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Interesting METAR phenomenon

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Interesting METAR phenomenon

Postby Fritz » Sun Nov 13, 2016 12:58 am

Approaching Tokyo in rather nice weather conditions, the sky suddenly became very dark.

Image

Because there was no volcanic eruption nearby, I figured this to be some kind of bug. But re-initializing the weather system didn't change anything, so I continued the flight.

Image

The METAR string that caused it was submitted by Narita Airport, and it was the same in the internet, i.e. not "damaged" by FG:

RJAA 122230Z 33004KT 4000 BCFG BR FEW001 SCT/// 10/09 Q1025 BECMG TL2300 6000 NSW

I finally found that the part "SCT///" (whatever this means) causes the phenomenon, even if added to very simple METAR strings which don't contain any other cloud information.

Edit: This only happens when ALS is turned on. It seems that there is no atmosphere to scatter light...
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Re: Interesting METAR phenomenon

Postby sanhozay » Sun Nov 13, 2016 2:01 am

That part of the METAR means scattered clouds but the sensor at the AWOS station could not determine the altitude. A complete reading would be something like SCT020. The slashes indicate unknown or temporarily unavailable.
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Re: Interesting METAR phenomenon

Postby Thorsten » Sun Nov 13, 2016 8:13 am

Try looking at what the parsed METAR info in the property tree says - the weather systems aren't directly using the string, there's a parser stage running over it, and likely that can't deal with the /// - the only question is what part of the info it then zeroes/NaNs.
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Re: Interesting METAR phenomenon

Postby Fritz » Sun Nov 13, 2016 9:33 pm

BKN/// does the same, as I just found out - again at Narita:

RJAA 131930Z 31004KT 260V320 4500 MIFG BR FEW030 BKN/// 11/10 Q1022 NOSIG RMK 1CU030 A3021

There are so many weather-related properties that it is difficult to find anything that is affected, at least for somebody like me who doesn't have any knowledge of this part of the software. But, to make a start, the properties "local-weather" and "local-weather/METAR" (including the layers) aren't affected in any way by adding or removing the BKN/// part.

What is (obviously) affected is "environment/metar/clouds": Layer 1 (the "broken" layer), has one strange property: elevation-ft: -1e+20. This is 5141 when changing BKN/// to BKN050. So /// translates into -1e+20, but changing this value manually to -1e+20, doesn't cause the black sky phenomenon on its own. -9999 is the value for unused layers, so this could be a start.

I didn't find other affected properties, but there probably are. Is there a way to export the whole property tree into a text file so that it can by compared by a diff tool?
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Re: Interesting METAR phenomenon

Postby rominet » Mon Nov 14, 2016 11:50 pm

You can put this in a binding:
Code: Select all
     <desc>Dump the global property tree to the console</desc>
     <binding>
       <command>nasal</command>
       <script>props.dump(props.globals)</script>
     </binding>

and then redirect the FG output to a file.
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Re: Interesting METAR phenomenon

Postby Fritz » Wed Nov 16, 2016 12:42 am

Ok... I'll try this tomorrow.
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Re: Interesting METAR phenomenon

Postby Fritz » Mon Jan 09, 2017 9:51 pm

Sorry, I didn't do FG for some time. I had a hardware problem and several real life issues caused by the old year ending and the new year starting. And it probably won't get better over the next weeks. I'll come back to this.
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Re: Interesting METAR phenomenon

Postby toshi » Wed May 22, 2019 5:01 pm

When a METAR message includes ///, the dark sky issue occurs still on FlightGear 2018.3.2.
Recently, a user in Japanese forum found that the issue occurs when both of "Detailed Weather" and "Atmospheric Light Scattering" are enabled.

Thorsten wrote in Sun Nov 13, 2016 8:13 am:the only question is what part of the info it then zeroes/NaNs.

I noticed that /local-weather/cloud-shadows/cloudpos-x and -y change from "{NONE} = nil" to "{DOUBLE} = 0" when a METAR message includes ///.

Here I describe a test report .

(PC) FlightGear 2018.3.2, Windows 10 64bit, Intel HD Graphics 530

(How to reproduce the issue)
- Start FlightGear with RJTT, ufo, noon. All the other settings are default (Real-world weather: disabled).
- Enable Atmospheric Light Scattering (ALS) from View > Rendering Options
- Enable Detailed Weather from Environment > Weather
- Change Weather Conditions from Core high pressure region to Manual input
- Change METAR Data from
XXXX 012345Z 15003KT 19SM FEW072 FEW350 25/07 Q1028 NOSIG
to
XXXX 012345Z 15003KT 19SM FEW/// FEW350 25/07 Q1028 NOSIG
- Observe that color of sky changes from blue to black.

(Properties which changed obviously)
- Taken from fgfs.log by executing from Debug > Nasal Console: props.dump(props.globals)
- 1st line: "FEW072" --- no issue.
- 2nd line: "FEW///" --- issue occurs.

/environment/metar/data {STRING} = XXXX 012345Z 15003KT 19SM FEW072 FEW350 25/07 Q1028 NOSIG
/environment/metar/data {STRING} = XXXX 012345Z 15003KT 19SM FEW/// FEW350 25/07 Q1028 NOSIG

/environment/metar/clouds/layer/elevation-ft {DOUBLE} = 7220
/environment/metar/clouds/layer/elevation-ft {DOUBLE} = -1e+20

/environment/ground-haze-thickness-m {DOUBLE} = 2877.312
/environment/ground-haze-thickness-m {DOUBLE} = -3.048e+19

(/instrumentation/wxradar not found)
/instrumentation/wxradar {NONE} = nil

/local-weather/cloud-shadows/cloudpos-x {NONE} = nil
/local-weather/cloud-shadows/cloudpos-x {DOUBLE} = 0

/local-weather/cloud-shadows/cloudpos-y {NONE} = nil
/local-weather/cloud-shadows/cloudpos-y {DOUBLE} = 0

/local-weather/cloud-shadows/cloudpos-x[1] {NONE} = nil
/local-weather/cloud-shadows/cloudpos-x[1] {DOUBLE} = 0

(snip...)

/local-weather/cloud-shadows/cloudpos-y[19] {NONE} = nil
/local-weather/cloud-shadows/cloudpos-y[19] {DOUBLE} = 0

(/local-weather/shadow-loop-flag not found)
/local-weather/shadow-loop-flag {DOUBLE} = 0

(References)
(2018-07-24) [Flightgear-devel] Double whammy errors
https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/ma ... /36375580/

(2017-09-27) #1993 Weird graphical glitch when /// is in METAR
https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/codetickets/1993/
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Re: Interesting METAR phenomenon

Postby Fritz » Wed Nov 25, 2020 2:07 pm

To close this thread, the phenomenon has been "accepted" as a bug in 6/2020.

https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/codetickets/1993/

I had totally forgotten about this because of my 4 year FG break...
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Re: Interesting METAR phenomenon

Postby wkitty42 » Wed Nov 25, 2020 5:07 pm

FWIW: some work has also been done in this area of METAR decoding //, ///, and similar... this within the last week of this post's time stamp...
"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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