:12 pm

Thorsten wrote in Sun May 17, 2015 6:15 am:
The short user-friendly answer is thus: once AW has been launched nothing else needs to be done while flying over tiles.


Hm... forgive me if I'm restarting the system all the time, and it looks different to if I just let it run. I suspect what I see on re-starting is the normal behaviour, so is there something wrong with just letting it run? is a bit of an odd question,


It's also actually not exactly what I asked you...

Thorsten wrote in Sun May 17, 2015 6:15 am: and perhaps deserves a pointer to re-think that kind of question rather than a user-friendly answer.


Sometimes rhetorical questions work really well in getting a person to re-think something, and sometimes they don't. Certainly the more technical the question asked to the non-technically-informed person the less it seems capable of promoting a re-think, or a search for more information. Instead it may come off as just sarcastic rhetoric, which isn't necessarily productive.

Now, you wrote: "every time you re-start AW you get a different cloud config which is randomly chosen but is described by the reported METAR." I suspect that either the word you're looking for is "and" instead of "but", or the word "not" is missing after "which is". The sentence as written is confusing and depending on how it should have been written it changes the meaning radically.

Thorsten wrote in Sun May 17, 2015 6:15 am:I mean, if you honestly assume that I code a system that needs to be re-started every 10 minutes to properly work, then you don't have a very developer-friendly opinion of me, no? :-)


My assumption is that you're a very very good coder/developer, certainly borderline-infinitely beyond my capabilities (as they are near zero). But I also assume that 1) you are a human being, and as such are prone to make mistakes at times, and that 2) you and your code isn't the only ones in FlightGear, meaning that at least to my mind it would be possible for others to break what you have created.

I understand that some transition is necessary during which weather is "combined" (is the word you chose I believe), and that between A and B there are X number of other METAR strings being picked up by the simulator, it's just that the difference between "flying into" and "spawning"/"re-launching" seemed bigger than expected - again from my perspective as a user. At one point I would expect that the "combining" of weather from different stations would be "dropped" and only the closest station - presumably at the airport - would provide the sole METAR string that would be the basis for weather.

If you're telling me the difference is to be expected and is the best solution then that's fine. I absolutely accept that.
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby wkitty42 » Sun May 17, 2015 5:12 pm

Lydiot wrote in Sun May 17, 2015 4:12 pm:I understand that some transition is necessary during which weather is "combined" (is the word you chose I believe), and that between A and B there are X number of other METAR strings being picked up by the simulator, it's just that the difference between "flying into" and "spawning"/"re-launching" seemed bigger than expected - again from my perspective as a user. At one point I would expect that the "combining" of weather from different stations would be "dropped" and only the closest station - presumably at the airport - would provide the sole METAR string that would be the basis for weather.

If you're telling me the difference is to be expected and is the best solution then that's fine. I absolutely accept that.

i'm not sure about dropping the combined METAR info when crossing a ""METAR boundry"" is a good thing... to me, it seems as if the change is too abrupt in the current FGFS next from the git repo... even with basic weather... this feeling comes from watching the sky as i fly and suddenly seeing all the clouds change as well as my craft bouncing about and recovering its set AP HDG and ALT... it is like when a new METAR is picked up (i see it by watching the log) that suddenly its information is slammed into the weather engine and then we go bouncing all over the sky for a few minutes... if there was some way to pull the new METAR info while still a little further out and then have them blended so the transition from one ""weather tile"" to another is much smoother, that would be a good thing...

i'm guessing that also having the sky view around you to adjust smoothly would be a good thing, too... by that i mean that if it is broken clouds where i am at 10000 ALT and in 15 miles there's a change to clear sky, i should be able to see those clear skys between the broken clouds... if 50 miles away there's a storm front, i should be able to see that across the clear area... but then i also tend to set my LOD ranges a bit longer than the defaults so that i can see more from further out so that it looks more real-to-life... remember, if you are at 10000 ALT, you can see to the horizon ~125 miles away... that's a lot of sky to cover ;)

simple rule of thumb:
distance to horizon (miles) = sqrt [ 7 × h (feet) / 4 ]
sqrt [ 7 x 10000 / 4 ]
sqrt [ 70000 / 4 ]
sqrt [ 17500 ]
132 miles

https://www.google.com/search?q=horizon+distance+at+altitude&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
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"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby Lydiot » Sun May 17, 2015 5:29 pm

wkitty42,

I agree with you 100%, and I expressed myself poorly. What I meant was exactly what you wrote, but in addition I suppose my thinking is that if conditions are one way at the destination, say for example that we're at KSFO and flying to KLAX, so there's one METAR string that's most accurate at KLAX, then while there'd be transitions throughout that flight at least I would expect that once I'm at KLAX that METAR string would have been transitioned to.

So it's certainly not that I think there should be no combination when crossing boundaries, I think there should, but I'm just saying that from a user's perspective it looks odd when there's a possibly big difference between spawning/launching at KLAX versus having flown into it.

But again, I think your explanation is much better than mine. Also I think that my primary concern has been addressed (that AW has to be launched, period).
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby Thorsten » Sun May 17, 2015 5:32 pm

if there was some way to pull the new METAR info while still a little further out and then have them blended so the transition from one ""weather tile"" to another is much smoother, that would be a good thing...

i'm guessing that also having the sky view around you to adjust smoothly would be a good thing, too... by that i mean that if it is broken clouds where i am at 10000 ALT and in 15 miles there's a change to clear sky, i should be able to see those clear skys between the broken clouds... if 50 miles away there's a storm front, i should be able to see that across the clear area... but then i also tend to set my LOD ranges a bit longer than the defaults so that i can see more from further out so that it looks more real-to-life... remember, if you are at 10000 ALT, you can see to the horizon ~125 miles away... that's a lot of sky to cover


That's basically the core principle of AW and the reason why it started out with the name 'local weather' - it would simulate weather 'there' being different from weather 'here' and allow you to see what's ahead before being right in it.

I think the whole tile concept is amply explained in the documentation, so is the interpolation of weather parameters.

And nowadays you get clouds drawn out to the horizon, no matter where it is - we're using impostors beyond 120 km, they even work from low orbit with thousands of km visibility (though they look a bit silly then...)
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Re: Reloading real weather produces better results!

Postby wkitty42 » Sun May 17, 2015 8:57 pm

Thorsten wrote in Sun May 17, 2015 5:32 pm:
if there was some way to pull the new METAR info while still a little further out and then have them blended so the transition from one ""weather tile"" to another is much smoother, that would be a good thing...

i'm guessing that also having the sky view around you to adjust smoothly would be a good thing, too... by that i mean that if it is broken clouds where i am at 10000 ALT and in 15 miles there's a change to clear sky, i should be able to see those clear skys between the broken clouds... if 50 miles away there's a storm front, i should be able to see that across the clear area... but then i also tend to set my LOD ranges a bit longer than the defaults so that i can see more from further out so that it looks more real-to-life... remember, if you are at 10000 ALT, you can see to the horizon ~125 miles away... that's a lot of sky to cover


That's basically the core principle of AW and the reason why it started out with the name 'local weather' - it would simulate weather 'there' being different from weather 'here' and allow you to see what's ahead before being right in it.

very interesting... i'm not sure i see it as each new METAR comes in and gets pumped into the weather engine, though...

Thorsten wrote in Sun May 17, 2015 5:32 pm:I think the whole tile concept is amply explained in the documentation, so is the interpolation of weather parameters.

TBH: i haven't seen any documentation on FGFS... i installed it, loaded it, started the craft and took off flying... or i tried to :lol:

it isn't like there's any menu items added... i got FGCom. FGCom-testing and FlightGear added to my Games menu but no link to any documentation at all... this is on linux... it would be nice if the installer would create a sub-menu under Games (it is a sim, not a game, right??) called FlightGear Simulator and in there would be links to the (local??) documentation, maybe the wiki and the forums as well as links to FGCom, the ATC apps, FGFS itself and whatever else... i don't have the first clue where to even start trying to find local documentation for FGFS :(

Thorsten wrote in Sun May 17, 2015 5:32 pm:And nowadays you get clouds drawn out to the horizon, no matter where it is - we're using impostors beyond 120 km, they even work from low orbit with thousands of km visibility (though they look a bit silly then...)

hehe, i can understand that... i guess METAR isn't able to give full weather information like you get with your eyeballs and satellite views... it would be nice for them to blend more smoothly when a new one is loaded, though ;)
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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