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Post by Dennis the menace on Oct 25, 2020 19:50:04 GMT -5
FSrealWX worked for me at midnight Saturday night. This Sunday morning, it was not working. This is an exact duplicate of the error/problem from the first time when this thread was created.
I assume it will be in operation by late Monday or early Tuesday if it repeats what happened the last time. But that is just an assumption. I posted this again so that people will not think that they did something to cause this program to not work, such as an update, or some type of download, etc. Some people early had suspected they might have caused the error. Its not you, its the program. So don't go out and start uninstalling updates or removing things!
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Post by Jorge on Oct 26, 2020 14:51:56 GMT -5
All,
I can confirm that the FSRealWX Lite version is no longer working. It also went down on Saturday for me (EST) in the afternoon since that was when I last tried to use it. I tried to use it again today, but nothing.
I reinstalled from what I had downloaded the other day and installed in a different location outside of all program folders. Nothing. It runs and does everything it is supposed to do, but there is not green message at the top of the flight sim. None of the information is being sent over. I have a registered version of FSUIPC 3.99, so it's not that. I have no idea what the issue may be since this is in both FS9 and FSX:SE as well. The program goes through it's thing (in FSX:SE using either the FSUIPC or the Simconnect, doesn't matter) without actually connecting to the sim, whichever it may be. When it does it just says the info at the bottom but does not send any weather to the sim. As far as I can tell this was the only weather program that was free that still worked with FS9. FSRealWX Pro (i.e. version 2.x) cannot be found online anymore and if you do find it, the site may face retribution of some sort since that particular version is not to be distributed per the author on the FSRealWX forums (at least that's what I understood from what I read there). If I'm wrong and you have a copy, please send it my way? It seems the weather engine I posted earlier actually used the FS9 interface to get the information for the third party software from the same server as FS9 Realweather (default), so there's no chance it will work. I finally had a chance to try it out and it didn't work. There are various other FS9 programs I've tried that work this way as well, so they won't work either. These include some of the ones that allowed you to download METAR information that you would then load "manually" into FS9. I think John mentioned another weather program that seems to work cross platform (FSMeteo) that may be worth the investment. At time of writing it costs 29.00 Euro ($34.25 per today's rate) which is a bit high for me right now, but maybe down the road it will be affordable. According to the website it supports everything from FS98 to P3D. FSMeteoIf anyone finds something in their archives that may help us get weather into FS9 please let us know. I'll keep searching.
For FSX I found something called FSXWX that seems to work well for that particular sim and should work in P3D from what it says. Haven't tried it yet, though. I'll post something when I can test it out unless somebody beats me to it.
FSXWXInstallation seems complicated, but some of what I've read online it's not really bad as long as you follow the instructions in the video. We'll see. Regards, Jorge Miami, FL
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Post by Dennis the menace on Oct 26, 2020 22:30:33 GMT -5
As of 4PM Mountain Time, it appears to be working. At least that is my impression of it. It starts normally when you launch the program, without the hanging or the sticking. It connects to the site and downloads weather. Here is were it is different that before. I have mine set to a 200 mile range. In the past, a long string of error messages would show, then one by one, each weather station would be displayed. Sometimes, like at Chicago or New York, where there are many weather stations within a 200 mile range, it might take 2 or 3 minutes to load them, one by one. You could count each station as it was loaded. Then the main display box would show the details for the weather were you are currently located. As you flew, each time the WX was updated, any sub panel would flash with each station load. The main instrument panel would not, but an autopilot, or the GPS, or something would flash until all stations were loaded.
Today I few a BKS Airspeed Ambassador from Belfast to Leeds UK. I started the weather program. It started up normally. Then came all the usual string of error messages. So far, everything was normal. Then it started downloading stations. ZIP ZIP ZIP very very quickly. Just a few seconds. At this time I had my doubts, I was expecting no weather to show in FS. Then the display box showed the weather at Belfast. So I went to FS, and presto, there were different clouds and temps and wind than I had previously had. So something had downloaded. So I took off from Belfast and as I got to the Isle of Man, the weather changed, and different clouds appeared. But no flashing. None. And it was instantaneously, not that one by one loading of the stations as it had been. 20 miles from Leeds, the weather changed a bit again. I landed and then went to the kitchen to make some rice pudding!
So something has changed. I'm not sure exactly what. One thing I noticed was that I did not see the altimeter adjust when I hit the B key. But the barometric pressure must have been put in by the weather program, because ATIS said the pressure was 29.52. And as we all know, when the weather is clear or not working, its always 29.92.
On last thing, I'm not sure if this is new, or something I had never paid attention to in the past. The box on the right gives the wind speeds and temps at various altitudes, and one of the lines was maximum wind speed. Another line said "Troposphere". I don't recall any of this in the past.
I do wish that site would at least post something on its forum. The "news" posts are like 2 years old.
So anyway, I think it is working, but I'm not quite convinced. It is certainly operating diffrently than it use to. Its better in my opinion. That flashing as you flew was a bit annoying. Another problem I has was if it was installing weather stations, and you went to something else, like flight planner or fuel/payload, it would bark at you with a box saying do you want to continue. It didn't do that to me today because everything was blitzkrieg fast.
Mike
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Post by Jorge on Oct 26, 2020 23:33:32 GMT -5
Well,
Nothing on my end. The program gets all the weather just fine, but when it says that it had the "handshake" with FS9 and sent all the weather over it's not there. Clear and 29.92 still.
I opened the debug menu under the last tab up top and at the bottom of it says that all weather was cleared 1 second after it was transferred. Not sure why, but it seems to be a "command" of some sort since I have reinstalled the program again and I'm getting the same, exact command at the end. Really strange.
On the bright side, the information was downloaded rather quickly like Mike said. It just gets cleared out of the sim 1 second after it gets sent over, while still staying on the FSRealWX Lite program itself. I guess you can always enter it manually, but you'd have to write it down first since it doesn't let you change anything on the sim while it's running and connected to it. That would mean you'd have the same weather throughout, though, which defeats the whole reason to have the thing in the first place.
Anyone else look at their debug log when things went sideways on your ends?
Jorge Miami, FL
PS: I got a chance to check out the FSXWX one for FSX and it works as advertised. Now to get this particular one working for FS9 again!
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Post by Dennis the menace on Oct 27, 2020 3:16:00 GMT -5
Sorry, I was wrong.
I thought it was working but what it was doing was downloading the weather and not installing it into FS. This time it was not overwriting my existing weather, so I was using the old weather from a few days ago. Usually, it clears out all weather. By not clearing the weather, I assumed it was working. This was this afternoon. Then tonight it was back to the "hanging box" when you try to start the program. So it kind of tricked me. Maybe tomorrow it will be working, otherwise who knows how long I will be using global October 25th weather!
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Post by Defender on Oct 27, 2020 8:55:20 GMT -5
Back to its usual self now at least where I am. Uploads everything to FS9 except, oddly, wind speed on the ground. Shows only direction on the ground, but both direction/speed aloft, Metar or DWC.
Anyway thanks for the warnings Mike. Maybe the FSrealWX team read your complaints, but I agree it has to be much more reliable to be of much use.
Bill
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Post by Dennis the menace on Oct 27, 2020 11:01:41 GMT -5
I can confirm it is working as usual once again.
At least it is predictable. It will fail sometime late on a Saturday morning or early afternoon. It will then work for a very short time around Saturday midnight (Mountain Time which is my time). Then it will fail until either very late on Monday night, or early on Tuesday when once again it will work normally - until the next month when it will repeat the process all over again.
Because it is so predictable, it almost leads me to believe it is a programming error or something. Maybe we can use its 4 day down time to do things around the house or something lol!
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Post by johnhinson on Oct 30, 2020 0:52:48 GMT -5
Strangely enough, having recommended FS Global, which has been fine for me for more years than I can count, it too has just had a 24 hour outage . . .
John
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Post by Jorge on Nov 1, 2020 11:50:12 GMT -5
Just wondering if anyone had any updates for this weekend.
Haven't had a chance to fire up the sim since I've been doing some computer "housekeeping" for two days.
Should have some feedback tonight myself.
Jorge Miami, FL
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Post by Defender on Nov 1, 2020 12:44:19 GMT -5
Working for me today Jorge but same fault, no ground wind speed. Annoying as the TAS and so TO distance is going to be wrong.
Bill
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Post by Pixel Pilot on Nov 2, 2020 10:25:15 GMT -5
I used FSrealWx lite yesterday. It worked well for most of my trip. I flew from Katl to Kpit. Two things have been different since prior to the problems. First is that the weather for the departure airport loads and then is replaced by default weather after no more than 10 seconds. If you are not watching for it it is easy to miss. The solution I have found is to click on the Set WX ICAO box. This will restore that actual weather to the departure airport. The second problem is that once you are out of the range of the departure airport weather the weather sometimes reverts to default weather. This shows itself as a reduction of almost all clouds and the barometric pressure becoming 29.92. The real weather normally returns within about 50 miles or so. I just keep going until the real weather returns. Other than those two things it seems to be working well.
Ed
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Post by warbaby on Nov 6, 2020 18:59:32 GMT -5
That is usual working order on my end. When I download wx, the air is always static. I found that if you start at a home airport or some other airport than your departure airport, then download weather. When you spawn to your departure airport, I usually have weather on the ground, active wind and temps. But then again, that is what works for me. Allen
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Post by Dennis the menace on Nov 7, 2020 1:08:43 GMT -5
I have found out the same thing. If I am already at an airport, and then download weather, it does not actually install the weather. Once I hit the "set" weather, the weather changes to what it correctly should be.
I have found this neat trick out also - Start FS and go to the main menu, set up your flight, but do not hit "enter" to begin FS. Now minimize FS and launch FSrealWX, and hit download. The weather will download. Once it is finished, then go back to FS and hit enter to start the program. When FS fully loads, you will be at your airport with the correct weather.
By the way, it was doing this for me six months or more ago. I only discovered it because I would take off, fly, and as soon as i reached the altitude I had selected in FSrealWX (4,000 feet for me), the weather would load.
Mike
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Post by darrenvox on Nov 7, 2020 8:28:16 GMT -5
normally i get an issue with updating info from vatsim or noaa and it breaks up every once and a while...never seen this happpen
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Post by Defender on Nov 8, 2020 10:22:08 GMT -5
Found the reason for no wind speed with aircraft on the ground. Problem solved initially by setting FSUIPC to normal default then found that the specific culprit was the "taxi wind control" which must be kept off.
Mike's suggestion seems a good fallback if all else fails with upload, as happens sometimes.
Bill
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