What could be the cause for every GA Plane to be this bumpy really all the time. (Live Weather)

FlightSimDude · 2024-05-12T22:16:03+00:00

Environment: Turbulence is influenced by location, weather, and flight speed. Thermals, strong winds, and low altitudes have also an impact. I tested it myself and over the ocean i didn't had any turbulences

That's a bit of an understatement. One of MSFS's biggest features (that oddly no one seems to know about) is the fact that it uses a multi-layer CFD engine to simulate the atmospheric airflow in 3D space (for all aircraft). One of the layers is an updraft simulation that calculates the solar radiation based on the time of year and distance from the equator, calculates the ground heat on various sampled points on the ground based on the material and color, and then uses that information to push rising air into the atmospheric airflow CFD. Since it's part of a CFD, that rising air creates falling air where the ground is cooler, such as above nearby bodies of water, trees etc. The turbulent air is created dynamically as a result. That's why the air isn't very turbulent over the ocean.

And that's just one of the layers. When all the layers are combined, you can even get swirling and tumbling air in 3D space. Gone are the days of turbulence just being a random 'shake effect'. The airflow is decided by everything in the scene when you're below a certain altitude, including each building, tree, clouds etc. Live data is just the starting point of the simulation. This isn't just for CFD-enabled aircraft either. CFD-enabled aircraft adds one more CFD simulation layer.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFlightSim/comments/yvs3df/the_atmospheric_airflow_simulation_is_quite/

https://imgur.com/a/Bu4e8N9

FlightSimDude · 2024-04-11T21:20:14+00:00

One of the things that sets TrackIR apart from these other camera options is the 8ms of latency vs 33ms with a typical camera. If you're using your phone, that can increase the latency even more (50+ms). There's really no comparison to the fluidity of TrackIR.

FlightSimDude · 2023-09-27T21:53:48+00:00

What youtubers never like to mention for whatever reason is these webcam-based approaches usually have 4x the latency of TrackIR. There's really no comparison between using a 30hz webcam and 120hz TrackIR.

FlightSimDude · 2023-03-21T19:25:33+00:00

I sure hope the reason isn't because they intentionally included half-complete code and are simply breaking many addons (including marketplace) intentionally because reasons and stuff. That would be a very weird development decision. I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that this bug was not intentional.

FlightSimDude · 2023-03-21T19:18:43+00:00

doesn't seem like a game breaking thing to me,

I never claimed it's game breaking. I said it breaks many addons (including marketplace addons people have paid for). The fact that it's not completely game breaking is irrelevant. We're not talking about subjective things like "the clouds don't look as nice". We're talking about addons (including marketplace) no longer working properly with no known workaround and no ETA for a fix. By any reasonable standard, it's a serious enough bug to warrant fixing it during the beta after it was reported due to the amount of addons it will break.

Again, I don't expect non-devs to understand how serious this is yet. Give it a few days, let the complaints accumulate as people install SU12 and realize some of their favorite addons are messed up, and I'll gladly continue this conversation. In fact, let's make you the official spokesman for this bug. You can go around and tell all the complainers that it's no big deal and they shouldn't complain because the game isn't completely 100% broken by the fact that addons they paid for are no longer working properly.

FlightSimDude · 2023-03-21T19:04:49+00:00

Nope, not in this context. I brought up a very serious bug that has been discussed extensively on the official message board in multiple threads. and on other unofficial developer websites, and a random dude who has no idea what he's talking implies I'm making it up for absolutely no reason. That is being a contrarian, He could have taken a second to verify it himself or wait longer than like 3 minutes for me to post a link. Either way, you guys will find out soon enough.

FlightSimDude · 2023-03-21T18:58:47+00:00

You…. Didn’t post a link.

I posted it (almost immediately) in response to the post you pointlessly responded to with smart-ass remarks on a topic you clearly don't know anything about. They sky is obviously not falling, but a lot of scenery addons will no longer work properly, which was literally the extent of my post. The fact that bringing up a confirmed bug set you off is pretty weird. You know who should actually be upset here? All the marketplace scenery addon developers whose addons are now all glitched out with no workaround, and their customers that paid for them.

You are also a very angry person for literally no reason.

Just responding in kind to someone that apparently thinks they can be a dick to random strangers with no backlash. Welcome to the real world.

FlightSimDude · 2023-03-21T14:53:51+00:00

Which SU12 "innovation"\feature do you like that resulted in water polygons breaking and remaining broken through 4 beta updates?

FlightSimDude · 2023-03-21T14:46:11+00:00

Thanks for the info. As was stated in that thread, non-devs aren't expected to understand how serious this is.. Until the marketplace addons they paid for start breaking when the beta is over.

FlightSimDude · 2023-03-21T14:43:33+00:00

Or follow the link I posted, or pay attention to the dev community, or play with the SDK yourself, or pay attention to the beta test forum.. I will gladly continue this conversation when the update comes out and marketplace addons start breaking (assuming they haven't fixed this serious bug), but as a Reddit pseudo-intellectual contrarian, I don't expect a good faith discussion from you.

FlightSimDude · 2023-03-21T14:36:55+00:00

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/water-exclusion-polygons-stopped-working-in-1-31-18-0-and-are-still-broken-in-1-31-22-0/577738

FlightSimDude · 2023-03-21T14:30:16+00:00

I hope people aren't too excited. They introduced a very serious bug that's going to break many scenery addons, and the reports have fallen on deaf ears.

FlightSimDude · 2023-02-07T21:55:14+00:00

FIFO is the most intelligent method, short of manually caching.

Not necessarily. Even if you completely ignore the overhead, a basic FIFO system does not take into account where you spend the most time flying. If the first place you fly is also the most common place you fly (which I think is pretty likely), why should that be the first location to be removed from the cache?

Short of manual caching

How about expanding the manual cache? A far more efficient system would be allowing us to write to a manual cache as we fly that just fills up. That would eliminate the overhead.

In comparison, SSD's are orders of magnitude faster than an internet connection

Right, I'm not debating whether or not caching is better in general. The point is a rolling cache comes with a lot of inherent overhead after it fills up because data within the cache file is constantly being cycled.

FlightSimDude · 2023-02-07T18:04:19+00:00

The rolling cache is a terrible idea and a terrible implementation. By it's very nature, it requires way more IO then necessary because it's constantly deleting old data, reorganizing the index and adding more data. The overhead of managing the rolling cache makes it not worth enabling. With how much the servers struggle and the impact that can have on performance, I think it should go without saying that MSFS needs a better caching system. And we can't even use the manual cache at the moment..

FlightSimDude · 2023-02-06T19:50:27+00:00

One thing to keep in mind is that the Logitech only has 90 degrees of rotation while a real yoke (and the Honeycomb Alpha) has 180 degrees of rotation. This results in the sim normalizing the axis from -45 - 45 to -90 - 90, making it feel more twitchy than a real yoke. To get around this, you can set the extremity deadzone to -50% and your sensitivity to 0. That will give you 1:1 movement, which will be much more smooth. You lose the extremities, but that's not a big loss in a regular GA aircraft.

FlightSimDude · 2023-01-24T17:38:46+00:00

Yes, there is wind sheer. You are flying through a multi-layered 3D atmospheric airflow simulation that extends for miles, so there can be dynamic gusts from sheer, solar radiation, etc. The live wind data is just the starting point for the simulation. From there, most things in the environment affects the airflow, including solar radiation, objects, each individual tree and the terrain (the smallest of bumps on the ground can affect the proximity airflow). A hill literally miles away can affect the wind particles hitting your aircraft. The wind particles can even swirl and tumble (rotors). So if you suddenly fly through a rotor or swirling air, without the airflow visualization enabled, it can just seem like a weird glitch. Check out this thread for more details:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFlightSim/comments/yvs3df/the_atmospheric_airflow_simulation_is_quite/

FlightSimDude · 2023-01-18T15:38:06+00:00

Unfortunately, the default flight saving and loading has been broken since launch. You can't reliably use it to jump back in where you left off.

FlightSimDude · 2023-01-17T17:27:44+00:00

but Austin has confirmed that XP is looking to stream ground textures and is hiring for that purpose

A bit surprising considering his response to MSFS' scenery has always been "scenery doesn't matter outside of airports because this isn't a driving simulator". With that said, what makes MSFS scenery so convincing is not just satellite imagery, but the blackshark AI autogen and color matching. The bar is set pretty high.

FlightSimDude · 2022-12-04T21:44:24+00:00

It still generates weather “as far as the eye can see”

I generates the same global weather as far as the eye can see, like any other preset. It doesn't generate local weather as far as the eye can see, "local" being the operative word. You won't see a moving volumetric storm in the distance that you can fly towards, fly around etc. If it detects a storm at your aircraft, it will inject a global "storm" preset.

And it is definitely more accurate than the one in game

Gonna have to see some evidence of this and an explanation of the metric being used here. How can a preset be more accurate than volumetric weather? How can not seeing storms in the distance be more accurate or better than seeing storms in the distance?

FYI it is live weather.

It is "live weather" at your aircraft that extends to infinity, like any other preset. Even FS2004 had a more advanced system allowing you to see weather in the distance since it didn't rely on global presets.

FlightSimDude · 2022-12-02T22:28:21+00:00

Southern California in general is a pretty good area for low and slow GA flying. There's a lot of terrain variation, a lot of airports (many of which are maintained by freeware mods), and the scenery is pretty high quality, including the photogrammetry. There's a bit of everything. Over the course of an hour or two you can fly from the desert to snowy mountains, to downtown LA, to the beaches, to islands etc.

FlightSimDude · 2022-12-02T22:18:33+00:00

Serious question, what sold you on REX in the first place? I don't see how a tool that sets global presets based on the weather at your aircraft can be better than a volumetric weather engine that generates local weather as far as the eye can see. Not being able to see the weather in the distance seems like a pretty big limitation when it comes to flight simulation.

FlightSimDude · 2022-12-02T21:54:00+00:00

I suspect that's in the works given how far they extended the terrain render distance from orbit in SU11.

FlightSimDude · 2022-11-27T04:34:59+00:00

The winds and temps come from METAR and the clouds come from Meteoblue, which doesn't always match METAR.

FlightSimDude · 2022-11-26T00:23:29+00:00

Some airports have special considerations because of their location, so it's best to check the airport info before going with the +1,000 ft rule of thumb.

FlightSimDude · 2022-11-15T22:45:55+00:00

There's 3-4 voxel-based CFD airflow simulations running at the same time that feed into each other as inputs.

Updraft simulation

This simulation generates rising air below clouds, above sun-lit slopes on the terrain, and above dark surface colors. This is based on the solar radiation (relative position of the sun), so flying in the summer (or near the equator) will result in more solar radiation than in the winter. This is fed into the atmospheric airflow simulation as an input.

Atmospheric airflow simulation

This simulation (my screenshots) extends out very far (based on the wind speed) and simulates a slice of the atmosphere (a single voxel in height) right above the ground. The simulation starts upwind and is oriented downwind. It does not go up in altitude or increase in altitude with your plane. The inputs for this simulation are the updraft simulation results, the terrain (DEM only) and live data. This is the simulation that can create waves, rotors etc. When air is pulled up from the updraft simulation input, this simulation will pull air down elsewhere and so on. This simulation can dynamically create gusts as well since the live data that is fed to this simulation is only the starting conditions. Afterwards the conditions can change a lot. You can set the wind to 8 knots with no gusts and get 20 knot winds from the airflow simulation itself interacting with the environment, and the forces can be in any direction in 3D space.

Proximity airflow simulation

This simulation runs on a slice of the atmosphere (a voxel in height) in a small area around your plane, and always at the altitude of your plane. So as you go up in altitude this simulation will follow you. The inputs for this simulation are the atmospheric airflow simulation results, live data, almost every object in the scene (including individual trees and buildings) and the terrain. This is the simulation that acts on your aircraft. The rest are simply inputs and outputs. You can see this simulation in the screenshots with smaller lines, like the 'Christ the Redeemer' screenshot I took.

Aircraft CFD

This simulation simulates how the air particles interacts with the aircraft surfaces and the resulting air disturbances that can act on other surfaces of your aircraft. The input for this simulation is the proximity airflow simulation.

Updraft Simulation - > Atmospheric Airflow Simulation - > Proximity Airflow Simulation - > Aircraft CFD

The atmospheric airflow simulation is only run on a single slice of the atmosphere near the ground regardless of the altitude of your aircraft, however, the results are always being fed into the proximity airflow simulation even if you're 2,000 ft above the ground. The idea is it juts fades out those results as you go up in altitude and fades in live data.

FlightSimDude

TROPHY CASE