No metar available

[scarymovie]

Hi everyone,

I am getting the "no METAR available" error message today. Just wanted to find out if there is a problem with fetching live weather today.

Thank you.

[erik]

metar seems to be working fine for me.

FlightGear does ship with a command line utility called metar which should report the metar-report.
Maybe it provides more insight?

Erik

[scarymovie]

Hi Erik,

Thank you for your feedback.

Live weather has always been working on my FG, but not today. It says "NIL" in METAR data. Restarted my computer and router but no luck.

[cgdae]

My tree has increased diagnostics when metar isn't available, and it's currently saying:

Code: Select all

        5.15 flightgear/src/Environment/realwx_ctrl.cxx:137: [ALRT]:environment Ignoring outdated METAR for EGTK (see /environment/params/metar-max-age-min)

- Jules

[scarymovie]

Hi guys,

It is working now after a million tries. Guess there was a glitch.

Thank you!!!

[ludomotico]

The METAR observations at EGTK (I mean, the real thing) usually don't work at night, at least during the last days: https://www.ogimet.com/display_metars2. ... &send=send

I guess there is no METAR when the airport is closed.

[scarymovie]

I am wondering besides tgftp.nws.noaa.gov which is the default source of metar in FG, is there any alternative? Because there are times when the site is down.

Thank you.

[lindoro]

I once wrote some code to integrate OpenWeatherMap real-time data in FlightGear, for places where there is no METAR service: https://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=37784

[scarymovie]

I once wrote some code to integrate OpenWeatherMap real-time data in FlightGear, for places where there is no METAR service: https://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=37784

Hi lindoro,

Sure, I will head over the thread to read up about it

Thank you.

[scarymovie]

Hi guys,

I afraid the same problem comes back after I installed the latest nightly version. Seems like sometimes I am able to get the metar info but 98% of the time, I don't ("No metar available, aborting..."). Tried to fix it for half a day but nothing worked.

Things I have done to troubleshoot this problem.
1. Wiped out all FG files & settings and did a clean installation.
2. Turned off Windows Defender Firewall.
3. Tested current stable release: 2020.3.8, worked perfectly well.

This is the log file.

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  203.97 [WARN]:environmentC:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Environment\realwx_ctrl.cxx:380: RealWxController::update can't find airport with METAR within 10000NM
  203.97 [INFO]:environmentC:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Environment\environment_mgr.cxx:378: FGEnvironmentMgr::update: No airport within 100NM range
  203.97 [INFO]:environmentC:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Environment\environment_mgr.cxx:436: Auto Tower: now Nimitz
  214.00 [INFO]:environmentC:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Environment\environment_mgr.cxx:378: FGEnvironmentMgr::update: No airport within 100NM range
  214.00 [INFO]:environmentC:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Environment\environment_mgr.cxx:436: Auto Tower: now Nimitz
  214.00 [WARN]:environmentC:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Environment\realwx_ctrl.cxx:380: RealWxController::update can't find airport with METAR within 10000NM


Any help will be appreciated. Thanks guys!

[scarymovie]

Hi guys,

I have found a workaround. I don't have the problem if I use command line without "--launcher" to start FG. The launcher could be the culprit that is causing this in the latest nightly version.

[wkitty42]

apparently you have some option(s) set in your launcher that are causing you to load up on a carrier that is further away than 100NM from a land-based ICAO... you cannot get METAR when further than 100NM from an ICAO...

[Johan G]

Hi wkitty42, saw your reply in the other thread but decided to continue the conversation here. I reset all the options in launcher to default but no luck. Then I tried starting FG in cmd with command line options except --launcher then it worked. So I doubt any of the options set in the launcher is causing the problem.

[wkitty42]

i don't doubt it... especially if you have "Advanced weather modeling" and "Real-world weather" turned off in the "Environment" tab...

either way, we need to see the top part of the FG log file for both types of execution so we can see what options FG is starting with...

you can find the log file via these instructions: https://wiki.flightgear.org/Commonly_used_debugging_tools#fgfs.log

and the lines we are looking for are in the first 100 or so lines... they will look something like this...

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   14.66 [INFO]:general   *path*/src/Main/options.cxx:2572:   option:enable-real-weather-fetch =
   14.66 [INFO]:general   *path*/src/Main/options.cxx:2572:   option:prop = /nasal/local_weather/enabled=true
   14.66 [INFO]:general   *path*/src/Main/options.cxx:2572:   option:prop = /sim/gui/dialogs/metar/mode/global-weather=false
   14.66 [INFO]:general   *path*/src/Main/options.cxx:2572:   option:prop = /sim/gui/dialogs/metar/mode/local-weather=true
   14.66 [INFO]:general   *path*/src/Main/options.cxx:2572:   option:prop = /sim/gui/dialogs/metar/mode/manual-weather=true
   14.66 [INFO]:general   *path*/src/Main/options.cxx:2572:   option:prop = /local-weather/tmp/tile-management=METAR
   14.66 [INFO]:general   *path*/src/Main/options.cxx:2572:   option:prop = /local-weather/tmp/tile-type=live
   14.66 [INFO]:general   *path*/src/Main/options.cxx:2572:   option:prop = /sim/rendering/multi-sample-buffers=1
[...]


there may be several dozen lines like those... please post all of them (the ones with "option:blahblah") from both a launcher session and a command line session so we can compare them and see the differences that may be leading to your problem...

[scarymovie]

Happy to share the log.

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   32.17 [INFO]:general   C:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Main\options.cxx:2727:    option:enable-real-weather-fetch =
   32.17 [INFO]:general   C:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Main\options.cxx:2727:    option:prop = /nasal/local_weather/enabled=true
   32.17 [INFO]:general   C:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Main\options.cxx:2727:    option:prop = /sim/gui/dialogs/metar/mode/global-weather=false
   32.17 [INFO]:general   C:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Main\options.cxx:2727:    option:prop = /sim/gui/dialogs/metar/mode/local-weather=true
   32.17 [INFO]:general   C:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Main\options.cxx:2727:    option:prop = /sim/gui/dialogs/metar/mode/manual-weather=true
   32.17 [INFO]:general   C:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Main\options.cxx:2727:    option:prop = /local-weather/tmp/tile-management=METAR
   32.17 [INFO]:general   C:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Main\options.cxx:2727:    option:prop = /local-weather/tmp/tile-type=live
   32.17 [INFO]:general   C:\Jenkins\workspace\Windows-nightly\flightgear\src\Main\options.cxx:2727:    option:prop = /sim/rendering/texture-cache/cache-enabled=true