Ross Carlson Posted June 5, 2019 at 07:33 PM Posted June 5, 2019 at 07:33 PM Ahh, okay, that's not as bad, but still doesn't get us anything that we can't already get from real world weather feeds. Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Warren Posted June 7, 2019 at 03:21 PM Posted June 7, 2019 at 03:21 PM Just out of curiosity Ross, because I have no idea. Is it that hard to add weather to the clients? Is it hours of code, or something relatively simple to do? If it's not terribly time consuming, then why not? It wouldn't be harmful. If it is, then I can certainly respect the delima. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Carlson Posted June 7, 2019 at 11:28 PM Posted June 7, 2019 at 11:28 PM Adding weather radar depiction in the ATC clients wouldn't be the hardest piece of functionality I've taken on, but it wouldn't be the easiest either. If it was super simple, it would be done already. Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Board of Governors Simon Kelsey Posted June 8, 2019 at 04:41 AM Board of Governors Posted June 8, 2019 at 04:41 AM Ahh, okay, that's not as bad, but still doesn't get us anything that we can't already get from real world weather feeds. Hi Ross, I'd argue the advantage of doing it via AS would be that it would provide weather (more) consistent with that depicted in the sim. As all significant weather in the sim is basically interpolated from METARs, it can often be very different to the real-world radar feeds, especially in more sp[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ly-populated areas... Vice President, Pilot Training Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Carlson Posted June 8, 2019 at 08:47 PM Posted June 8, 2019 at 08:47 PM Are you sure they don't use real world weather radar to drive their simulation? METARs don't tell you nearly as much about the size and density of the cells as the real world weather radar data. I'm not even sure it matters ... at the end of the day, if you can't control the location of the cells, it doesn't matter what the source data is. (Not to mention the fact that I am loathe to add functionality to ATC clients that depends on third-party payware.) What we really need to do is some empirical testing to see how consistent weather depiction is from one sim to another, and how much it varies from the real world data. I know some informal testing was done on this years ago, but it wasn't a large enough sample set to be conclusive. Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhruv Kalra Posted June 9, 2019 at 10:39 PM Posted June 9, 2019 at 10:39 PM Are you sure they don't use real world weather radar to drive their simulation? METARs don't tell you nearly as much about the size and density of the cells as the real world weather radar data. I'm not even sure it matters ... at the end of the day, if you can't control the location of the cells, it doesn't matter what the source data is. (Not to mention the fact that I am loathe to add functionality to ATC clients that depends on third-party payware.) What we really need to do is some empirical testing to see how consistent weather depiction is from one sim to another, and how much it varies from the real world data. I know some informal testing was done on this years ago, but it wasn't a large enough sample set to be conclusive. I’m all for this. Nothing like having a couple pilots suddenly unable vectors to final at MCO during FSExpo to start your inner monologue cursing about lack of precipitation depiction in vSTARS Dhruv Kalra VATUSA ZMP ATM | Instructor | VATSIM Network Supervisor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Bartels Posted June 17, 2019 at 01:09 PM Posted June 17, 2019 at 01:09 PM I'm no programmer and talking out of my other mouth, but it seems like you could take raw radar data that gives the coordinates of the cells and put that through a weather engine that tells the sim, put cell here. That would be a lot better than the current version where the metar just says, yeah thunderstorm. Put it somewhere. You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Forever and always "Just the events guy" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Peterson Posted June 17, 2019 at 03:27 PM Posted June 17, 2019 at 03:27 PM I'm no programmer and talking out of my other mouth, but it seems like you could take raw radar data that gives the coordinates of the cells and put that through a weather engine that tells the sim, put cell here. That would be a lot better than the current version where the metar just says, yeah thunderstorm. Put it somewhere. I think it would be much easier to just import the radar data and paint it rather than convert coordinates and such. Jeremy Peterson (HP) VATUSA Command Center National Operations Manager (NOM)/VATUSA9[email protected] or [email protected] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Warren Posted June 17, 2019 at 06:19 PM Posted June 17, 2019 at 06:19 PM What we really need to do is some empirical testing to see how consistent weather depiction is from one sim to another, and how much it varies from the real world data. I know some informal testing was done on this years ago, but it wasn't a large enough sample set to be conclusive. How do you propose gathering this data Ross? Is it a matter of someone comparing sim Wx with sim radar depiction against a concurrent real world visual and real world nexrad source? I'm afraid in northern California, our thunderstorm season is thinning out. If you are serious though and seriously interested in putting the work into this, then perhaps we put out a call for testers gathering the data you need. The community is generally quite responsive to this, and as you can see, this thread alone has gandered significant interest. How can we help? Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Warren Posted June 17, 2019 at 06:20 PM Posted June 17, 2019 at 06:20 PM What we really need to do is some empirical testing to see how consistent weather depiction is from one sim to another, and how much it varies from the real world data. I know some informal testing was done on this years ago, but it wasn't a large enough sample set to be conclusive. How do you propose gathering this data Ross? Is it a matter of someone comparing sim Wx with sim radar depiction against a concurrent real world visual and real world nexrad source? I'm afraid in northern California, our thunderstorm season is thinning out. If you are serious though and seriously interested in putting the work into this, then perhaps we put out a call for testers gathering the data you need. The community is generally quite responsive to this, and as you can see, this thread alone has gandered significant interest. How can we help? Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Carlson Posted June 18, 2019 at 01:28 AM Posted June 18, 2019 at 01:28 AM What I think we need to know is how consistent weather depiction is from one sim to the next, across the popular weather engines. Plus, how close is the in-sim representation of storm cells (in terms of location, size, shape, bases, tops) to real world. And we need a lot more than one or two people involved. The more the better, but I would say at least three or four from each popular weather engine. Note that I can't make any commitment to adding weather radar to my ATC clients, so please don't think that gathering data about weather representation in the sim will lead to having weather radar in the ATC clients. My time for VATSIM dev is extremely limited and there are far more important things to spend it on, such as integrating the new voice system and other planned improvements. That being said, if we found that we could actually get consistent weather in the sims, and it comes reasonably close to matching real world, then that would at least move it out of the eye candy category and into the realm of actually being of real benefit to the network as a whole. Developer: vPilot, VRC, vSTARS, vERAM, VAT-Spy Senior Controller, Boston Virtual ARTCC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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