weather update with VisualPSX question

[Ivo de Colfmaker]

Hi,
Yesterday I did a  multi crew test flight with  my friend to try out some weather scenarios.
I have prepar3D and he has FSX as scenery generator.
we both noticed that after a few changes of the weather in flight VisualPSX did not updated this weather anymore, unless we ticked the set zones by flight track box.
however when selecting our own weather it did not worked.  Neither  from planet, preset boxes or randomize, the nearest airport box was ticked and correct, and the weather zone focused.
Today I did some testing and found out that when on the ground I can select as many weather settings as I like, real weather, random , preselect, clouds boxes, whatever, 10times 20 times, always immediate and perfect update of the weather through visual PSX.
In flight however after choosing 3 or 4 different settings it did not update anymore, again nearest airport selected and weather zone focused.
The focused zone was always zone 1;
This let me to believe I do something wrong here?
Now I found that when selecting a different weather zone, lets say 3, click on nearest airport and this zone is focused  then updating again was correct.
What puzzles me is that this  nearest airport on zone 3 is the same as zone 1, and zone 1 does not update the weather through Visual PSX and zone 3 does.
Is this because the aircraft is closer to the center of zone 3 then zone 1?
And copying the focused weather of zone 1 to all zones is this the best option to try different weather scenarios in the same vicinity ?

ivo

 :mrgreen:

[Garry Richards]

Hi Ivo,

I am not sure how this situation arises. I was not able to reproduce it with PSX airborne, although motion was frozen so the nearest and focused zone was constant.

VisualPSX has a very simple weather transfer mechanism. It listens for zone METARs being sent from PSX. When it receives one it checks that it starts with an ICAO compatible four letter code and then sends it to FSX.

If that weather zone is nearby you will see the FSX weather change to the new values unless FSX can't parse the METAR, in which case it will be ignored.

Perhaps under the conditions of your flight and your weather settings PSX doesn't always send METAR updates.

Hardy, can you advise?

Cheers,

[Hardy Heinlin]

Hi Garry,

as we all know, when the user sets a zone weather manually, PSX autogenerates a respective METAR text (any real-world METAR text will be replaced in that zone by the autogenerated text).

Does VisualPSX receive such autogenerated METAR texts when the user edits the zone weather manually? If so, does the received text agree with the text on the Instructor?

Does VisualPSX receive the info about which zone is focussed? When this info is updated on the Instructor, does it agree with the info that VisualPSX gets?

What puzzles me is that this nearest airport on zone 3 is the same as zone 1, and zone 1 does not update the weather through Visual PSX and zone 3 does.

When zones 1 and 3 have the same center coords, PSX should focus zone 1. When multiple zones are identical, PSX focusses the left most zone on the tab row. When you copy a zone to another, the focus may change on the tab row. Be sure to work with the focussed tab.


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[Garry Richards]

Hi Hardy and all,

At last it's falling into place in my head, I think.

VisualPSX receives PSX variables metar1 to metar7. Each is sent at situation load and whenever the respective Instructor METAR text changes. They are then passed to FSX. So far so good.

But now there is a problem. I send the Metars to FSX in the order 7 to 1 so that if more than one refer to the same location the left one wins. This takes no account of manual entries into anywhere but the leftmost location if the locations are the same.

I can fix this by giving priority to the last change. I presume that automatic Metars all refer to different stations so they won't be affected by this change.

I may have seen the FSX weather not matching the PSX weather after a two hour flight today (I was investigating something else so wasn't thinking about weather) and will check that tomorrow.

In the mean time, any thoughts?

Cheers,

[Hardy Heinlin]

Hi Garry,

does VisualPSX read the lat/lon of each zone center?

http://aerowinx.com/forum/topic.php?post=14745#post14745

In my previous post I forgot that PSX will not send the index of the focussed zone into the network; it must be calculated by the add-on by computing each zone's distance to the current aircraft position.

Zone 1 is not necessarily the focussed zone. It is, often; but not always. It is definetely the focussed zone only when all 7 zones have the same center coords.

If the distance of the nearest zone is greater than 320 nm, no zone is focussed and the planet weather is used. Unfortunately, there is no METAR function for the planet weather.


Cheers,

|-|ardy

[Garry Richards]

Hi Hardy,

Does VisualPSX read the lat/lon of each zone center?

No, but my testing today has shown that it will have to. I already know the relevant variables and their structure.

For those who are testing the weather I have confirmed that FSX sometimes stops following frequent weather changes from PSX. I need to investigate this further to find a solution.

Cheers,

[Ivo de Colfmaker]

Hi Garry,
Thank You very much for following up this so quickly and providing to us such a wonderfull tool.
ivo

[brian747]

Many thanks indeed, Garry!

Your dedication is sincerely appreciated.    

Cheers,

Brian

[Garry Richards]

I have made a debug version of VisualPSX with a revised weather transfer procedure.

In this version:

1 Where there are multiple zones with the same ICAO only the lowest zone with that ICAO is sent to FSX.

2 On situation load all zones are sent (with the above limitation).

3 FSX will ignore sent METARs if it doesn't have that ICAO in its database, or if there is no weather station at the location, or if the METAR contains a syntax or formatting error.

In my testing the weather was set reliably in each zone while making manual changes and during automatic PSX weather allocation. Please test it for yourself.

The METARS are displayed on the status page as they are sent to FSX.

Thanks,