Cloud levels at High altitude airports still broken!
Submitted by oogiefrog52 on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 21:04
I fly FSX in offline mode. Therefore after downloading the initial metar, the only thing that changes are the dynamic updates generated by ASE.
My settings are all default, straight "out-of-the-box" except that I have unchecked automatic weather updates.
When flying around an area like Denver or Mexico City or Salt Lake, everything starts out just fine. After a few minutes however, the clouds start appearing right above or embedded in the ground. I'll spare you the exact metars and screenshots. Just trust me when I tell you that this is just flat out incorrect.
I thought you guys said that this was FIXED????
ignore
response to wrong comment
Spurious cumulo with ASE SP1
Yeah it's a pity but this problem still happens with ASE SP1. It might be a little bit better but the experience at places like Tucson Arizona is a bit surreal at times. SP1 seems to wipe the formation of these ghost clouds after certain number of minutes before they start reforming. Selecting fog layer is a bad idea as this makes the problem far more noticeable.
On a positive note it appears that the ghost cumulo don't pop out of the ground as much in SP1. They tend to appear 2500 feet or so above the terrain in 50% of cases and out of the ground the other 50%, despite not a single metar reporting these clouds...... If it were reality, these ghost cumulo would need to be reported as they impede visibility in potentially dangerous ways.
Sincerely
Extremely dissapointed about this!
The included picture says it all. The ground level is at about 3000 feet ASL, outside Goodland Kansas...those are not thundershowers!
I have no idea how this issue is being ignored? I was hoping that the ASE upgrade would fix this, but again, I was wrong. In my frustration I've started using the REX weather engine. It is somewhat limited, but at least it depicts the clouds at the right altitude!!!
Mr. Skorna, not that Hi Fi seems to care much, but this absolutely ruins the program. Unless you happen to be flying along the coast, it ruins the immersion factor entirely for me.
What does one have to say or what information does the user community need to provide to bump the priority of this issue? Its a big deal. I wouldn't mind flying in the No-Mans-Land between the East Coast and the West Coast once in a while. Or at Lukla, or the Andes, or ......
Clouds in the ground SP2?
Thanks for the picture Oogiefrog. I have similar picture posted elsewhere. The bug spoils low altitude VFR flights in regions like Arizona, Utah, Grand Canyons etc. It is especially tragic for glider pilots in these regions who are looking for lift at low altitude in the midst of these phantom clouds.
In this thread some months ago Jim said that he would take a look at this bug for SP1. It is not fixed and SP1 has been released. Will it be fixed for SP2 or for any future product or is it fundamentally impossible to fix?
Honesty about it would be appreciated. Perhaps it cannot be fixed or perhaps HiFi cannot reproduce the bug? If the bug is only affecting 0.5% of users and so it is too expensive to fix for such a small use case, then at least let us know so that us 0.5% of users can go make other plans. We do not only just outlay money for this software, but also a lot of money in hardware as well.
My system:
Intel quad core
9800GTX
Vista
4GIG
FSX Acceleration
ASE SP1
Sincerely
Hi, Using historical weather
Hi,
Using historical weather from 04-01-2010 00Z I went to KDEN and here is what I got.
Of all places I would think that clouds in the ground would show up here, but nothing even close to the ground.
The METAR had clouds at 8000 and 13000.
This is with B572 of ASE and FS9, registered FSUIPC set to default settings and weather settings off.
So how best can I reproduce this?
Thanks,
Jim - HiFi Software Sales and Support
How to reproduce
Hi Jim
Honestly we have explained it dozens of times before. I have provided test cases as well. Fly VFR any where in Utah or Arizona during the middle of the day when the conditions are actually perfectly clear in the METAR and you will see it. Doesn't matter if it is offline or online.
I use Simconnect not FSUIPC with FSX. There has never been a problem with FS9! It only started with the first versions of this software for FSX years ago.
Cheers
Next set over to Utah at
Next set over to Utah at KCNY. Again CLR in the METAR.
Jim - HiFi Software Sales and Support
Hi, First set at KAVQ. A CLR
Hi,
First set at KAVQ. A CLR METAR. Did not see any clouds touching the ground or close to the ground.
Jim - HiFi Software Sales and Support
Thanks Glider1001
Yes, my first question, is why in the heck is Hi Fi trying to reproduce this with FS2004??? The very first sentence of this thread clearly states we are using FSX! Why is their such a failure to communicate?
I have read several long threads on this subject at AVSIM. Hi Fi is well aware of this problem and knows what it needs to do to fix it...add the AGL-reported Metar altitude to the Station Altitude, since the "bug" is in FSX, using ASL instead of AGL....(Notice that the default FSX weather embed the clouds in the ground as well). Microsoft isn't going to repair FSX, so If Hi Fi cares about accurate weather depiction, they are going to have to do some additon in -their- code. Its probably a single line of code.
For whatever reason, however, some decision has been made that this is of the lowest possible priority. I have a completely optimal system, set up completely correctly, and as a result, I don't believe for one second that only a "few" people are experiencing this or that it can't be reproduced.
I certainly hope this isn't the case of the problem not being fixed simply because Hi Fi is annoyed at the tone of the people reporting this. Nobody is trying to be a troll here, Jim, we just want accurate weather :)
lets all keep it cool here...I'm not interested in this turning into a flame war, or burning any bridges. What additional information can me or Glider provide to help out getting to the bottom of this, once and for all?
Hi, We did fix the cloud
Hi,
We did fix the cloud height issue with SP1. Here is from KGYR tonight, FEW clouds, all at the proper altitude. This is with the 3 cloud generation sliders at zero and stratus clouds at zero.
Thanks,
Jim - HiFi Software Sales and Support
Wait a minute!
You run 3 "test cases" . The first 2 have a CLEAR SKIES in the Metar. And the last one, has 3 of the 4 cloud sliders turned to ZERO ?????
Those are the examples you are using to prove to me that this problem doesn't actually exist? Wow.
If the user can't get realistic depictions with several of the cloud options enabled.....then why are those options even there? And if there isn't a problem, why were you so careful to make sure they were disabled? Why did you pick 2 examples where the sky was CLR?
Were you flying completely offline? How long was your flight? How many dynamic update cycles occurred during your flight? Did you have DWC DISABLED, using FSUIPC for the wind smoothing. These are the kinds of comprehensive test cases that your beta-testers should be running...
Look....like I said, I'm not interested in a flame war, but I'm pretty disappointed about this because I've been experiencing this almost every flight since the birth of ASX/ASA/ASE and I don't know why you are so adamant that this problem doesn't exist. Most developers of Flight Sim products are very interested to hear about these kinds of issues that their users are experiencing because they are committed to making their product as good as it can possibly be. Regardless of your obvious annoyance at either me or Glider, Could you PLEASE just open up a problem ticket to your development team, and direct them to this thread. If you claim that they fixed this problem in SP1, even though it never existed in the first place, then at the very least, the developers would want to know the results of their work, wouldn't they?
Peace,
I also saw clouds on the
I also saw clouds on the ground (with latest ASE SP1 installed) when landing at Denver and Madrid (last week). I'll take some screenshots next time this happens (or I'll try to reproduce the problem with historical weather).
I have nothing against HiFi but I really don't understand why they are treating customers as liars - ok, a bit harsh but how would you say it? People obviously have this problem (well, I do too) and they (HiFi) are trying to convince them (clear skies screenshots,..) it's not happening!?
I understand they can not solve the problem if they can't reproduce it but c'mon, you really can't?
Power Supply: LC8850 850W
Motherboard: GA-EX58-UD4
CPU: i7 920 @ 4GHz
Memory: MUSHKIN 3x2GB HP3-12800 DDR3 3x2GB 1600MHz
Video Card: Geforce GTX 285
Addons: ASE, REX, UT2, FSPassengersX, FS Global 2008, UTX Europe
Windows 7 64bit
Hi All, I read all of this a
Hi All,
I read all of this a few hours ago, thought about my response, and now have returned to post.
People gave me some conditions to duplicate and so I did, to the best of my ability, and then I took screen shots of what I saw in my FSX using my ASE. So I posted those and some of the settings I use, and what do I get?
If you instruct FSX to generate clouds not based on any actual data, you are going to take the chance that FSX will place those clouds in odd places. That is the way it is; its the nature of FSX.
When FSX and ASX were in beta, I set my non-data cloud sliders all to zero. I didn't want CAVOK clouds, or no data clouds, or cirrus clouds, or even any stratus clouds. Every single FSX flight I took was spot on.
When FSX and ASX were released, well the same thing. For every beta test, for every public release, for everything, the first sliders I adjusted were those 4 non-data based cloud sliders. Every single FSX flight I took was spot on.
ASA came along and I did the very same thing and now the same for ASE. I have never seen a cirrus or stratus cloud in FSX or a cloud under CAVOK conditions or a cloud at a station not reporting a cloud layer. Why? Because my weather program tells the half broken FSX engine exactly where to draw its clouds, based on the METAR data from my weather program. Every single FSX flight I took was spot on.
Yes, ASE SP1 fixed a cloud altitude issue, but with actual data driven cloud layers, not with some non-data based, randomly drawn clouds.
So, why are the sliders there? To give users the choice to do what they wish with those 4 conditions. But with choice comes the possibility that the visuals will not be pleasing to the eye of the beholder.
With that all being said I will suggest that if you are seeing clouds at unrealistic places, that you do place those 4 non data based sliders at zero and see if you notice a difference in your FSX experience.
All the best,
Jim - HiFi Software Sales and Support
My no-data cloud layers were
My no-data cloud layers were all on 50%. Maybe that's the reason for me seeing clouds on the ground. I'll try them on zero for a while. Maybe my last response was a bit too harsh.
Power Supply: LC8850 850W
Motherboard: GA-EX58-UD4
CPU: i7 920 @ 4GHz
Memory: MUSHKIN 3x2GB HP3-12800 DDR3 3x2GB 1600MHz
Video Card: Geforce GTX 285
Addons: ASE, REX, UT2, FSPassengersX, FS Global 2008, UTX Europe
Windows 7 64bit
You are saying that FSX is
As troubling as it is that you didn't bother to test the Non-data cloud sliders, or even the Cirrus and Stratus sliders...You are saying that FSX is ultimately responsible for the placement of "non-data" clouds, so why bother testing it in Beta? If ASE is leaving it up to FSX to tell the clouds what altitude to appear at, that sounds like a problem with the design of ASE, and I don't buy the "its FSX's fault". I have never seen this problem in the REX weather engine.
Even so, I too read your very civil response, considered it, and set off to do a test flight from KCOS to KAPA, using some of the settings you suggested, OFFLINE, DWC off, using the Metar file 2010-05-19-12z.wx.
I set:
CAVOK Cloud Generation = 0
No Data Cloud Generation = 0
Cirrus Cloud Generation = 30
Stratus Cloud Occurence = 0
I was perfectly open to consider this as a temporary "workaround" (not a fix) provided it worked as advertised. Unfortunately, my result was exactly the same. Horrible looking clouds embedded in the ground on a pretty nice day.
In one last ditch effort to get you to stand by your product I have included an overly comprehensive set of screen shots. They are described as follows:
1)generalsettings.jpg (the general settings screen)
2cloudoptionsscrren.jpg (the cloud settings)
3)visoptionscreen.jpg (visibility options screen)
4)InitialMap.jpg (the ASE Map screen start of flight
5)KCOSMetar.jpg (the initial weather metar)
6)KCOSNotBadGround.jpg (Good initial depiction at KCOS. No problems yet!)
7)EasternPlains2.jpg (enroute to KAPA-bad clouds to the East appear less than 15 minutes after takeoff)
8)enroute.jpg (2/3 through flight. Ground embedded clouds to the Northwest
9)KAPAMetar (the weather screen for KAPA)
10) ApproachingKAPA (just south of KAPA, look at those horrible clouds!
11)Kapawidescreen (Same as above, but a panoramic)
There is no more I can do. Myself and others have tried to bring this problem to the attention of you and the development team for over a year. Totally in vain. I am a hundred percent confident that these problems could be replicated by you or others on your team, but I have yet to see a serious attempt on the part of Hi Fi to do so. I've dealt with many many FS related customer service departments, and I have to say I've never been treated like this by any of them, or seen a problem of this signifigance, just brushed away, as if you could care less. You should know at this point that I am 99% at the point where I become an "ex" customer. I would prefer for this problem to be addressed, but if the answer is no, I can always use the pretty-good REX weather engine. So I humbly implore you do the right thing at this point.
thanks,
p.s. thank you glider and 0artur0, who have supported me on this thread.
Clouds-in-ground test case 2 confirmed
Just a note that I have run the same test as OogieFrog above with these settings and get the same clouds in the ground result (see attachment). You can notice that not only are the clouds near by in the ground, but also off in the distance:
CAVOK Cloud Generation = 0
No Data Cloud Generation = 0
Cirrus Cloud Generation = 0
Stratus Cloud Occurence = 0
DWC on
FPS unlimited/30FPS (no change)
If Prevent Redraws is turned off, the spurious clouds hang around for 10-15 minutes then get wiped but then reform after approximately 5-10 minutes.
We now have four users that confirm this problem and I myself and Oogiefrog have put in a lot of effort over the last six months to help resolve it but our hopes for SP1 were to no avail. I hope that Jim can find a positive way to acknowledge that the problem exists and to fix it for us.
Cheers
Clouds-in-the-ground test case
Hi Jim
Realise that it is difficult providing support for a product that has many different interactions. In the end, we users of ASE think of ASE as the master of all weather generation in FSX. After all that is why we bought ASA/ASE. Oogiefrog has done a lot of work here providing a test case which I will also try to replicate and report back on. The screen shots are horrible and so totally spoil the experience. You must be able to imagine the frustration. The only possible thoughts I have on this subject are that may be:
1) Cirrus cloud generation also needs to go to zero
2) That the ASE sliders are not configuring FSX to stop producing non-data clouds for some reason. Is there perhaps an ini file in FSX that can be edited to absolutely prevent FSX from producing these clouds.
Thanks Oogiefrog and Jim
Assistance to help you debug this
Hi Jim
Hope you are well. Regarding this report now one month old including pictures of the spurious cumulo's that spring out of the ground at Tucson with ASE and ASA at this historical time:
1st March 2010 20GMT
I'm trying to help you with debugging it. I have had no new lead until today.
The met reports for this historical time report differently on the main map in ASA compared to ASE!
Check out ASA's depection verses ASE.
The cloud depiction south of 5AZ6 in ASA is because some metars are reporting cloud levels at lower height (but still potentially realistic) and others not. In ASE this is not present but still showing differently.
If I run either ASA or ASE, both depict superious clouds at ground level, but ASA is not as bad as ASE.
I suspect there is something wrong with how your software filters out inconsistent metar reports, regardless of how those inconsistencies emerge either by mistakes in reality or data transmission errors.
It seems to then get confused and put spurious ground level cumulo in at the margins of clear reports to cloud reports in the actual simulation.
Cheers
When is this going to be addressed?
The problem is pitifully simple to reproduce. All you have to do is fly OFFLINE from anyway at sea level to any airport at a high altitude an Viola. This problem has been there FOREVER.
It doesn't matter what the user's "settings" are. This shouldn't be happening whether their CAVOK settings are 0 or 100, whether they have DWC on or not, whatever.
Sorry for my admitedly disappointing tone...I'm absolutely not trying to be trollish, but I am expressing some frustration simply because I really really want this program to work as it should. It seems like this is a major bug and it is being completely ignored for OFFLINE users, and treated as if it is some rare anomaly, or user error, or that it can't be easily reproduced, etc...I don't believe that.
The bottom line is that you have a program that DOES NOT WORK for high altitude locations when using offline, historical data. It simply depicts the weather incorrectly, and that is a fact.
The reason it "works" for online users using automatic downloads seems to be is that ASE gets it correct provided the weather is fresh...if the program tries to do dynamic changes to the weather, as in the case of an offline user, the program totally gets it wrong. Try flying a flight from the West coast to SLC or Den...the destination will be shrouded in ground embedded clouds every time, even if the metar indicates a fair weather day.
Again, sorry for the rant, but I've been waiting and hoping for this to be fixed going on 2 years now. Do you guys ever intend to address this???
Hi, Yes, we are working on
Hi,
Yes, we are working on SP1 for ASE right now.
Thanks,
Jim - HiFi Software Sales and Support
Hi, Thanks for that
Hi,
Thanks for that information.
Jim - HiFi Software Sales and Support
This is a definite concrete bug
Hi Jim
Tried again with DWC on and everything else default. The cumulo form at or near ground level as if the algorithm is ignoring the terrain altitude. I tried enhanced route coverage, create additional stations in various combinations and nothing fixes it. The only thing that fixes it TEMPORARILY is to refresh the weather data, or to try simple clouds instead of 100% detailed clouds.
You're quality control testers have got to try this scenario for yourselves. It is easy:
1) Download historical data 20GMT 1st March 2010
2) take off on a flightplan from AZ67 to 5AZ6 which takes you straight over Tucson International. You will see cumulo sprouting out of the ground like mushrooms (within minutes of a fresh start or hitting the refresh data button)
Every METAR in the entire vicinity is reporting clear below 20,000 visibility 10SM and virtually no wind and temps around 16degs. A perfect test case yes?
At least with DWC it looks like the sudden wind shifts at around 10,000 feet look to be resolved. I do not understand DWC properly but it looks like a compromise solution to bugged FSX code if I understand it correctly.
Dang, it is annoying. Boy it was a good decision of your marketing team not to charge ASA customers an upgrade fee to ASE, otherwise users would have been very angry. I've been a long term customer of yours ever since the early days of FS9 and active sky.
Cheers
Here is what I saw.
Here is what I saw.
Jim - HiFi Software Sales and Support
Here is what I see
Hi Jim
Thanks for your help. I try to help as much as I can too. In the attachment list below you will see various scenarios in this bug.
Screenshot explanations:
phantom_clouds01: In this screen shot, I am running FSX and ASE via Alacrity PC which may reallocate threads in a way that causes ASE to not clean up cloud depiction properly, I do not know.
phantom_clouds02:
I decided to reboot the machine and run only ASE and FSX(via ASE) and TrackIR5. My machine is a quad four processor on a 9800GTX+ setup on Vista x32 (SP2) with very recent video drivers. This time clouds are no longer popping out of the ground except in the hills in the distance.
phantom_clouds03:
one minute later, the clouds dissapear altogether except off in the far distance where they are popping out of the ground again.
phantom_clouds04:
a couple of minutes later even the far distant clouds are gone but the high level cloud pattern has completely changed!
phantom_clouds05:
a few minutes later the dreaded phantom cumulo begin to form again this time much closer.
My system does nothing but run FSX, I do not use it for any other purpose. Perhaps the problem is that the combination of TrackIR and the Discus simultation (very processor intensive) is somehow stealing cycles from ASE. I do not know.
EDIT: I have installed mega scenery and graphics are turned up to the limit where I can get 30fps. Cloud draw is set to 70mi and clouds are on 100% detailed. I have set the simulation to run a lot of civilian aircraft and so there will be quite some AI traffic, but not enough to dip below 30fps.
Cheers
Hi, OK, thanks. Is your No
Hi,
OK, thanks.
Is your No Data Cloud Generation slider set at zero in ASE?
Also, what about your 2 thermal sliders on the Wind Options Tab?
One other thing, please be aware that if the data calls for clouds to be drawn at say at 5k at an airport and then the terrain changes a few miles away, we cannot adjust to where the clouds get drawn at the new terrain altitude.
Thanks,
Jim - HiFi Software Sales and Support
Other possibilities
Thanks Jim
No Data Cloud slider at 50% (default)
Two thermal sliders 50% (default)
CAVOK 50%
Cirrus 50%
Stratus 20%
Prevent cloud redraws off
DWC on
Fog layer on
Disable Haze on
Visibility graduation on
Force high priority process off
Create additional stations off
Enhance route coverage on
Depict hurricanes on
Sounds like prevent cloud redraws along with DWC sounds like a good idea. Perhaps No data clouds = 0% might fix it? Perhaps force high priority processes?
Cheers
Hi, Why would you restart AS
Hi,
Why would you restart AS or hit the refresh button during a flight?
Thanks,
Jim - HiFi Software Sales and Support
Thanks for trying to help
Thanks for trying to help Jim. I don't restart ASE. If you hit refresh weather data, the cloud forming out of the ground temporarily clears, and then these clouds build up again out of the ground after a few minutes. It was just to test possible causes.
Thanks
Confirmation of this problem
Yes I too have experienced your observation in exactly the same way in on-line historical mode flying around Tucson. I too thought that this issue was one of the primary goals to fix in ASA because it is hyper unrealistic. However I cannot be sure that there are some other complicated effects going on in the interaction between FSX and ASE.
Cheers
Glider, Can you post the
Glider,
Can you post the METAR from ASE?
Thanks,
Jim - HiFi Software Sales and Support
Hi to all, First, I'm a
Hi to all,
First, I'm a newbie with ASE, not with Flightsimulator.
I tried the proposed flight from AZ67 to 5AZ6 at March 1st 2010 GMT 20.00. So a 'historical' flight. Weather report in ASE: Clear under 20.000 ft. Fact in FSX: Cumulus at low altitudes. I also saw the so-called mushrooms, growing out of the ground.
Then I restarted ASE (actual time) and FSX, using the same flightplan. Surprise, surprise: clear skies, cirrus at high altitude (weather report in ASE: clear under 20.000ft).
So, if I'm not wrong: maybe, better forget about historical weather in ASE. It does not make sense anyway. I bought ASE, to get actual weather.
Regards,
Henk
Extra cloud-in-the-ground confirmation
Thanks Henka
That was my test case from all those months ago. This is the first time anyone has confirmed my observations from that test case. However I just do not understand why there should be a difference between actual time and historical time in terms of this problem. I suspect that perhaps you just got lucky with your "actual" time session, but I cannot be sure. It is interesting that you restarted ASE to solve the problem, but I have done that before and it did not help.
Anyway, I've now tested this particular test case myself with the four cloud data sliders off and DWC on as per Jim's suggestion and have seen no clouds in the ground. Spurious clouds are still forming but ASE/FSX seems to wipe them periodically and then they reform again. At least it's an improvement.
I suggest that OogieFrog give my test case a go as Henka did, with the four data sliders off and DWC on. Perhaps that will fix it for him as well. I am yet to try test case 2 Jim and Oogiefrog supplied in this thread:
Test case 2:
KCOS to KAPA, OFFLINE, DWC off, using the Metar file 2010-05-19-12z.wx.
Fingers crossed for future simming in ASE.
Cheers
Workaround, not great, but a workaround...
I think I figured this out, but offline users are not going to like it.
I'm convinced this has everything to do with the DYNAMIC CHANGE slider. Rereading this thread, I apparently had diagnosed it correctly back in April, but the response from JSkorna was only the cryptic, "we are working on SP1", without ever addressing anything in that post. So I never pursued that angle further up until now. Hmm......
If you stick the slider at 0, you will get no clouds embedded in the ground, but of course, your weather will be 100% static. I was ready also to declare that CAVOK and NODATA sliders shouldn't matter, since I had several good flights with them set rather high, just to test, but the very next flight, clouds were sprouting all over hell. So for now, the fix is to change the Dynamic change to 0, in addition to the CAVOK and NoData
Now this is not very acceptable, at least to me. I was under the impression that there were a bunch of fancy algorithms under ASE's hood to enact dynamic offline changes. Well, Hi Fi can correct me if I'm wrong, but in short, it would appear the DYNAMIC CHANGE slider is a fancy GUI for the same slider in the FSX weather tab. So much so, that when you change the slider in ASE, FSX inherits the setting. ASE doesn't appear to do anything at all with dynamic weather except seting the rate, then it simply hands all of that stuff off to the default FSX weather engine dynamic algorithms. And since everybody knows that FSX can't tell the difference between AGL and ASL, therein is the flawed design decision. ASE should be telling FSX at what altitude to place the clouds (just like it does for Reported clouds), but instead it just offloads the whole thing onto FSX which misplaces them. its a crucial omission, and therefore sure sounds like a design flaw, to me at least. You know FSX places clouds at the wrong altitude, but you rely on it to make all the dynamic changes anyway?
Now, I suspect that if you are an online user getting updates every fifteen minutes, you won't see this problem, provided your dynamic change slider is sufficiently low or Zero, and you will still get changing weather even if you circle the same airport all day long.
If you are an offline user though, you are out-of-luck. Looks like Hi Fi gave you the finger. If you choose to keep using Active Sky, you can learn to love static weather....i.e. At the end of your transatlantic flight, the weather in NYC is appropriate for 4 in the morning, not 12 noon. Or ...you can get with the program and run online (and take the performance hit of having to run Anti Virus Software). Or don't bother with the AV, if that is your thing...I don't think that is for me though.
When you are flying a PMDG airplane, in concert with Ultimate Traffic, Ultimate Terrain, Ground Env, Rex Clouds, TrackIr, all across multiple monitors...well I would rather save the CPU cycles up from having to run Anti-virus. In the scenario I just outlined it makes a noticeable difference in performance if you can turn AV off, and that is why I'm so disappointed about this. I even tried it in the Cessna, and noticed a few not-so pleasant stutters, that I would much rather not have.
Active Sky 6.5 had a feature called "Offline Sequential." You could download several hours worth of Metars, and then run completely offline. It would then simply load the appropriate file from your HD instead of downloading it. I was very disapointed when I figured out that none of the ASX/ASA/ASE had this feature any more. So I was counting on the Dynamic Weather....so I'm out of options now, but it would be nice if a future revision of Active Sky brought this feature back.
As far as what appeared to me be a lot of equivocal responses about this issue on the part of Hi Fi. I don't know if the developers kept Skorna in the dark about this, or if he was simply running interference for the sake of PR...I don't mean to be a jerk by saying that, but I'm supposed to believe that nobody on the Hi Fi side had a clue after 3 years of development? Either way, this situation sure sucks for offine users. Offline, dynamic weather has been more or less touted as a capability of this software, so I think Hi Fi should either sticky this, or remove it from their list of features, or better yet, actually fix it (work around FSX and generate your own darned dynamic clouds/weather, just like we thought you were doing all along!) We tried to make that argument though.....
If I have made any factually incorrect assertions here, I would appreciate if Hi Fi corrects me or otherwise explains where I am in error. For all I've said here, I am still uncertain if the very next time I use ASE, the sprouting clouds will be inexplicably back, Dynamic slider or not! Since you are clearly not going to provide any type of a fix or "workaround", (if you prefer to blame FSX), the very least you can do is stop acting like "huh?, what?, send me a screenshot, never seen this before"
But there you have it. I'll try to convince myself that I can enjoy my new STATIC offline weather....
Clouds in the ground other possibilities
Thanks for the info. I'll give your suggestions above a go, nothing else has worked. I fly on-line with 15 minute updates so zero dynamic change might possibly work.
Cheers
Glider, one more thing
Glider, I should have mentioned above that even with Dynamic changes set to 0, I still had extremely poor results when DWC (and Global) and Visibility Graduation and Smoothing were enabled. Clouds were popping out of the ground all over the place, in that case. I'm not sure if this was just a failure to refresh (some people are saying you have to restart FSX or ASE, or whatever???). You might try this, or at least beware of that, maybe your results will be different or better.
Clouds-in-the-ground possible fix
Eh OogieFrog
EDIT: more configuration info..........
Thanks for the help. Had a great glider flight from Whetstone to Willcox Arizona without any clouds in the ground at any time and for the first time with these settings:
General options:
All FSX specific settings off
Force high priority off
Dynamic rate of change = 0
Dynamic weather change in FSX = 0
Auto downloads 15min from historical data
Cloud options:
CAVOK CLOUDS = 0
No Data Cloud Generation = 0
prevent cloud redraws off
Cirrus cloud 10% (irrelevant in my opinion)
Stratus 100% (irrelevant in my opinion)
Wind options:
Enable direct wind control on
Visibility options:
Fog layer generation on
Disable haze on
Graduation and smoothing on
I start the session by loading ASE on it's own then download historical data, enter a flight plan and then launch FSX.
From this I can conclude thus far that the actual resolution to this problem is a hybrid of Jim's suggestion and OogieFrog's. The clincher's so far seem to be DWC, CAVOK+no cloud and dynamic weather change.
I think it is very possible that the actual clincher is dynamic weather change sliders to zero. I say this because I noticed that in between ASE automatic weather updates with dynamic change on, the clouds in the ground would begin to sprout out and then get culled on the next ASE update and then start reforming. This really does smell like the dynamic change code either in ASE or FSX is bugged for higher altitude locations like Arizona at 4000ft. I do not understand why Hifi cannot get into the FSX SDK and fix it, but I guess they don't want to screw with someone else's code perhaps.
Thanks OogieFrog, could not have done it without you.
Fingers crossed that it is a permanent fix for sailplane flying in the Arizona and Utah regions.
Hope it works out for you. Suggest you forget about offline mode. I noticed that even when I change the stratus sliders, it does another fresh download of weather data. So it looks like connection to the web is pretty fundamental. I didn't like it when HiFi decided to do it this way, but I can understand it. With Vista/Win7 and proper firewall and an update-to-date virus scanner, there probably isn't any issue with security on these long unobserved online sessions.
Cheers
glider, glad to hear that is
glider,
glad to hear that is working for you. We should be Beta Testers! Unlike you, I actually had to turn DWC off in order to avoid the clouds in the ground.
I don't like at all what appears to be a hidden requirement to run Online if you want accurate depiction. Again, I am not stupid enough to be connected to the internet without AV, and I use one that is very efficient, but the performance hit I take from having to run that in the background is quite noticeable when running some of the frame-heavy addons...such as PMDG planes. I'm quite tired of the Weather program consistenly being the weakest link in my simulation experience out of all the 20 or so addons that I own. And if the frustration has shown, then good, because it is real.
If Offline mode inevitably leads to clouds in the ground, then Hi Fi should fix it, or remove the option.... I doubt that they will comment on this thread anymore, but I do hope that the developers ( and I mean the people who actually write the code) are taking note of what has been discussed here. I still have no idea why they got rid of the "Offline Sequential" capability of AS6.5?
Thanks for your help, Glider
Clouds in the ground issues
Eh OogieFrog
Tried it again this time over Greenlee County Arizona. It's totally fixed for me right now Oogie. Not a single anomoly. You mention DWC and it's effect. Let me remind you what you and only you discovered (not even Jim), that dynamic weather updates is the heart of the problem. Whenever we stuff with the settings there are so many retests and we are victim to cause and effect in a probability environment where the clouds may form or may not irrespective of the settings we apply like DWC. It is very tricky.However logically your findings from a few days ago about turning off dynamic weather updates is spot on as far as I can tell both from a testing sense and a logical intuitive sense.
If you fly offline (I agree that with such a computationally heavy simulator, offline mode should be supported) then you have to turn OFF dynamic weather updates both in ASE and FSX if you do not want these horrible clouds in the ground. However how will your weather dynamically change? I guess that it simply will not, unless HiFi have dynamic code that is executing in any case. If you are still experiencing these clouds in offline mode, then there must be some other dynamic weather code executing that we are not in control of.
Me as an on-line simpilot, I now get weather that changes but only every 15 minutes. What can you do? We are forced to pretend that the weather is changing in our head in between updates. We must be appreciative of at least that!
Dynamic weather coding is an extremely interesting problem. How do you dynamically evolve the weather data in between hard updates and do it well? Apparently both Microsoft and HiFi do not yet know, the evidence is clear, or perhaps they do know but have not coded it yet.
On another topic regarding HiFi pushing you towards online mode whether you like it or not, suggest that you theoretically could configure your virus scanner such that it only scans the network during a sim session and thus does not scan files and other resource wasting exercises. HOWEVER it is extremely dangerous to do this, because you will be guaranteed to forget to turn on full scanning after the simulator session and thus will compromise your PC.
WARNING.
From my perspective, there is no need to do this because my virus scanner (avast) is very unobtrusive.
Cheers
The things you cite are some
The things you cite are some of the big reasons why I was such a fan of Sequential Offline updates in v6.5. Instead of going to the internet to get the next weather file, it simply pulled it off your hard drive. Seems like it would be a no-brainer to have included this in subsequent releases, but for whatever reason they didn't.
One of the big advantages of ASE over REX for me was the flexibility offered in terms of archival and/or offline flying. Now that that advantage is quite a bit less now, I've been looking at both of these products in a new light, and re-assesing ultimately which one will provide the most seamless simming experience. Flying the same flight over and over to guage the different behaviors is less fun than I had hoped :)
Thanks for your advice on the Anti-virus stuff; I'm exploring my options there, not very succesfully. (still stuttering when AV is on and packets are coming across the net, versus totally smooth flight before). I am a rather unhappy simmer right now about this new "requirement" that has arisen.
Hi again, Reason for a new
Hi again,
Reason for a new start of ASE was, that I would be sure, that the settings were set at actual weather. I did not trust myself, that changing this in Historical would do it well.
I have added 4 jpg files, containing my ASE settings for this flight.
I guess, hardware-specifications are not that important. What the reason is for this problem (for me, newbie) is unknown to me. Could it have something to do with the fact, that ASA and ASE both are installed; I mean: some interference, despite only one of the programs is running at the time? Could it have something to do with a ASE-FSX interference? Hope you will get a solution for the problem however.
Regards
Henk