RealWeather tool
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On my side, my ultimate dream would be like the ActiveSky for FSX which is downloading real TAF & METAR and set them in the sim.
One can dream.
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On my side, my ultimate dream would be like the ActiveSky for FSX which is downloading real TAF & METAR and set them in the sim.
One can dream.
Ultimate dream indeed, but even if we could just have some form of automated local weather, so that weather in China is different from that in Japan, and altitude-dependent winds, it would already add so much more to pre-flight briefing, performance, general immersion, …
fingers crossed for 4.33
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Hello All,
Im working on a tool that will make ‘some’ manipulation possible to the weather profile when starting a Campaign or loading save files.
This way it will be possible to change ‘some’ weather params outside of Falcon BMS.
The same percentages of a type of weather to happen at the start of a Campaign for example.This would be a one time thing though, right? You set it, start the campaign, and then it plays out however it wants to?
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Unless there is a way for force weather updates while the server is in 3D this wouldn’t be possible for dedicated hosts…
If there is a way it wouldn’t be hard to interpolate RL weather data to the handles available in BMS in realtime…
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This would be a one time thing though, right? You set it, start the campaign, and then it plays out however it wants to?
Thanks everyone for your inputs already.
At the moment you could basically run the tool next to bms and simply update the weather file anytime you would like. But To use the new settings you need to load a savefile or start a Campaign.
First my idea was born just so that we could start a Campaign with other weather then the standard sunny everytime.
Then when i got started, more ideas and possibilities came to my mind.
Feeding the tool with external data would not be a big issue as long as the data can be converted to the dataformats that the tool understands and can ‘manipulate’.
At the moment this is limited, but could expand further.
For now i am working with a simple ini txt file to feed the tool. Because this is easy to read and to customize.
Also probably would be available a verbose mode so the tool would start its work and close again automatically.Obi1
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First my idea was born just so that we could start a Campaign with other weather then the standard sunny everytime.
Not sure if I’m following your line of thinking, but internal weather module already permits to choose the weather state at the beginning of a campaign…
Anyways, it’s good to see someone feed the weather topic, looking forward to see some brainstorming in this thread
Best of luck to your endeavors. Fingers crossed to see some surprises in the future regarding the weather engine.
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@Nuno:
Not sure if I’m following your line of thinking, but internal weather module already permits to choose the weather state at the beginning of a campaign…
Anyways, it’s good to see someone feed the weather topic, looking forward to see some brainstorming in this thread
Best of luck to your endeavors. Fingers crossed to see some surprises in the future regarding the weather engine.
Yes ofcourse you can also set values at the start of a Campaign, but is it random;) for example using the same possibilities of a weather type as the percentages you would like to use further on in the Campaign.
And also i think standard there is no starting weather file for Campaigns, offcourse you can create one. Actually this is automated by the RealWeather tool itself.
By the way your beautifull work on the clouds was one of the reason I got hooked on this whole idea;)Cheers Obi1
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I just remember reading in some manual, available in the Docs-folder, that there are console commands that allow you to change wind. That’s the only one I currently remember, but I’m relatively sure there were others. Such commands did appear to allow a human in 3D to update weather.
I’m not sure if those commands still work in BMS, however, as I was unable to type them. I tried, but I have an AZERTY keyboard, and BMS uses QWERTY when I press SHIFT (and only then ), so some symbols are unavailable to me. (I think I needed a < or similar)
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thanks !!! for your work i think its very useful program for BMS !!!
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I just remember reading in some manual, available in the Docs-folder, that there are console commands that allow you to change wind. That’s the only one I currently remember, but I’m relatively sure there were others. Such commands did appear to allow a human in 3D to update weather.
I’m not sure if those commands still work in BMS, however, as I was unable to type them. I tried, but I have an AZERTY keyboard, and BMS uses QWERTY when I press SHIFT (and only then ), so some symbols are unavailable to me. (I think I needed a < or similar)
Thanks Eagle Eye,
I would love to have these kind of things working from within the RealWeather tool. And its exactly the kind of 3D manipulation I was thinking about.
But I did not know if it was possible at all and how it could be changed (Even thought about memory or a specific file where the used data would be at that moment of changing).
Just hope the command line inputs are still functioning in the latest version of BMS. I will investigate into this.In the meantime perhaps somebody could confirm an issue I detected while working on the RealWeather tool. I think its a general issue, so if someone could confirm this.
I have seen that some values for the percentages dont seem to be accepted. Like 5%, 10%, 15% and others possibly.
It looks like you can input the values, but then when pressing the SAVE WTH button OR after reloading the saved campaign file, the values are not the exact values I had.
I am aware that the 4 values together have to be 100% and perhaps it has to do with rounding or something.
Anyway if someone could confirm that its a general BMS issue than its ok.Cheers Obi1
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Found it in the BMS-manual p. 145-146, and it was the period (.) I was unable to use.
There’s a bit more in the BMS manual, but these are the commands.
In case that alone is not enough fun for you, there are also some new command line options that you can use to play with the above items in real time when you are in the 3D world. As usual, bring up the chat line (shift T by default) and type in: “. <keyword><value>” replace <keyword>with one of the ones below and <value>with something appropriate.
keyword: wd
effect: sets direction that the wind is blowing towards
range: integers in the interval of 0-359 inclusivekeyword: ws
effect: sets the strength of the wind in KPH (don’t ask me why that instead of knots, I don’t know :P)
range: integers in the interval of 0-MAXINT…I’d recommend keeping the numbers reasonably low thoughkeyword: swind
effect: this turns on and off the short wind turbulence (i.e. g_bWindShortChange)
range: 0 for off, any positive integer for on but 1 is recommendedkeyword: sfmw
effect: this turns on and off the effect of wind on the simple flight model (i.e. g_bSimpleFMIncludesWind)
range: 0 for off, any positive integer for on but 1 is recommendedkeyword: wcai
effect: this turns on and off the wind correction for AI course tracking (i.e. g_bWindCorrectAIFlying)
range: 0 for off, any positive integer for on but 1 is recommendedSome notes about g_bWindShortChange: I had not realized and others may not also…while this feature was implemented in support of the AFM flight model code, if the variable is true/on, any and all calculations that use wind speed and direction are apparently affected. Thus AI flight performance (as above) and even dumb bomb flight paths are affected by the shifts in wind speed and direction that are present with g_bWindShortChange.
With this in mind, notes that from the above chatline selections, wd and ws are only effective when g_bWindShortChange is false/off (it is off by default).</value></keyword></value></keyword>
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Found it in the BMS-manual p. 145-146, and it was the period (.) I was unable to use.
There’s a bit more in the BMS manual, but these are the commands.
Yes, was already reading the manual, you got there first;)
Very intresting, although I think the command cant be send from the OS commandline, but rather from within BMS. Via the Chat line(shift t), but even that could be possible to send the key commands to BMS i guess.
Now if only something simular would be possible for ‘Rain’ too.Thanks!
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On my side, my ultimate dream would be like the ActiveSky for FSX which is downloading real TAF & METAR and set them in the sim.
One can dream.
This or some Thorsten magic applied. This guy is friggin mathemagician, just see his other works related to visual simulation on Weather/Shaders Development sections of FG forum.
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@xeno: I get “error loading page”…
ok, now i ca see it. Sorry
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Ok I see, doubled “http://”. I’ve edited lthe link, so it should be ok now.
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Hello All,
I’ve updated the first post with an updated screenshot of the RealWeather tool.
I have been very busy (really a lot of time went into this) to get this far and still need a lot to do.
The ‘distance’ values you see are based on Tom’s recommended values for now and the sliders react based on these values.
But I want to add more modes to be selectable (like BMS settings for example).Hope you like the concept.
Cheers Obi1
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Hi ASharpe,
First I would like to be able to get and set some values manually. Also to test if it is at all possible.
After that getting ‘external’ data and importing these values is just using these functions. -
Hi All,
First post updated with latest UI changes included.
This software is for personal proof of concept reasons and public release is not planned, because of needed support when released and during development I noticed other better weather tools being developed.
Also in 3-4 weeks Falcon time, BMS weather handling and files could be entirely different from now making this tool obsolete, don’t know.Cheers Obi