turbulence and real weather

  • Turbulence in most flight sims is just a artificial rocking of a plane and not an effect of the moving air currents. My suggestions is that in FS 2 it is done right. For example:

    On a sunny day, a late spring day with a steep temperature gradient (unstable air) there wil be turbulence as an effect of rising and sinking air (thermals).

    Near mountains the turbulence is an effect of the mechanical turbulence created by wind and obstacles. Wave turbulence would be really great.

    Wind sheer turbulence would also be nice.

    Off course this would mean that the weather settings would need imputs for at least:

    - wind strenght at different heights
    - temperature of the different air layers (dew points, etc.)
    - wind directions at different heights

    This way you could create inversions, determine the strenght and height of thermals and thus turbulence (so no sliders for thermals, but indirect by setting temprature at the surface and in the air (condor has a good working system)), determine the amount of wind sheer, determine the wind gradient, etc. If it is done right you could create weather that has chances for thunderstorm development, tubulence at different strenghts at different places, challeging landings due to wind sheer and wind gradient, mechanical turbulence behind buildings and tree lines, etc.

    Real weather data would effect the same variables and would simulate the conditions of the real world at that point in time, not just picture them.

    I probably forgot a great deal, but maybe it is of some use in the development.

  • Honestly it's almost a moot point, because no matter what they do, somebody will point out that its 0.0000000000000000009% inaccurate on sunny days in october at noon when the winds are blowing west at 10,000 feet.

    After 10years of trying, through multiple attempts via numerous companies, a totally satisfying whether rendition has never arrived that pleases the flightsim community completely.

    I would just say to Ipacs: do your best!

    Devons rig

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    • Official Post

    Hi everyone,

    Weather and Wind/Turbulence are very complicated topics. Even super-computers can't predict the real world weather even an hour ahead - It's just not possible to create 100% realistic weather in a real-time desktop simulator.

    I agree, Condor has probably the best wind system and thermal modeling today. You get pretty authentic thermals at reasonable/believable places. But we can't just "plug in" their weather system into our engine. Those are two very different platforms. If we had their themal model (equations) we could maybe implement ours based on theirs but we'd have to reprogram everything pretty much from scratch even that way. It probably wouldn't save us that much time.

    What I would like to see in the Aerofly is real world weather only, no manual input needed. Maybe have like one preset: clear ISA standard day but that is pretty boring as well. I don't like to sit there and manually place the clouds and winds for minutes, I'd maybe like to look through a couple of recorded days and select the weather that way. Maybe have a little search for low-visibility, strong crosswinds or perfect soaring conditions for the currently selected location...

    With highly detailed real world data from the past or even present (streaming service?) we could simulate thermals and wind systems in the mountains very accurately. If we then add a good turbulence model that is actually creating turbulence due to environment factors (not just random) it could be very convincing. Get that typical strong turbulence around good thermals, get fine, higher frequency turbulence near a dying thermal, turbulence in clouds, etc...

    And also quite important:
    - the aircraft should shake in the turbulence, not the camera.
    - the real world turbulence might not be evenly distributed, the wind could roll the aircraft to 40deg of bank and not return it over time... meaning it shouldn't neccessarily be a standard deviation, it can have vorticies in it so that you really have to correct it.

    Regards,
    Jan

    Regards,

    Jan

  • Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

  • Click on where it says EARTH, and you can get all sorts of views and data.

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

  • Great link to that visualisation, I bookmarked it.
    It will be nice to have more vigorous turbulence in powered light aircraft. Having to use bootloads of rudder in high winds to correct almost instantaneous asymetric wing lifts will be a sign of having an excellent wind model.

  • I agree Jan, real weather isn't feasible at this point in time. Maybe in a decade but probably later. My point is simply that the weather model (i.e. a simplification of reality) is a model and not a picture that has nothing to do with reality. For instance: It really bothers me that cumulus clouds are always just randomly distributed through the sky. No matter if the clouds are on the leeward side of a mountain, over a lake or whatever. This is not modelling after reality but just putting up some background pictures to make it look nice.
    I would like to find cumulus clouds at the tops of mountains on the windward side where the moist air is and where the wind is mechanically pushing the moist air up forming clouds, not on the leeward side. There I want to see a blue gap (rain shadow I believe it is called? Sometimes extending 600! miles away from the mountains) I would like to find cumulus clouds just over the lake at the windward side and see a blue gap at the leeward side. This would make the it so much more realistic.

    And yes, only real weather data as source of input for the weather model should be really nice, but I think not all would agree with this. Ipacs could make it optional: real weather input/slider input. The input data for the weather model is the same, only one is from data files, the other put in by sliders.

    And yes, turbulence is not evenly distributed. That is my point. It would make flying in the sim much more challenging. Think of an approach during turbulent weather with a severe wind gradient. You really have to be on top of your game to cope with such conditions, not knowing if and when a wing will suddenly drop away or if you airspeed will suddenly decrease or increase as a result of wind gradient or a thermal that's changing your angle of attack.

  • Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5