If they’re in the haze, yeah. But clouds above the boundary layer can look crisp from hundreds of kilometers away.
Distant towering convection is really going to suffer from this condition.
2 Likes
You are preaching to the choir but I doubt that storm is more than 50nm away. Otherwise I say "Keep preaching! maybe they will listen and actually make the sim great.
P.S.: On the horizon in your shot there appear to be a line of similar thunderheads and most of them are indeed obscured by the haze – they look to be ‘hundreds of kilometers away’.
and also - I’ve been told that ‘if it looks frothy, its ice and if its bubbly its water’ – if thats correct, how is it water (bubbly) at higher altidues than the frothy top part? Does convection bring enough heat up there to keep things liquid for short times? I ask because you are one of resident wetaher specialists - and storm chaser no less!
Can’t really say without knowing the focal length. I liked the image because it showed the haze layer obscuring the base of the storm, while it’s still crisp above.
The overshooting tops of storms reach into the stratosphere where the air is so thin and there’s so little aerosol that the convection can look crisp from hundreds of kilometers, especially when you’re also above the boundary layer (like when flying).
Never heard that before, but it might be a rule of thumb in some contexts? Is that pilot folk wisdom? Bubbly clouds are convection, and they actually get colder the higher they go. The bubbly tops of thunderstorms are waaaaaay below zero. But bubbly convection can also form in the winter when the entire vertical profile is below freezing, as long as there’s still a large enough temperature difference.
2 Likes
That picture appears to be using an addon.
It would be fairer to show native X-Plane weather.
In my opinion, the clouds and lighting conditions in the FS sometimes look very good and sometimes not. The problem, I think, is that they are not created physically, but only according to weather parameters. The clouds that we see in the FS are composed of a few basic parameters (algorithms). There is nothing like that in nature. Clouds are created physically by weather conditions (humidity, temperature differences, reflection of the ground, etc.). These types of clouds are similar and can be easily identified if you know what you are looking for and can say what weather situation is prevailing. But you will find that the FS does not have the ability to display or calculate these in the corresponding weather situations. Therefore, this does not work with static parameters that are updated every 15 minutes.
It was once said that, for example, thermals in the FS should arise depending on the ground conditions and the sun’s influence. I very much doubt that this is the case at the time. Weather simulation in FS would be very complex and computationally intensive. (Although I think my CPU still has some reserves for it). I’ve been wanting this for years, especially for gliding, which I actually do 95% of my time in FS. And when I look at the bugs that are now coming up again with '24, I don’t think the weather situation will change much.
On the whole, I’m fairly happy with my gliding flights, but the distance to what’s really going on in the sky - well…
Nevertheless, good flights, let’s not let it spoil our fun. 
3 Likes
I think what you’re going for is “glaciation,” which does generally denote ice crystals versus water (also can vary depending on the size of the ice crystals). Remember that water can be supercooled and remain in liquid state well above the freezing level. If you’re dealing with really strong updrafts, that can easily be the case. There is also a lot of latent heat released as the water vapor changes phase to liquid (condensation) or into ice (deposition). Thunderstorms provide their own heating mechanism in that regard.
Precipitation can also have an obscuring effect - so if you’re dealing with a storm (or a portion of a multicellular storm) that has matured, that can look “frothy,” wispy, however one might describe it in certain portions.
1 Like
I have not heard of ‘glaciation’ in reference to clouds. I was watching some guy on youtube trying to teach about meteorology and he was doing some basic cloud type identification stuff and he mentioned, I think it was fuzzy and not frothy, versus bubbly when trying to determine the likelihood of icing when flying.
I don’t know the physics behind cloud types. I’m 98% sure it all has to do with temperature and pressures but I don’t know the equations that would explain how on one day the low altitude cumulus are all low density while on another day they are fuzzy (and the sky is usually more purple then) and on yet other days the cumulus are so sharp looking they could cut you. They look like battleships in the sky - very cool. These are the equations Asobo should know and care about. I think they have too many data sources and ‘how it looks’ is not one of their concerns. I can only imagine what would happen if the attitude toward aircraft appearance was the same. It honestly feels like aircraft appearance is the only thing that really matters in this sim.
I was going to post a follow-up that addressed just this. Those calculations are extremely complex. Like, supercomputer complex. Each storm behaves differently due to a myriad of atmospheric conditions: Updraft strength, freezing level, precipitable water, CAPE, theta-e, helicity due to wind shear, deep-layer moisture, convective inhibition, the list goes on. And that’s just the atmospheric setup - once they’re initiated, there are a lot of dynamic factors, including the effect of nearby storms. There isn’t enough data being pumped into the sim, especially at that fine resolution, to go “here’s where the cloud would start glaciating,” outside of maybe just the anvil top.
Bottom line, there’s no way you’re going to get one in the sim to behave like a rw supercell thunderstorm and match what’s going on in the real-world enough to correlate with forecast and observation tools (how and when does it initiate, where does it go, how and when does it dissipate, etc.). Can it be done in a more simple way? Probably, but it’s probably going to run into uncanny valley issues if you do.
As a potential solution, anything you do in that regard is going to have to be, for lack of a better word, a template: “here’s a supercell, they kind of look like this, go.” And that’ll maybe look okay-ish, but they’ll have to, for example, suddenly disappear, rather than dissipate (or go linear) like they do in real life because there isn’t enough computing power to run a simulation of one, much less many at a time. It’ll have to be more deterministic in that regard.
3 Likes
Well I wish they’d realize and accept that and let the art department take charge instead of insisting the limited data sources available be the dictators of what we see.
I have to admit that my limited understanding was telling me the same CFD cubes of information should be able to form clouds but I guess it would be too simplistic.
Some time ago I wrote something about the weather here and referred to the “German Weather Service” DWD. The computers for the weather forecast don’t exactly fit under the desk, let’s put it that way, but in emergencies where weather warnings are required, various simulations are consulted. Because we know exactly how unreliable they are. Forecasts for 5 days are constantly being corrected, even with 3 days you can’t be sure in some situations and when it comes to tomorrow’s forecast, I can almost look out the window or look at a current satellite image.
From this familiar situation we can already see how difficult it will be to have a weather representation on a physical basis in the flight simulator. This cannot run on the clients but must be calculated externally on a large system and then streamed.
So far, the developers have not managed to create a seamless view between the actualized weather data. It doesn’t matter to me whether the weather is displayed with a delay. Therefore, after updating the data, there should be a linear transition (15min.) in the simulator that changes the clouds and wind situation unnoticed.
Even if it has already improved, it is still not optimal.
However, this only improves the current status.
If you look at the data that is used to display the weather, it also includes weather information from the airports. These are static parameters and visual conditions, cloud density, altitude, visibility, etc. However, only data that is important for flight operations is transmitted. Therefore, certain cloud layers did not exist in Fs2020 and the cloud image looked completely different in FS than in reality. I live between EDDL and EDDK. When I look at the data from the two airports, the FS comes close to these data, but that can make a big difference to the overall impression because it is not important for flight operations.
In one sentence, there is a lack of data and I don’t see any way to fill this gap. Even partially only if you put an AI on it that analyzes realtime satellite images, which will be a big step forward.
But that will improve the current version in my opinion, but it is still not a physical simulation based representation.
I think, this is an issue that the developers have only addressed to a very limited extent.
Despite all the criticism, the current situation is flyable and as a glider pilot in particular, you are of course extremely dependent on these conditions.
So what bothers me the most is the half-heartedness with which gliding has started in Fs2020. in '24 it looks even worse. If the existing weather system had only been pursued slowly and steadily since the introduction of gliders, we would be somewhere better now. But perhaps this will change when all other bugs are gone.
Gliding and weather are inextricably linked.
Shall we rely on a hopeful German sentence?
“Was lange wärt, wird endlich gut.” -
“What takes long time, will be good in the end”
Regards
1 Like
