Windsocks showing wind at aircraft altitude, not at surface

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue:
Windsocks are indicating the wind at the altitude the plane is, not what is actually on the ground. Surface observations AND my observations as I departed confirmed this.

ICAO, coordinates, or specific location:

In this case, Hulett Airport in Wyoming (W43)

[PC Only] Did you remove all your community mods/add-ons? If yes, are you still experiencing the issue?

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)?

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

  1. Get surface observation from ASOS/AWOS
  2. Observe windsocks while on the ground
  3. Climb up to or above pattern altitude
  4. Observe the wind aloft readout in the G1000
  5. Check the windsock visually below you at the airport - it is now pointing in the direction of the wind at altitude as reported in the G1000 (etc.), not what it is/was at the surface.

YOUR SETTINGS

If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the User Support Hub.

What peripherals are you using, if relevant:

[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it?
No

[PC, MSFS 2020 Only] Are you using DX11 or DX12?

[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use?

[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share?

MEDIA

Please add a screenshot or video of the issue occurring.
I wish I’d gotten a screen shot during departure, but this was discovered when I was on a high downwind, as I was departing the pattern.

Here’s a crop the windsock during my high downwind departure. Note the runway number 31. I added an orange line for the windsock direction (about 280°) and a magenta line for what it was when I departed two minutes earlier - about 230°.

However, when I departed it was straight across the runway, at about 230°, which is confirmed by the surface observation, which I received prior to takeoff, then again as I took the same screenshot above while in the pattern. Here’s the crop of that:

Lastly, here’s a crop of the wind on the G1000 during my climbout:

image

I believe this is what’s driving the windsock, as that’s about what it’s now showing.

My report is that the windsock changed while I was climbing and reflected my current winds rather than those on the surface. This makes it incredibly challenging to accurately gauge the wind direction when you’re at altitude, overflying the airport, or on approach, something that pilots often have to do - especially at smaller airports with no tower or ASOS/AWOS.

Note, this is not a weather issue - it is a scenery issue. The winds throughout takeoff and climbout were what I would expect based on the surface observations and wind aloft forecasts. Rather, it is the representation of the wind via the scenery objects that is bugged.

Using the current update of SU Beta 1, if it matters

[END OF FIRST USER REPORT]


:loudspeaker: For anyone who wants to contribute on this issue, Click on the button below to use this template:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
•

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
•

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

(edit - to blow up the picture of the windsock and add the lines to make it easier to see)

3 Likes

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• yes

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
• did a test at KFXE, RWY 09, 2 wind layers manually set as follow:
surface: from 90, 10kts
at 2000ft: from 270, 10kts
see below screenshots for results

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•
Plane at RWY 09, windsock is correctly orientated:


Using slew to go up at 2000ft, wind is from 280, 11kts:

Using the drone, go down at RWY 09, windsock incorrectly shows to the opposite direction, 280:

4 Likes

Has been like that since FS1 because that is what the AMBIENT WIND DIRECTION environment var shows. There’s no ground wind direction var. Would be good if there was one, though.

Mathijs Kok
PMDG

3 Likes

Yeah, I think this has been called out before, but I don’t believe it has its own bug report, at least not one that’s open. I just re-noticed it and either way, it needs to be fixed.

Thanks for the insight on the variable name!

I have a soft spot for bugs that have made it through several generations of Flight Sim. I’m a freak.

4 Likes

I am wondering if that issue could also impact the instruction ATC give you for the airport destination landing runway if you don’t have the “ATC enforce flight plan” enabled ?. Will make a test.

4 Likes

I don’t fly with ATC, but wind shear on short final is one of my favorite things!

This is fascinating.

1 Like

If the ambient wind variable is the factor, and things are loaded or “running” when we’re in various modes prior to getting in the plane, that could affect a lot of things in unpredictable ways.

I just always thought I was at the mercy of a poorly timed weather update in the sim but now I know about this it explains it.

I’ve overflown many small dirt strips to observe the windsock, only to find that once I’m actually below 100-200 feet on final that the wind (and sock) is pointing in the complete opposite direction…

3 Likes

This is a critical issue mainly for the ones flying VFR since the circling prior to land on non controlled airport to check the windsock direction may be wrong and lead to land on the incorrect runway.

For departure it is less problematic since you are at the same altitude than the windsock, so you’ll always see the correct wind surface direction.

3 Likes

100%
I’m also one of the ‘ones flying VFR’ too lol. I must spend at least 3/4 of my time doing VFR.

Even when you don’t get the wrong runway, when you’ve mentally prepared for a ~15 knot left to right landing crosswind, a ~10 knot crosswind right to left is quite an unpleasant surprise in something small like a C208/T207 :upside_down_face:

Unless you’re affected by the 180 degree windsock bug :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes

I had never really thought about it before, but now that it’s being mentioned, I realize this has happened to me quite often as well.

It would be great if the windsocks at ground level would display the ground wind.

1 Like

When I am flying with live weather on, I pull up the AeroWeather app on my phone to check the weather for my departure & arrival airports. One less thing to depend upon in sim, and one more screen for me in the cockpit/on the flight deck.

Does that work for airports without weather reporting stations? Many of the airports I fly into don’t have those. You can get an idea if there’s one nearby, or maybe interpolate between two stations, but that doesn’t always work well in the sim.

Also, while real ASOS and certain AWOS broadcast “minute weather” over the airwaves, I’m sure you know they only update the METARs every hour (aside from SPECIs), so that data can be old. A windsock is often a good flyover or last-minute check as you are approaching or departing. The sim AWOS do only the hourly updates, not the minute weather, but I also don’t know the frequency at which the sim updates the wind - if it’s also hourly, then I guess that works.

Does the sim create new weather for airports without weather reporting stations nearby? Does it interpolate and simulate new local winds or does it simply take whatever live weather that is reported nearest-by? App has a “Nearby” option so if there is no weather data local to an airport, one can see what nearby airports are reporting. Does the sim simulate new weather between hourly weather reporting data and present that as live weather to windsocks & pilots?

In any case, even if approaching an airfield that does not report, if one has the weather picture from nearby airports that do report, a pilot already has the weather picture in mind’s eye before seeing the windsock in sim. When what I see in the sim does not make sense, I defer to what I know to be reported when using live weather rather than a sketchy simulated windsock. While I love what we have to fly at home, I also take a lot of what is simulated with a grain of salt. In a pinch, I can always switch live weather off to save a flight that the sim is errantly trying to ruin for me.

If you use the weather layers on the global map, you’ll see what it is giving you at the time indicated by the time slider. Airports that report METAR do augment the broader data, so those are fairly accurate, but might “hold it” until the next refresh. More research is needed to see how transitions are handled.

But the questions have always been - where do those in-between data come from (they seem to be based on numeric models), how much resolution/granularity is there, and how delayed are they into the sim? I’ve heard some figures thrown around, but that was for FS2020 - it seems to be more timely and accurate in 2024.

In the end, what’s going on at airports without reporting stations is highly dependent on a lot of things - local geography and nearby storm systems being big ones. Airports can be really far from them. But again, hard to know what it’s going to do in the sim, anyway, which is why we need the windsocks to be accurate.

1 Like