Weather in briefing for mission
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So lets say the weather in a mission briefing says sunny 23 degrees C, wind at 180 degrees for 4 kts…is this the forecast for the mission duration? or is this just what the weather will be when i get into the pit…could it change during the mission? like from sunny with clear visibility to virtually no visibility with dense fog? and 4 kt wind to 25 kt?
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It is the weather at the exact time you’re watching it. If you watch at the briefing at 0929 and the weather is scheduled to change at 0930, you’ll get a different weather report when looking 1 minute later.
If you go through the weather tabs, you can see when it’s expected to change.
Probabilistic is between X and Y seconds, which can range from 1 to unlimited, I think. (3600 seconds = 1 hour) The percentages dictate what the odds are of the weather changing to a particular environment.
Deterministic allows 1 change at a fixed time per 30 minute, and you can manually set to which environment it will change. I’m not entirely certain if you could switch from clear to inclement, though.What this means is, if you look at a “fair weather” briefing at 0900 and load up Mk.82 bombs, you could be in for a nasty surprise when you reach your target 1 hour later and notice you’re in bad weather.
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It is the weather at the exact time you’re watching it. If you watch at the briefing at 0929 and the weather is scheduled to change at 0930, you’ll get a different weather report when looking 1 minute later.
If you go through the weather tabs, you can see when it’s expected to change.
Probabilistic is between X and Y seconds, which can range from 1 to unlimited, I think. (3600 seconds = 1 hour) The percentages dictate what the odds are of the weather changing to a particular environment.
Deterministic allows 1 change at a fixed time per 30 minute, and you can manually set to which environment it will change. I’m not entirely certain if you could switch from clear to inclement, though.What this means is, if you look at a “fair weather” briefing at 0900 and load up Mk.82 bombs, you could be in for a nasty surprise when you reach your target 1 hour later and notice you’re in bad weather.
Ok looking in the weather tabs its got probabilistic and intervals between 20,000 sec and 25,000. I’m just roughly guessing thats every 5 and half to 7 hours the weather will change with each weather type having equal chance. I understand each tab except for turbulence have no idea what thats about and dont want to go there but for fog….how does that work? for sunny weather it has fog start at 8,000 feet up to 200,000? how does that work as i havent noticed any fog in my campaign so far and all sorties i’ve done up to now have been in clear sunny weather.
Worked out the next weather change should be between 20.30 and 22.00 and next sortie take off is 19.55. Flight plan has me expected to land at 20.41 so slight chance weather could change wehn i’m on my way back to land…could be an ILS landing may be required, the joys
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Worked out the next weather change should be between 20.30 and 22.00 and next sortie take off is 19.55. Flight plan has me expected to land at 20.41 so slight chance weather could change wehn i’m on my way back to land…could be an ILS landing may be required, the joys
Note that for actually observing a weather change within 5 to 7 hours in your case, the campaign engine is required to be running constantly up to this time period without a break. Closing the theater screen or BMS will reset the process. Thus, estimating a weather change within 20:30 to 22:00 is only valid if the campaign engine is processing since somewhat 15:00.
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Note that for actually observing a weather change within 5 to 7 hours in your case, the campaign engine is required to be running constantly up to this time period without a break. Closing the theater screen or BMS will reset the process. Thus, estimating a weather change within 20:30 to 22:00 is only valid if the campaign engine is processing since somewhat 15:00.
So it resets whenever i exit out of the campaign? i’m never gona play it for more than 5-7 hours solid so then the weather would never change.
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You can manually change the weather settings. What I usually do when we fly campaigns is set it to Probabilistic, between 1800 and 3600 seconds (30 - 60 minutes), as you get a fairly frequent change of weather that way. I once tried setting it to 600 seconds (10 minutes), to simulate local weather, depending on the place you were flying at, but soon found out that it may change quite abruptly, and that AI/tanker/weapons don’t seem to handle it too well.
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So it resets whenever i exit out of the campaign?
Yes.
i’m never gona play it for more than 5-7 hours solid so then the weather would never change.
Well, some people around here actually do that.
You can manually change the weather settings. What I usually do when we fly campaigns is set it to Probabilistic, between 1800 and 3600 seconds (30 - 60 minutes), as you get a fairly frequent change of weather that way. I once tried setting it to 600 seconds (10 minutes), to simulate local weather, depending on the place you were flying at, but soon found out that it may change quite abruptly, and that AI/tanker/weapons don’t seem to handle it too well.
In general, that’s a good idea to make things interesting. However, I’ve found myself lost in probabilistic bad weather more than once while I actually had to deploy LGBs or mavericks and had no chance finding my moving targets visually due to overcast. Happened to me more than once. Quite frustrating.
Another approach is to retrieve actual weather and weather changes from various METAR sources (such as skyvector.com) and adjust the weather settings in BMS accordingly. However, there are no METAR sources for north korea available, so this method is another compromise. If anybody knows a source for real DPRK METAR, please share
Cheers,
EggsEdit: A program that retrieves METAR data from skyvector.com and others, and adjusts the weather settings in the BMS config file automatically? Does this sound like a valuable tool? I might start doing some coding tonight
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Yes.
Well, some people around here actually do that.
In general, that’s a good idea to make things interesting. However, I’ve found myself lost in probabilistic bad weather more than once while I actually had to deploy LGBs or mavericks and had no chance finding my moving targets visually due to overcast. Happened to me more than once. Quite frustrating.
Another approach is to retrieve actual weather and weather changes from various METAR sources (such as skyvector.com) and adjust the weather settings in BMS accordingly. However, there are no METAR sources for north korea available, so this method is another compromise. If anybody knows a source for real DPRK METAR, please share
Cheers,
EggsEdit: A program that retrieves METAR data from skyvector.com and others, and adjusts the weather settings in the BMS config file automatically? Does this sound like a valuable tool? I might start doing some coding tonight
So lets say you’re tasked with BAI and the weather changes to inclement with low fog so visibility is at its worst, now what? how would you find your targets? and what weapons would work against them?
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You can manually change the weather settings. What I usually do when we fly campaigns is set it to Probabilistic, between 1800 and 3600 seconds (30 - 60 minutes), as you get a fairly frequent change of weather that way. I once tried setting it to 600 seconds (10 minutes), to simulate local weather, depending on the place you were flying at, but soon found out that it may change quite abruptly, and that AI/tanker/weapons don’t seem to handle it too well.
That sounds good and i guess also not predictable if you have all weather types set to even chance (25% each) is that how you set it? so if your flight starts off sunny, theres’ an equal chance of it still being sunny after those 30-60 mins.
The weather model is cool, i love how you’ll be wondering what the weather will be like especially if it takes like 40 min or longer to reach a target, and if it changes to inclement (i’m guessing that would be a bad storm with low clouds at about 6,000 feet?) you’ll be wondering if it changes to fair or sunny for your journey back making you wonder how you’re going to land whether it be by VFR or IFR.
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That sounds good and i guess also not predictable if you have all weather types set to even chance (25% each) is that how you set it? so if your flight starts off sunny, theres’ an equal chance of it still being sunny after those 30-60 mins.
In real life, you would have a weather forecast, so I don’t set them all to 25%, because that would be totally unpredictable. When I start planning, I imagine a weather scenario. One time that could be “full overcast”, with >90% inclement; another time it can be “most likely fairly good”, so 40% sunny, 50% fair; then it might be “good now, but there’s a front rolling in”, so 40% fair, 45% poor; and so on and so on.
Then, based on that, you can start planning what tactics to use, which weapons to load, …Start playing with those weather settings and you’ll soon find out that replaying the same mission could already be an entirely different experience.
If I still want to simulate local weather (e.g. Poor over homebase, Fair over target) I use Deterministic, and make sure that the change in weather is during ingress and egress. For example, I take-off at 1200, and need 1 hour to get to target = change weather somewhere between 1230 and 1245. Then 10 minutes in target area before flying 1 hour back home, so another weather change between 1320 and 1330.
If you want, with Deterministic, you can make it really interesting: take off in good conditions, target site has fair to poor weather, and when you’re back at homeplate you have zero visibility fog and rain.
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In real life, you would have a weather forecast, so I don’t set them all to 25%, because that would be totally unpredictable. When I start planning, I imagine a weather scenario. One time that could be “full overcast”, with >90% inclement; another time it can be “most likely fairly good”, so 40% sunny, 50% fair; then it might be “good now, but there’s a front rolling in”, so 40% fair, 45% poor; and so on and so on.
Then, based on that, you can start planning what tactics to use, which weapons to load, …Start playing with those weather settings and you’ll soon find out that replaying the same mission could already be an entirely different experience.
If I still want to simulate local weather (e.g. Poor over homebase, Fair over target) I use Deterministic, and make sure that the change in weather is during ingress and egress. For example, I take-off at 1200, and need 1 hour to get to target = change weather somewhere between 1230 and 1245. Then 10 minutes in target area before flying 1 hour back home, so another weather change between 1320 and 1330.
If you want, with Deterministic, you can make it really interesting: take off in good conditions, target site has fair to poor weather, and when you’re back at homeplate you have zero visibility fog and rain.
I dont know how the fog tab works, it has for sunny weather fog at 8,000 feet up to 200,000, how does it work? and i take it those 4 weather types relate to it being, for example sunny is clear so no clouds (i think except for at 35,000 feet? with the con layer?) for fair theres’ some clouds and what about poor and inclement? basically more clouds right? but for poor its accompanied with rain and inclement its a thunderstorm? and is it possible to have heavy dense fog in inclement weather?
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Not entirely sure how the fog works, so this will need confirmation from someone else.
To my knowledge, it’s the distance in feet at which fog starts and ends. The closer together both values are, the denser the fog will be. So Sunny 8,000-200,000 would give you a fog layer that is 192,000 feet wide, which is practically imperceptible.
If you want to have dense fog at 1.5NM (1NM = ~6000ft), you would set the lower value around 9,000 and upper value not above 15,000.About the weather types, it’s pretty much as you say. I think it’s as follows:
Sunny: clear skies, except maybe some stratus
Fair: A few cumulus clouds here and there, but generally good weather
Poor: More cumulus clouds, possibly an overcast but no or light precipitation
Inclement: Definite overcast, with normal or heavy precipitation -
Not entirely sure how the fog works, so this will need confirmation from someone else.
To my knowledge, it’s the distance in feet at which fog starts and ends. The closer together both values are, the denser the fog will be. So Sunny 8,000-200,000 would give you a fog layer that is 192,000 feet wide, which is practically imperceptible.
If you want to have dense fog at 1.5NM (1NM = ~6000ft), you would set the lower value around 9,000 and upper value not above 15,000.About the weather types, it’s pretty much as you say. I think it’s as follows:
Sunny: clear skies, except maybe some stratus
Fair: A few cumulus clouds here and there, but generally good weather
Poor: More cumulus clouds, possibly an overcast but no or light precipitation
Inclement: Definite overcast, with normal or heavy precipitationI get it, what about when the weather is due to change so now i have it as probabilistic with change every min interval 1800 sec and max 3600…if the weather is sunny (clear when at night) could the weather change to any of the 4 states instantly? so it could go from sunny to inclement? i’d imagine it does as it i have it set at 25% for each weather state (at the moment, but think i might change it).
