Specifically the fact that they’re all doing this:
until you’re a couple hundred meters away.
It’s not very helpful.
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Yeah, I noticed that too. Just another thing to chalk up on the long list of disappointments.
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Yes, IF there are windsocks at all at the airfields & airports at all, they are utterly useless.
Can’t believe nobody noticed or didn’t deem it important enough to fix that before release.
Also, the drawing distance of objects are so limited that windsocks (beacon lights are another frustrating example) first get drawn in, when you basically are lined up for final already.
They are also very…jerky for lack of a better term when rotating around when the wind changes direction and not fluid like you would expect them to behave. I know it’s nitpicking but it’s really distracting, especially when we have such a nice looking game, only for animations to look that bad. Really wish they had given us the chance to choose the draw distance because the current one like mentioned is short.
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Yes i also reported this on Zendesk.
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Some more stuff about the windsock misery:
Flying into Wittman Rgnl (KOSH) I again witnessed a prime example of the problem.
On short final you see…no windsock at first:
Ten seconds later it suddenly appears (left of runway)
(disregard the aircraft, it’s again somebody just spawning in on the runway when you’re on final…sigh)
But not only is the drawing distance of the windsocks so limited that they are rendered almost completely useless. They are in fact very much useless, judging from this (2 min. later):
The windsock is definitely not indicating a 19kts wind and is neither indicating a wind direction of 325.
Surprisingly, this doesn’t seem to bother too many people in here.
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A lot of airports don’t have PAPI that are there IRL as well.
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So after flying some more, I can assure everybody that the windsocks in the US are not indicating the wind reported by ATIS/AWOS/ASOS and doesn’t reflect the “real” wind directions either.
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Every airport everytime i look at the windsock it looks like strong wind, the moment i come closer to it, while taxing, it falls flat most of the time and shows the correct wind - who else have this ?
Yeah, have this too. And if the sock is blown often the direction is wrong.
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The wind socks are not animated when being in the distance. unfortunately the animation kicks in only when very close. This makes them absolutely useless because you can’t get any information while overflying the field.
Also the wind direction and speed seems to be not as accurate as it should.
Another issue is the missing of those windsocks on many airports, which should have one.
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Is this some performance related LOD thing going on? I’d be surprised if there were a setting specifically for windsocks, so perhaps a fix would decrease performance across the board, if that is even the reason, of course.
Windsocks in general haven’t had their final design pass. When adding them to custom airports they are off by 180 degrees by default and have to be flipped around. They also don’t hold their designed size. They’re not very good at the moment.
Seems those windsocks need some rework for the immersion. Especially vfr flying is bad if you fly over the field and couldn’t get a clue from which direction the wind comes…
I don’t think that windsocks are a big performance hit if they had a higher LOD and were animated from further away. I mean: look at other sims where this stuff simply works for ages
The animation issue is like Asgarmagol said. The distance to the non-animated state of the windsock is ridiculous short. You can change that yourself by increasing the corresponding value in the windsock.xml file found here (MS store installation): X:\Users\XXX\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Official\OneStore\asobo-simobjects-landmarks\SimObjects\Landmarks
However, this only solves the animation issue. Another issue is the draw distance of the windsocks.
The draw distance is too way to short, so windsocks are generally first drawn in when really close to them. At Whitman Regional Airport (KOSH) you can’t even see the windsocks at the end of the runways when you are parked at the runway midpoint.
I haven’t found a solution for the very small draw distance. I would like to know too.
And yes, the windsocks doesn’t really reflect real world winds at least in the US, but that’s probably because of the weather being broken there in general. Haven’t really tested it other places.
Surprisingly, this doesn’t seem to bug a lot of people in here.
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Casuals don’t care about windsocks or accurate markings / lightings of airfields.
We need more accuracy of airfields to get more “sim” value out of it.
It bugs me quite a bit. I would also add the in-game windsocks also lack lights. Of course, if you can’t see them from any useful distance in daylight, putting a light in them wouldn’t help at night, either.
I hope folks who know all the details of these windsock problems, such as yourself, have told Zendesk about them.
I find that the windsocks don’t show the current wind at all and don’t seem to be hooked up to the weather engine. They look the same (little or no wind) at every airport in every weather conditions.