XP11: What is the correct setting for weather using XSB?

[Rich Heimlich]

I have XP11, SkyMaxx Pro and RWC. I love real world weather when not in VATSIM but prefer to mainly fly in VATSIM sessions.

 

I noticed on my most recent flight that my weather was likely off. VATTASTIC showed my plane flying through a bad weather patch but my actual in-sim experience didn't even have a cloud around me.

 

I was under the impression that XSB takes control of the weather. Is that not correct? Should I not be set to Real World Weather?

 

What's the correct settings and do I need to change anything in SkyMaxx Pro/RWC?

 

Thanks...

[Christopher Collins]

I have XP11, SkyMaxx Pro and RWC. I love real world weather when not in VATSIM but prefer to mainly fly in VATSIM sessions.

 

I noticed on my most recent flight that my weather was likely off. VATTASTIC showed my plane flying through a bad weather patch but my actual in-sim experience didn't even have a cloud around me.

 

I was under the impression that XSB takes control of the weather. Is that not correct? Should I not be set to Real World Weather?

 

What's the correct settings and do I need to change anything in SkyMaxx Pro/RWC?

 

There is no "correct" beyond ensuring only one application/plugin has control of the weather.

 

XSB's weather system is old and very primitive - it has it's own (imperfect) METAR p[Mod - Happy Thoughts]r which it uses to set the simulator global weather - this can create somewhat disjoint weather transitions so a lot of people try to side-step it (I don't blame them). If XSB's weather is enabled, it will explicitly disable the simulator's weather updates on it's own.

 

You can turn off XSB's wether support by setting weather updates to 0 - if you do that, it'll leave the simulator's weather settings alone so you can use external weather data such as the integrated real-world weather source or third party plugins. This is necessary if you're using external plugins to provide weather information.

 

Bear in mind that if you are using external weather, there may be issues with coverage of the datasource vs VATSIM's weather - we have this problem regularly in Australia as most of our Wx data is not available through the main providers.

 

I do have improving the weather support on my todo list, but I still need to get 1.3.3 final out the door first.

[Rich Heimlich]

Thanks so much Chris!

 

Question: If I use real weather (which is usually very good) from RWC will it potentially match weather fronts I see in Vattastic?

 

My main goal would be to avoid situations where I'm on a storm that controllers don't see.

[Christopher Collins]

Thanks so much Chris!

 

Question: If I use real weather (which is usually very good) from RWC will it potentially match weather fronts I see in Vattastic?

 

My main goal would be to avoid situations where I'm on a storm that controllers don't see.

 

The problem is twofold: I don't know where vattastic gets their storm data from, and weather on the network isn't defined with that much accuracy anyway - Weather is defined by METAR sampled at a number of airports - it's not so precise to say a "storm exists inside this box".

[Rich Heimlich]

Okay. Understood. Thanks for the details. Bit of a pity.

 

I guess if I'd like to vector around a storm cell I can still ask VATSIM controllers to approve my vector requests even if they don't see the weather I'm seeing.

[Dace Nicmane]

You can request to deviate right or left for weather, then let them know when you're ready to resume your route. They're gonna tell you what to do.

[Juan Perez]

When can we expect an update in the XSB weather system?

 

Meanwhile thanks for your great work!

[Josh Glottmann]

Meanwhile thanks for your great work!

I'd suggest using the NOAA whether plugin and disabling the XSB one.