Do FSX, P3D, X-Plane simulate dust storms, sand storms, volcanic ash?

[Hardy Heinlin]

As far as I recall, volcanic ash has never been simulated in those other sims. So PSX pilots who use external scenery generators can never be warned in advance by visual volcanic effects, unless they look at the PSX windshield.

Well, one can live with that limitation. (Or just never activate volcanic ash.)

But the palette of unusual weather effects will be extended in future PSX versions, and so the visual feedback becomes more important: I'm wondering if heavy dust storms and sand storms are -- or will be -- modelled in those other simulators.

Dust storms and sand storms may cause engine failures. If the external scenery shows a sunny sky, you will be pretty surprised when an engine fails in a dust storm in PSX.

Another solution to get advance warnings is to carefully check the current SIGMETs. PSX versions that simulate dust storms and sand storms will also provide SIGMET texts. Actually, it's the SIGMET text that generates those weather phenomena. Not vice versa. The text can also generate volcanic ash clouds in a specified 3D area, regardless of the traditional volcanic ash setting on Instructor > Situation > Weather > Planet.

For reference, there's a heavy dust storm today in the Jeddah area:

WSSD20 OEJD 162007
OEJD SIGMET 03 VALID 162000/162400 OEJD-
OEJD JEDDAH  FIR HVY DS OBS N OF N26 W OF E46 INTSF=


Regards,

|-|ardy

[Dirk Schepmann]

Hardy,

I can only comment on FSX and P3D.
The weather simulation in both sims is very basic, actually. Tools like Active Sky will greatly improve this (in fact, the programmers use a lot of tricks to bypass the limited internal weather machine).

Volcanic ash is not simulated in P3D and FSX. There are some effect files to make some volcanoes look alive (e.g. Hawaii) but these are just visual effects with no impact on flight characteristics. There is an external tool which can generate forest fires in P3D and FSX (it basically reads the coordinates of reported wildfires around the globe and injects the effects into the sim).

The effects of a sand or dust storm are most certainly not simulated, but the limited visibility in the vicinity of the storm is simulated if METAR or SIGMETs are available. But it is just haze in the P3D and FSX, I think.

Active Sky will also depict hurricanes, including the eye by injecting appropriate clouds at the corresponding real world positions. This is a nice feature, although the wind simulation is based on METARs (and not a model of the hurricane itself).

By the way:

If PSX would be able to read the direction, altitude and velocity of real jetstreams from SigWx charts, the weather simulation would be (almost) perfect. But I'm afraid that this is not possible or would require a very complex algorithm. I have often tried to move the jetstreams around in the PSX weather screen, but this only works if we have a typical zonal setup of the atmosphere. But in recent years, we were often facing meridional weather setups (i.e. strong meandering of jetstreams in south and northern directions instead of west-east) and this is not so easy to reproduce in PSX. For example, at the moment the polar front jetstream is interrupted at many places and in Europe the jetstream is oriented from Iceland to Madeira and makes a sharp 180 degree turn back to the European mainland.

Best regards,
Dirk

[Hardy Heinlin]

Thanks for the info, Dirk.

The jetstream settings will be obsolete in future PSX versions when you activate the new optional wind & OAT data corridor. You just need to copy the enroute weather data from your external flight plan text (PFPX or Simbrief etc.) and paste it into a text field in PSX:

http://aerowinx.com/board/index.php?topic=4817.msg53551#msg53551

Please note that this corridor path is not a wind direction path. It's a path within which the wind data changes from waypoint to waypoint (smoothly interpolated vertically and laterally); it implies wind changes caused by jetstream crossings etc. (More information on this corridor system in that other thread.)


Regards,

|-|ardy

[Hardy Heinlin]

The dust storm started again this morning:


Metar:
OEHL 170800Z 30020G30KT 3500 BLDU NSC 10/M04 Q1020

(BL = Blowing, DU = Dust)


Sigmet:
WSSD20 OEJD 170643
OEJD SIGMET 02 VALID 170800/171200 OEJD
OEJD JEDDAH FIR HVY DS OBS E OF E41 N OF N24 MOV SE INTSF=

(HVY DS = Heavy Dust Storm)


|-|

[Britjet]

It would be interesting to see if anyone is flying in and out in those conditions. I've never tried it but I suspect it would be rather similar to a volcanic ash effect on the engines...?
Peter

[Hardy Heinlin]

Some stuff on this subject:

https://flightsafety.org/asw-article/dusty-and-gusty/

https://youtu.be/cIp0MNjwUJg
https://youtu.be/uZtiWeuxZcY
https://youtu.be/drwaLWDP_n0


|-|ardy

[cagarini]

Since I'm a long time member of their beta testing teams, I just posted at the beta forum about this subject and will report back any feedback...

It would be really interesting to model such effects, visually. Wonder if the CAE / Thales simulators do that ?

[Hardy Heinlin]

The level D sims that I have tested all simulate volcanic ash only. I guess this is because "volcanic ash" is a QRH item, and "dust storm" is not.

Are dust storms part of any theoretical flight training subjects at all?


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[cagarini]

Not that I know, other than in FAA's publications, like in Chapter 13 of "Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge":

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation/phak/media/15_phak_ch13.pdf

and of course in the weather services ( OMM / ICAO ) publications.

[Toga]

Are dust storms part of any theoretical flight training subjects at all?

Yes, they come up in Met.

[ahaka]

For volcanic ash and dust storms, a checkbox to enable/disable them would probably do the job.

However, what would be a real game changer is if we could see the Active Sky precipitation on the PSX ND display. Active Sky can distribute this data, but of course I am not aware of the technical details. However, some software use it for their weather radar simulation.

So if PSX could fetch that information from the computer running Active Sky and then display the thunderstorm cells correctly on the ND, then we could navigate around the cells using both visual cues and weather radar information.

[Hardy Heinlin]

PSX add-ons will have the possibility to inject CB positions and sizes into PSX using the standard "SIGMET language". Just define TS SIGMET areas of the desired size by lat/lon boundary points and min/max altitudes. There is still some randomization within the area, but this is only for the small fuzzy details that make it look realistic.

If Active Sky uses the same real-life SIGMETs, it will mostly agree with the real-life SIGMETs in PSX anyway -- depending on the respective SIGMET area size. The smaller the area, the better the defintion of the random CB cell positions within the area. The greater the area, the more randomization within the area.


|-|ardy

[Gary Oliver]

Hardy,

As part of the work we have been doing for a P3Dv4 PSX_747 Model that features all the lights working properly with dynamic lighting we have found a way of triggering certain effects via ExternalSim.

Therefore if you could provide a Q code for 'Aircraft is in Volcanic Ash/Dust/Sand' we can trigger an effect around the aircraft to do this on the visuals.

That sounds quite exciting!  More details on PSX_747 for External sim will be on another post in a few weeks.

Cheers
G

[b744erf]

What a great news. I really hope to switch to ExternalSim from X-plane. The biggest reason why I did not make it yet is I really like the connected weather function. If you can add this gorgeous connecting weather, I am sure this is the best choise!

[Hardy Heinlin]

... you could provide a Q code for 'Aircraft is in Volcanic Ash/Dust/Sand' ...

I'll do it.


|-|ardy

[Chris Kilroy]

We get lots of BLDU metars here in Vegas in the spring time, most often accompanied by visibilities <1sm and winds 40-60kt+. This doesn't really affect operations at the airport save lowering the arrival rate, a few more go arounds, and the fact that AA can't land if the wind (even gusts) is reported at 50+ even though everybody else can. Here in the northern Mojave desert, we don't get the "sand storms" often associated with BLDU. In our case, it's actually just dust, which doesn't affect engine operation at all.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that just because BLDU shows up in the METAR, it doesn't mean there's automatically an engine-seizing sandstorm ongoing.

[Hardy Heinlin]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that just because BLDU shows up in the METAR, it doesn't mean there's automatically an engine-seizing sandstorm ongoing.

Yes, I won't put the SIGMET related "heavy dust storm" into the same category as the METAR DS or BLDU which are not necessarily worth a SIGMET report. In the existing PSX version, when you select "precipitation" and there's no cloud (of water dops), the precipitation effect will represent a sand storm and the generated METAR text will indicate DS instead of RA or SN. DS won't cause any malfunctions. Engine failures may only occur when in a "heavy dust storm"; and that can only be generated by the SIGMET feature (in future PSX versions). The effect on the PSX windshield will be different too.


|-|ardy

[Hardy Heinlin]

The discussion regarding the PSX wind & OAT corridor and SIGMETs continues here:

http://aerowinx.com/board/index.php?topic=5089.0


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[Hardy Heinlin]

... you could provide a Q code for 'Aircraft is in Volcanic Ash/Dust/Sand' we can trigger an effect around the aircraft to do this on the visuals.

This Q will be available in the respective upgrade, but before I forget to explain it, I explain it right now:

Qi264="WxBits"; Mode=XECON; Min=0; Max=2147483647;

Bit 1 : Aircraft is within volcanic ash cloud
Bit 2 : Aircraft is within dust storm or sand storm

Add-ons can: Read only.


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[Hardy Heinlin]

Qi264 "WxBits" is now available in PSX 10.59:

http://aerowinx.com/board/index.php?topic=4191.0


|-|ardy