Tropical Cyclone Season - how realistic is FSX:SE?

[slim6y]

With three tropical cyclones out there currently, I decided to try and track some in a Baron. Unfortunately, I just either couldn't find them (Irma in particular) or the realism just isn't there.

So my question is, how would I find the cyclones to practise heavy weather flying and how realistic is the "real time/real world" weather? Is there a way to see the weather map on FSX?

I used the NOAA site and the coordinates they gave for the cyclone. Sure, there was some heavy cloud, but nothing really serious in the wind department. I was able to land very easily at MUCC after a 45 minute tour looking for the cyclone.

What can I do to better this? Anything? Or is the game just not advanced enough for this type of weather formation?

[1haydenrobertson123]

Active Sky Next or Active Sky 16 is the most realisistic i've seen and i have it and looking at its it position [the hurricane jose ] in the map of as16 and google earth is accurate enough, and to add with the realism if you have an aircraft with WX radar, you'll see the red, yellow,green, but if not there's a thing with in AS16 that is a weather radar

[gspectre]

What can you do, you mean other than activating the "Real Weather" mode? The sad truth is NOTHING.

I sent an Email to REX over a year ago asking if they could model Hurricanes or Tornadoes. There reply basically stated that it was not possible to model the funnel clouds at this time.

So, you should be able to fly into stormy areas, as you see them in Google Earth but don't look for the actual funnel cloud, it won't be there or those very high winds.

Just so you know, I did ask another company that also does weather for FSX (though I can't recall which one) and I was basically told the same thing. :(

[slim6y]

Originally posted by haydenrobertson:

Active Sky Next or Active Sky 16 is the most realisistic i've seen and i have it and looking at its it position [the hurricane jose ] in the map of as16 and google earth is accurate enough, and to add with the realism if you have an aircraft with WX radar, you'll see the red, yellow,green, but if not there's a thing with in AS16 that is a weather radar [/quote]

I have not looked at Active Sky at all, in fact I did not know it existed. I will look at comparing Google Earth to current.

So are you flying into Cyclone Jose right now in side of FSX? And what is it like as far as realism?

[slim6y]

Originally posted by gspectre:

What can you do, you mean other than activating the "Real Weather" mode? The sad truth is NOTHING.

I sent an Email to REX over a year ago asking if they could model Hurricanes or Tornadoes. There reply basically stated that it was not possible to model the funnel clouds at this time.

So, you should be able to fly into stormy areas, as you see them in Google Earth but don't look for the actual funnel cloud, it won't be there or those very high winds.

Just so you know, I did ask another company that also does weather for FSX (though I can't recall which one) and I was basically told the same thing. :(

This is a little sad, the answer I was expecting, but not the answer I wanted.

Have you tried Active Sky at all?

[galax17]

I have Active Sky. It works. Sat at MUBR Cuba runway 27 with the Beechcraft Baron inside Irma and it was totally cloudy and very Heavy rain, I realesed parking brakes and moved throttle forward and the plane immediately Went sideways left and threw over. Crash after 3 seconds! Flying was impossible.

[slim6y]

Originally posted by galax17:

I have Active Sky. It works. Sat at MUBR Cuba runway 9 with the Beechcraft Baron inside Irma and it was totally cloudy and very Heavy rain, I realesed parking brakes and moved throttle forward and the plane immediately Went sideways left and threw over. Crash after 3 seconds! Flying was impossible.

try starting yourself in the air already. Perfect, I will get AS16 then.

[galax17]

Originally posted by slim6y:

Originally posted by galax17:

I have Active Sky. It works. Sat at MUBR Cuba runway 9 with the Beechcraft Baron inside Irma and it was totally cloudy and very Heavy rain, I realesed parking brakes and moved throttle forward and the plane immediately Went sideways left and threw over. Crash after 3 seconds! Flying was impossible.

try starting yourself in the air already. Perfect, I will get AS16 then.

You do it. Seems impossible from the wind I experienced at MUBR. Guess you can come from the outside.

[1haydenrobertson123]

Originally posted by slim6y:

Originally posted by haydenrobertson:

Active Sky Next or Active Sky 16 is the most realisistic i've seen and i have it and looking at its it position [the hurricane jose ] in the map of as16 and google earth is accurate enough, and to add with the realism if you have an aircraft with WX radar, you'll see the red, yellow,green, but if not there's a thing with in AS16 that is a weather radar [/quote]

I have not looked at Active Sky at all, in fact I did not know it existed. I will look at comparing Google Earth to current.

So are you flying into Cyclone Jose right now in side of FSX? And what is it like as far as realism? [/quote]
i flew from TNCM and flew on a heading of 100 to 120 degrees, into Hurricane Jose in a 737 for about an hour and 20 mins, and the wind was like crazy headwind, speed was all over the place, red and yellow on the wx radar, [with active sky 16] here's a screen shot i took ( https://imgur.com/a/fq3wZ ) [This was at the start of the Hurricane,] this was yesterday,

so, here is a screenshot of active sky map: https://imgur.com/a/5EuXB
and here is the screenshot of where the Hurricane On Google Maps, is: https://imgur.com/a/UgsVF
as you can see it's pretty accurate

[gspectre]

Originally posted by slim6y:

Originally posted by gspectre:

What can you do, you mean other than activating the "Real Weather" mode? The sad truth is NOTHING.

I sent an Email to REX over a year ago asking if they could model Hurricanes or Tornadoes. There reply basically stated that it was not possible to model the funnel clouds at this time.

So, you should be able to fly into stormy areas, as you see them in Google Earth but don't look for the actual funnel cloud, it won't be there or those very high winds.

Just so you know, I did ask another company that also does weather for FSX (though I can't recall which one) and I was basically told the same thing. :(

This is a little sad, the answer I was expecting, but not the answer I wanted.

Have you tried Active Sky at all?

Nope. I've only used Real Weather in FSX or through REX. I think it was Active Sky that I had also contacted but I'm not sure.

I used to alway load up FSX to fly through storms I saw in Google Earth and always wondered why all I got was Wind, Rain and Clouds but never actually saw the Funnel. That's why I wrote them. It was just after REX released Soft Clouds and talking about all the great new features they were adding. I noticed nothing about what I wanted to see. That's why I wrote them.

Come to think of it, it might have been more than a year ago.

[gspectre]

Originally posted by haydenrobertson:

Originally posted by slim6y:

I have not looked at Active Sky at all, in fact I did not know it existed. I will look at comparing Google Earth to current.

So are you flying into Cyclone Jose right now in side of FSX? And what is it like as far as realism?

i flew from TNCM and flew on a heading of 100 to 120 degrees, into Hurricane Jose in a 737 for about an hour and 20 mins, and the wind was like crazy headwind, speed was all over the place, red and yellow on the wx radar, [with active sky 16] here's a screen shot i took ( https://imgur.com/a/fq3wZ ) [This was at the start of the Hurricane,] this was yesterday,

so, here is a screenshot of active sky map: https://imgur.com/a/5EuXB
and here is the screenshot of where the Hurricane On Google Maps, is: https://imgur.com/a/UgsVF
as you can see it's pretty accurate

Looks great on the Radar but did it look correct outside the windows? Could you see a Funnel Cloud or make out and swirling clouds?

[1haydenrobertson123]

tbh i didn't really look outside, because there wasn't any visibility out of the windows

[ZombieHunter]

Originally posted by gspectre:

Originally posted by haydenrobertson:

i flew from TNCM and flew on a heading of 100 to 120 degrees, into Hurricane Jose in a 737 for about an hour and 20 mins, and the wind was like crazy headwind, speed was all over the place, red and yellow on the wx radar, [with active sky 16] here's a screen shot i took ( https://imgur.com/a/fq3wZ ) [This was at the start of the Hurricane,] this was yesterday,

so, here is a screenshot of active sky map: https://imgur.com/a/5EuXB
and here is the screenshot of where the Hurricane On Google Maps, is: https://imgur.com/a/UgsVF
as you can see it's pretty accurate

Looks great on the Radar but did it look correct outside the windows? Could you see a Funnel Cloud or make out and swirling clouds?

A hurricane is huge. You won't see swirling clouds. The eye of Irma alone is around 34 miles across. What you will see is cloud movement respective to the storm. So if you are on the west side of the storm heading due north you should see clouds moving south with winds hitting you from the N or NE. But thunderstorms inside of hurricane complexes are complicated and wind patterns vary across the storm b/c each cell is its own entity being fed by the entire system and the only way to know the true wind direction is to use real world reports. Problem is out in the ocean stations are sparse so you will get spotty data. If you are on the east side of the storm heading north you will have a huge tailwind and the clouds will be moving North along your flight path. Hurricanes in the northern hemisphere spin counterclockwise which is why the east side or right side of the storm has the highest winds b/c the spin is in the direction of travel thus adding to the velocity. The only way you could see the spinning complex is to get up around 65 to 75k feet or higher or even in LEO.

A hurricane is so much larger than any supercell so you won't see the localized rotation, rather just a portion of it.

On a side note I recently bought Sail Away which is a sailing simulator which also has real world weather. Last night I was east of Cuba in 68 knot winds which according to NOAA at the time was pretty close to what stations were reporting. I'm sure ASN can do just as well as some rather unknown sailing game.

[gspectre]

Originally posted by haydenrobertson:

tbh i didn't really look outside, because there wasn't any visibility out of the windows

Well, that still sounds better than what I usually get in FSX.

[gspectre]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Originally posted by gspectre:

Looks great on the Radar but did it look correct outside the windows? Could you see a Funnel Cloud or make out and swirling clouds?

A hurricane is huge. You won't see swirling clouds. The eye of Irma alone is around 34 miles across. What you will see is cloud movement respective to the storm. So if you are on the west side of the storm heading due north you should see clouds moving south with winds hitting you from the N or NE. But thunderstorms inside of hurricane complexes are complicated and wind patterns vary across the storm b/c each cell is its own entity being fed by the entire system and the only way to know the true wind direction is to use real world reports. Problem is out in the ocean stations are sparse so you will get spotty data. If you are on the east side of the storm heading north you will have a huge tailwind and the clouds will be moving North along your flight path. Hurricanes in the northern hemisphere spin counterclockwise which is why the east side or right side of the storm has the highest winds b/c the spin is in the direction of travel thus adding to the velocity. The only way you could see the spinning complex is to get up around 65 to 75k feet or higher or even in LEO.

A hurricane is so much larger than any supercell so you won't see the localized rotation, rather just a portion of it.

On a side note I recently bought Sail Away which is a sailing simulator which also has real world weather. Last night I was east of Cuba in 68 knot winds which according to NOAA at the time was pretty close to what stations were reporting. I'm sure ASN can do just as well as some rather unknown sailing game.

Even if it's not possible to see the Funnel Cloud, I would at least like to see weather so bad that I'd have second thoughts about entering. In FSX, I always tried to find an airport near a tornado and see if I can land at it in a Beechcraft Baron 58. So far, I've never failed.

Sounds like AS is what I need.

[ZombieHunter]

Originally posted by gspectre:

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

A hurricane is huge. You won't see swirling clouds. The eye of Irma alone is around 34 miles across. What you will see is cloud movement respective to the storm. So if you are on the west side of the storm heading due north you should see clouds moving south with winds hitting you from the N or NE. But thunderstorms inside of hurricane complexes are complicated and wind patterns vary across the storm b/c each cell is its own entity being fed by the entire system and the only way to know the true wind direction is to use real world reports. Problem is out in the ocean stations are sparse so you will get spotty data. If you are on the east side of the storm heading north you will have a huge tailwind and the clouds will be moving North along your flight path. Hurricanes in the northern hemisphere spin counterclockwise which is why the east side or right side of the storm has the highest winds b/c the spin is in the direction of travel thus adding to the velocity. The only way you could see the spinning complex is to get up around 65 to 75k feet or higher or even in LEO.

A hurricane is so much larger than any supercell so you won't see the localized rotation, rather just a portion of it.

On a side note I recently bought Sail Away which is a sailing simulator which also has real world weather. Last night I was east of Cuba in 68 knot winds which according to NOAA at the time was pretty close to what stations were reporting. I'm sure ASN can do just as well as some rather unknown sailing game.

Even if it's not possible to see the Funnel Cloud, I would at least like to see weather so bad that I'd have second thoughts about entering. In FSX, I always tried to find an airport near a tornado and see if I can land at it in a Beechcraft Baron 58. So far, I've never failed.

Sounds like AS is what I need.

I'm talking about a hurricane. Funnel cloud and hurricane are two very different entities. FSX models neither, however. You also won't see swirling clouds on FSX for a funnel cloud. Funnels form in mere minutes and some don't live longer than that. Go chase some storms and you will understand. By the time the funnel is documented in a way that FSX could get information it would be long gone. The only way would be to have real time data feed from NOAA velocity radar which would show the red / green couplet and then FSX would use the velocity data to model wind. But FSX wind models are global for weather areas at various altitudes and at the surface. It simulates turbulence for other wind affects but turbulence does not simulate changes in wind velocities local to a weather area. A funnel is very small compared to a weather area. Our PC could not compute actual weather patterns for even a simple supercell thunderstorm. Too much going on. All fluid dynamics calculations and some things we simply don't have models for at this time. FSX divides the world into weather areas to simulate weather but it is global for that area. So if the area is 10 miles wide and the wind at 5000 MSL is 320/20 it is 320/20 for the entire 10 miles. The game then takes this and fudges it a bit over time to add some realism and then adds local wind effects to your aircraft to make it all appear genuine. But in real life you would never have the same wind pattern in a thunderstorm across a 10 mile area. Also note you can have converging winds at any altitude vertically and horizontally which FSX does not model.