I’m totally confused about wind layers. Any wind settings I try result in the wind varying from 0 knots up to the gust speed. Changing slider on the upper 'wind speed" panel doesn’t seem to do anything, only the gust settings have any effect. Trying to model typical conditions at my local airport seems inpossible - e.g. if I’m looking to setup a wind that is constant and direction at around 16 knots gusting up to 18, i just can’t seem to do it! All the tutorials online talk about gusts as having a percentage setting, but I see a slider for speed in knots. Is there something wrong with my install? Am i misunderstanding the interface? Can anyone help me?
Wind is weird for me too. In my quest for a constant wind, I set the gust to come from the same direction as the prevailing winds, with the same speed, hoping to trick the sim. Instead I got a wind that was half the speed I specified. Grrr…
They changed how gusts are set from percentage to knots.
I too can never get conditions I often flew in. I either have to have the winds be minimal to simulate the thermals that used to bounce my plane around while low (a few thousand feet) or have higher winds so I could do a reasonably realistic cross country nav exercise. It was absolutely impossible to get both.
I sort of gave up several months ago because going by the Asobo video’s they didn’t see an issues. They seemed confused about thermals and the differences between turbulence sources. Just look at how fast the wind speed changes speed and direction, maybe it is that fast on Earth somewhere but it sure isn’t here.
Heck look at windsocks and ATC and the trouble they have with blowing in the correct direction of assigning the correct runway. It is a complete mess and my #1 issue with the sim by a long shot. It is so annoying in MP.
I think I can see what I’ve been doing wrong. I’ll try setting the gusts so that they are equal to the difference between base wind levels and gust levels, e.g. base wind level 16 knots and gusts at 2 knots for a 16 knot wind gusting to 18 knots.
I’ve tried it and I think it basically worked. Still issues around actual wind at ground level etc. as covered in other posts that I still don’t fully understand!
That is how I thought it should work now and I think that is reasonable for end-user settings. As a programmer it is about as simple as I’d like to make it if possible.
The wind change frequency, air layer mixing, and thermals based on ground surface type are where I think it needs improvement from a general wind movement perspective.
They also need to find a way to make METARs work with the MeteoBlue data.
The wind interface has some weird bugs. I’ve never sat down to try to map out exactly what causes it, but you can get in to a state where one wind layer cancels out another.
For example, I could put a wind layer at 40,000ft, and set it to 150kts. Then set another wind layer below it, near ground, at a different speed. Ground will register half of what the one at the ground layer reports, as expected. Now drag those wind layers around, effectively swapping them. You won’t see 75kts at the ground no matter where you place the wind layers. Now delete the wind layer that was at ground, and suddenly ground will report the wind layer showing 150kts/2. It’s like that first wind layer is somehow irrevocably tied to ground wind, no matter it’s actual elevation. I’ve pushed it all the way up to 60,000ft, and it still affects wind at the ground.