Old good FSX

[V12]

I made upgrade on customer's PC and on HDD found FSX. And that was not end - on my surprise, there was addon PMDG 737 800/900 NG/NGC ! I tested 737-800 NG and was surprised again, almost all buttons, switches etc is functional. Route planning in MCDU is fully functional. I performed some flights, for example LZIBB to LOWI with full SID STAR procedures. Flights was boring - LNAV with VNAV worked absolutly perfect. Flight dynamics is almost identical with fix base sim in Simulatorcentrum Bratislava.
This old piece of software is amazing.

Some screenshots - default FSX clouds :



Destination - LOWI - check terrain visualisation on ND (there was not framerate drop) :



Touchdown at LOWI :



Wet runway looks very good :



I was a bit dissapointed - FSX has not real weather, or today, that feature doesn't work. Original 737-800 is very nice modelled with reasonable flight dynamics, but with basic and very unrealistic autoflight system. 747 too. There is one big problem - that app is only 32bit and can't use more than 4GB RAM on 64bit systems and can't grow.

Night cockpit 737, again, beautifull for museal software



I found free real weather generator FSXWX, clouds are better than default FSX :



This piece of software is perfect, interpolate wind direction, speed, use wind aloft, calculate clouds placement and types, etc. No spikes in baro pressures, no steep change of wind direction or velocity. Clouds coverage smoothly transit from total overcast to few cumuluses, no ugly rectangular pattern of clouds, or visible generating of the cloud systems, etc. Again - amazing for free software.

Another unbelievable surprise on early morning depart from Heathrow Gate 420 :



That silhouette in the dark is very good familiar for me !

Clouds art :



with default 737 (previous was PMDG :



Outstanding overall performance for 12 years old software. I will think very hard when I see this sim on the Steam with "action" price 9.99 EUR plus 60 EUR for PMDG737 is very attractive offer.

[SHM]

Now you know why I just don't feel flying on fg anymore.
All these things you pointed out are fixed with p3d v4(64 bit) and active sky

Hope they get the new version of the fslabs Concorde out soon.

[V12]

I knew that
I'm fighting with FG's weather discontinuity on all transatlantic flights. It is totally impossible suddenly altitude change 1000 feets, or MACH speed from ideal 2.04 to 2.2 after 180 degs wind direction change. I reported that problem, but everytime it was ignored with words like "When I worked on AW, I did not observed that bhaviour, I can't fix not existing bugs". I made "blackbox" protocol and recorded wind and pressure data. Not enough for fix that discontinuity. Or strange clouds rotation after long flights from E to W or W to E. I'm dissapointed

[SHM]

I'm fighting with FG's weather discontinuity on all transatlantic flights. It is totally impossible suddenly altitude change 1000 feets, or MACH speed from ideal 2.04 to 2.2 after 180 degs wind direction change. I reported that problem, but everytime it was ignored with words like "When I worked on AW, I did not observed that bhaviour, I can't fix not existing bugs". I made "blackbox" protocol and recorded wind and pressure data. Not enough for fix that discontinuity. Or strange clouds rotation after long flights from E to W or W to E. I'm dissapointed

[123apple]

To be fair that is simply a limitation of the weather system...
without any proper data source it is impossible to solve:

Whatever the source is - someone has to

1) write code that fetches the data as needed
2) represents it in the property tree
3) inserts it into AW

I'm entirely willing to do 3), but I'm not going to do anything about 1) or 2) because I'm just not interested at all in METAR-driven weather (personally I think offline weather simulation has a lot more potential because of all the details that can be consistently generated) so someone else needs to do it.

All else is nice, but won't produce any change to FG.

the cloud rotation though - people have said how to fix it, but nobody has yet. It's reportedly in simgear (according to stuart) in the code that tells flightgear what direction is up.
(nothing to do with AW itself)

[V12]

123apple :
Cloud rotation - OK, that is bug in the renderer.
But weather discontinuity - FG has live metar decoder - source for AW's basic data exists. And again - next almost ruined flight - https://fgtracker.ml/modules/fgtracker/ ... ID=7069210. Suddenly sharp descend was responsible AW. In the reality, at FL500 you should fly ABOVE the all weather phenomena.

My machine can't handle last P3D, but can handle FSX. If now dead 12 years old software can smoothly interpolate weather, why constantly updated open source software can't do it ? Probably, at the first opportunity I will buy FSX and PMDG 737. I'm disapointed by FG more and more. I don't need 700 aircrafts in the hangar, but almost none working correctly.

[123apple]

The the problem really is that you have two discontinuous data sources. E.g. Halifax and Shannon when crossing the Atlantic. At the moment, Halifax has a huge high while Shannon a huge low. Difference is more than 15-20 hpa.

It's as simple as getting the data from somewhere and parsing it - the thing is there doesn't seem to be anyone willing to do it.

Tbh METAR is not really a good source for weather data as it only reports the weather at a specific point. Fine in e.g. the USA but in Russia they are few and far between. Therefore the best solution would be to have proper wind aloft data... in fact if possible maybe each 1x1 tile could have its own weather even at the surface if the distance to the metar is more than 1 degree? Now the thing is to find someone willing to take the data and get it in

[SHM]

My machine can't handle last P3D, but can handle FSX. If now dead 12 years old software can smoothly interpolate weather, why constantly updated open source software can't do it ? Probably, at the first opportunity I will buy FSX and PMDG 737. I'm disapointed by FG more and more. I don't need 700 aircrafts in the hangar, but almost none working correctly.

Exactly! Go for it

[V12]

123apple :
Wind aloft sources exists, freeware FSXWX uses them. And works very good. On my testflight from EGLL to KJFK with freeware Concorde I did not observed any discontinuity in baro pressure, or wind changes.FSXWX uses NOAA grib files as source.

[Richard]

But weather discontinuity - FG has live metar decoder - source for AW's basic data exists. And again - next almost ruined flight -

The 20,000 foot drop in altitude really is indicative of a problem with the autopilot rather than FG itself. It's hard to debug this; but I've never had a problem with the F-15 at FL420 mach 2.5 for extended periods of time; in fact I'm going to test it now on a long run from where I am to South America FL500, M2.1 ref: https://fgtracker.ml/modules/fgtracker/ ... ID=7069840