ATC Atis is still wrong - reporting Winds Direction as TRUE, and Wind Speeds in ft/sec
Been reported so many times – is so wrong - and still not fixed (this should be a TRIVIAL one to fix !!)
A picture is worth 1000 words – clearly it is wrong
@Bishop398 You have pilots in WT .. what do they think of this ???
Zendesk reports are not working on this one – maybe you can fix it, or mention it to the Devs at Asobo (please)
I don’t know that any of us ever noticed this; I don’t think anyone on the team uses the sim ATC (I certainly don’t), to be honest, and ATIS doesn’t have that issue that I ever saw.
I’ll check to see if anything is logged on this one, but please, please, I’d encourage folks not to @ me directly for every one of their personal top bugs, because I’ll just never be able to actually use the forums.
-Matt | Working Title
Thanks for bringing this up.
ATIS is very very important. Before contacting the tower for takeoff or landing it should always be checked and flight planning done accordingly.
As the OP mentioned, could be an easy fix, and would certainly be of great value.
The wind Direction ( True vs Magnetic) is not too significant (unless you are in an area of High Mag Var, like South New Zealand.)
But the Wind speed being in ft/sec is really BAD.
If ATIS says winds are say 140 @ 20, and its a direct Crosswind, you are expecting 20 knots, which may be more than you could handle.
Then you take off, and think – 20 knots was not so bad . I MUST BE GOOD !! I can handle a 20 direct Crosswind — but in reality, the winds were only 12 knots.
But is WRONG, and is relevant in a Simulator – and so should be right if possible, and its just as easy to get it right than to get it wrong.
ATIS is not a real time report, it gets updated every hour, so the winds speed and direction can be different from what the ATIS report 40 mins ago.
In real life, ATC gets a real time update of the wind speed and direction, so when they clear you for takeoff or landing, they provide you the real time wind, which again, can be different from what the ATIS report a few mins ago.
True, but totally irrelevant to the question of why ATIS & ATC are reporting the wind in ft/sec.
And as you say, The Controller gives the CURRENT Wind speed & direction, as measured by Airport Instrumentation – which is the same as the Simconnect Local wind speed & direction at the plane’s position on the airport. That Data is CORRECT, but ATC is giving it as a TRUE Heading, and in units of ft/sec.
Its a Coding error ..
In the screenshot shared above, it’s not the ATIS, ATC is giving the incorrect wind read during takeoff clearance.
Correct – screenshot shows the ATC takeoff clearance, but the COM2 was also tuned to local ATIS, and was giving the same incorrect information.
You just cannot HEAR the ATIS on the ScreenShot 
And on top of all that, with the ACTUAL wind being 050 @ 9. ATC is assigning runway 19, and not 01 .
Can it really get more wrong ?
The windsock may now know what way the wind is blowing, but the Tower Controller is clueless !!
While we are discussing WIND.
The Weather setup UP, clearly says that the Wind being set is for GROUND level.
(Not 1000ft)
But the UI is still treating the wind input as a 1000ft level wind, with a FUDGE factor that is believed to account for a lower wind at ground level, so Surface winds are 50% of what the UI is indicating for GROUND winds.
The UI got corrected to confirm that the Wind input was for GROUND, but the Fudge Reduction code is still making the wind 50% of that input.
For a Flight Simulator, that has been release now for 9 months, and has had endless Beta testing, for such BASIC things to still be wrong, is “Disappointing” .
People use the default ATC?
Its not so much using the ATC, its more to do with getting weather information, that is current in the sim.
ie
When you tune to ATIS or AWOS at an airport, you want to hear the CORRECT weather, that is actually running in the Sim, and NOT assume just because it is may be set to Real Weather, that the weather you get through the Internet which is typically CORRECT, is the same as the sim.
Then when you are NOT using real weather, you still want the IN GAME ATIS-AWOS to be reporting the weather in the Sim.
The actual ATC, Tower, Approach, Center “ATC Controlling” is NOT what is being discussed –
YES-- that also needs a LOT of work, to be anywhere near "Realistic:
The question is, does the sim interpret Meteoblue data correctly?
Let’s say the wind is supposed to be 270/10 knots, does the sim interpret this as true heading and 10 ft/sec or will it use the correct values supplied by Meteoblue?
Is this JUST an ATC/ATIS problem or does it pertain to other areas of the weather sim?
Thats another question,
But, if you sit at the airport , and get the current wind direction & speed by Simconnect, it IS WHAT IT IS, and it is what ATIS gives you, but with Atis using the wrong units. (True instead of Mag, ft/sec instead of Knots)
Where the data came from, for this issue, is irrelevant
I am aware. 
Sorry for hi-jacking the topic. But I think that question would also be worth looking into.
100%, but its a different issue.
If the current issue gets made complex with other issues, it will loose clarity, and hence be even less likely to be addressed.
But getting the above issue fixed, greatly help evaluating what REAL weather is being injected.
At the moment, the REAL Weather is purely VISUAL - there does not seem to be an obvious way to get a WEATHER READING at any given location (via SimConnect) ?
Such an ability would allow so much !!! but does require opening up some of the weather system
Something did change wrt to the wind speed and direction in this update. Prior to the update the wind reported in littleNavMap was in Magnetic and the wind reported on the G1000 was in TRUE. After the update they both now report MAG wind.
ATIS NORMALLY gets updated every hour, but they’ll also update it when there are significant changes. Just the other day when I was flying, they were updating every 15 minutes, and the runway changed direction twice in a half hour.
Geoff, you’re ABSOLUTELY right on this. I reported this bug, incorrectly it turns out, way back in October. I thought they were stripping out the gust speed and not the wind speed. Great insight to figure out the units of the wind speed.
And, yes, per the regs, ATIS report should be magnetic, not true. Saying goes “If you read it it’s true, if you hear it it’s magnetic”. Now, in fact, when I listen to ATIS around here it seems they are using the true direction because it usually matches the METARs, but, that’s neither here nor there, the sim should do it correctly. I totally agree with you.
INTERESTING - (not to get too far off track ------)
By “ATIS around here” – I assume you mean IRL at your local airport.
If that is so, maybe, as a local pilot, you should, question that.
ATIS = Automatic terminal information service (Airport AVIATION)
METAR = Meteorological Terminal Air Report (National Weather Service in the USA)
The ATIS is typically derived from the local airports MET Instrumentation ( Wind sensors, temperature & DP sensors, rain sensors, visibility (RVR) Cloud sensor (Ceilometers).
Very often these are also directly linked to the any local ASOS, AWOS systems.
The point is, that the ATIS is the local Airport information, that uses real time gathered GROUND information, to inform Pilots of the Airports Weather Conditions.
ATIS thus talks to Pilots in AVIATION Units that the Pilot can relate to - ie MAGNETIC Headings, and speeds in Knots.
The METAR, which is more TEXTUAL (written), uses the Weather Service units of TRUE Headings (Don’t ask me why they want to use TRUE !! but the still do)
So, if a Local Airport is getting METARS and (I assume, manually) creating their Atis, using them (again not correct .. all but the smallest private airport can afford local Weather Instrumentation these days), they at least need to translate the METAR’s TRUE headings to Magnetic.
So do pilots, getting Metars !!!
It’s a subject close to my heart - I was Engineering Project Leader of the design & development of many of the sensors for the USA ASOS & AWOS system when they were 1st being introduced, (I actually wrote the wind processing algorithms !! )
It would depend on where “here” is. If it was someplace like Minneapolis, where the variation is essentially zero, true and magnetic would indeed be the same.
