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XPlane Weather - Is it up to date / real ?


Sebastien Bartosz
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Sebastien Bartosz
Posted
Posted

Hello there,

I noticed a long time ago, but I'm posting about it now:

 

I feel as if the XPlane weather is not updating... Or maybe updating every 5-6 hours ?

 

I do lots of long haul flights, and I'll take off , with a certain wind direction and speed,

then once in the climb getting higher, I'll get a new wind direction/speed and it will stay at that for the whole flight !

 

I took off from LFPG this morning, I'm currently over the north atlantic, and Ive had winds from approx. 270° at 90 kts. During the whole flight. Ever since shortly after takeoff.

 

Doing 390 kts GS isn't so fun...

 

And when I change to XPlanes real world weather, its completely different. Or when I look at some north atlantic wind sources (r/w) it doesnt correspond to the winds I'm getting...

 

My XSB is set to get new weather every 3 minutes.

New York ARTCC

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Alexander Cohrs
Posted
Posted

Ah, my favorite topic! I did not dare to bring this up again, but as you now started it...

 

Two different points:

 

1. XSB does not support real upper winds. As far as I understand, the upper winds you get during your flights are somehow calculated by interpolating the (ground) metars of the stations around you. Unfortunately, the result is very different from the real world winds.

 

2. Additionally, in your current case, you simply can't get any weather updates over the North Atlantic, as there aren't any weather stations - so there are no metars to be used as a basis for the calculation.

 

Fortunately, Wade Williams was so kind to take care of this topic. The decision was made that a solution via the online client (like XSB) is not the one to be favorized, as this would lead to different weather situations for different pilots using different clients. Instead, Wade is working on broadcasting the upper winds via the network.

 

I did not read any updates on this project for some month, and as mentioned, I did not dare to ask. I know our developers have a lot of work to do, and I think I already was a pain in the neck for them regarding this upper wind question. So I am happy someone else is now bringing this up again

 

What I do in the meantime is to set real weather updates to 60 minutes during cruise and set the winds manually. Not very nice, but it prevents you from getting 99 knots head winds when they should be 20 knots tail wind in real world.

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Sebastien Bartosz
Posted
Posted

Ah ok makes sense, thanks.

 

Still kind of wierd though...

 

EDIT: All of these symptoms happen over land too by the way. I always have some unrealistic wind that doesnt change direction or speed during my flight.

New York ARTCC

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Brendan Lynch 1167842
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Did you check the weather tab and if the update every X minutes is 1 minute?

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Sebastien Bartosz
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Posted

Yep.

New York ARTCC

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Brendan Lynch 1167842
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This is weird, the download and scan buttons are selected as well, correct?

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Sebastien Bartosz
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Brendan, are you talking about the Download ans Scan R/W weather in the XPlane Weather window? If so, that is independant from XSB weather system.

New York ARTCC

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Brendan Lynch 1167842
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Oh, yes, I thought you meant the X-Plane weather, not XSB weather. My bad.

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