Hey all - I just installed a new airport from flightsim.to for Yellowstone West (KWYS) and whenever I install one of these, either free ware or pay ware, I use the Top Rudder ultralight to ‘poke around’ and check out all the airport details.
Well as soon as the TR103 was spawned it was going backwards at a good clip - the wheel brakes wouldn’t stop it. So I started the motor and took off - nearly vertically and from the ramp - into the wind.
I flew it upwind best I could, making about 5-10 mph groundspeed - then turned 180 to get going downwind and was going about 50-60 mph over the ground at about 100’ over the taxiway when I passed the windsock. It was backward. It was pointed tail first into the wind.
Now - I don’t think this is typical of MSFS - but I have not tested it yet.
I’m about to try a few airfields with the wind at ground level cranked up but I was wondering if anyone else has seen this at any other airports?
Unless this was fixed and then reverted, I think it’s always been this way
Nah, on occasion they are blowing the right way, but not often. At least where I travel. Even if you follow the sock other will land in the opposite direction because of ATC. It is the only issue that drives me nuts.
Yeah you can’t rely on the windsock; you certainly can’t rely on ATC for landing direction … I’m just hoping that one day they implement smoke from industrial buildings so that the poor GA pilot has some chance of figuring out which way to land… 
In reality, two windsocks on two different ends of a real airfield can tell two different stories! Alas, I am not sure if MSFS 2020 is as clever as that with it’s weather modelling. I wish it was. Charles
Is there any way with an external app to see the current wind around the aircraft? Just like shift-Z in FSX?
I know the wind around aircraft can be read using simconnect, but any app that does that?
Not sure about that one. You could try the Avsim forum if you don’t get any help here. Perhaps there is something in the ‘developer options’ that gives a ‘wire frame’ type of representation of the wind if one enables it? Remember, especially if it’s a thunderstorm day with significant convection, frontal, or calm days with noticeable convection, the wind sock will behave differently as apposed to a windsock blowing in a steady wind. Charles
They may have been placed incorrectly by the scenery developer? Are they 180 degrees out by any chance?
No, this is a known bug, and apparently will be fixed soon. In one of the Dev QAs they said it would be fixed in Sim Update 4 (next week!)
It very well could be. When building airport scenery, you can’t just drop a windsock object and say “done”. It has a rotation property that has to be set to north, or it will not point correctly. I modified my home airport to fix the taxiway signs and lights, and found two of three windsocks in the default scenery had the direction parameter set incorrectly. I fixed that, and all three point correctly with whatever wind is injected by Live Weather 100 percent of the time.
I’ve read about this issue, and the rationale behind it.
But I’ve never read anyone explain why the sim would allow you to place the windsock in such a way as to make them useless!
Why would you ever want to place them in any orientation that means they can’t be used properly?
I recommend this simple program, has been working great for this purpose:
That looks perfect. Thanks so much!
You don’t WANT to place it incorrectly. Asobo chose to make the default object insertion direction to be 180 degrees, for who knows what silly reason.
The windsock effect requires that the object be placed in a 0 degree orientation. So every windsock you place has to be oriented as well. If the author doesn’t know, or forgets, then they’ll be wrong.
Asobo made windsock orientation even worse in the latest SDK, as they added an option (that perhaps I don’t understand) to the Windsock object that says “Default object direction” and it’s set at 0. You’d think this means that it will be placed at 0. I thought, oh, that was nice of them to fix this. It’s not fixed. I don’t exactly know what the new option means. When you place a windsock, it’s still placed at 180. But the new option now my bet is makes authors complacent when they see “Oh, it’s already set to be default at 0”. I only figured it out that’s not what it means because I checked. I assumed, since I heard they fixed it, that they had fixed the object so you don’t have to reorient it when you place it. No, they just added an option without explaining what the option does, and the object is still placed “wrong” by default.
Now perhaps if you change the option to 180 it works and you don’t have to reorient the object, but, be that as it may, you HAVE to reset the object orientation to 0 degrees or change this value, if that’s in fact what it does, for the windsock to work properly. Meaning, the author STILL has to fix it, and now it’s even more confusing because it seemed like they fixed it, but they didn’t. Either way, they are STILL forcing the author to edit each object, and there’s no official documentation on this, when Asobo could just choose to fix the object so you don’t have to think about it.
I still have windsocks blowing INTO the wind here…
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