Yet another Weather Injector...

Hi guys,

So I've always been bugged by the fact that I have to create the real life weather for a certain mission that I create for offline missions. While it is not a huge burden to Tab forth and back from an Active Sky window to DCS and insert and calculate the right inputs (wind directions need to be turned around as DCS uses direction to instead of direction from, as just one example of the changes) for the DCS weather inputs, my flying time is limited. So I could only do this once a month.

I've thus created this little command line app' to facilitate a fast weather snapshot creation. The catch is that you would need Active Sky for this to work. The good thing is that you can use AS's historical weather to get the exact weather of a certain date and time (Cold War/Korean style campaigns).

As this does not need any LUA interpreter, the downside is that the weather doesn't evolve over time - I thought if I changed the LUA weather file, DCS will "feel" it and refresh the weather by itself. It does not do that, unfortunately, but for my needs it is quite fine. The app' also sets the right time of the day taken from the METAR. Please read the README and follow the instructions of the help app' text. Any problems, please write it here and I'll "make it so" in a fast update.

The link is provided here

Hope you like it,

Adrian

This is amazing and I wonder why people haven’t said so yet. Greatly simplifies injecting real weather into a mission.

Ok all ass kissing aside I am trying to make a bridge like what you built but for a Virtual Airline software. Any change you can give me a little help? Help as in some info.

Hi Neon,

thanks for the kind words. I am here to help so please let me know how I can help....time permitting, of course :).

What version of AS are you using? Also do you have that sim installed? I am trying to find a way to run AS without having to install p3d on my server.

Hi,

you don't have to have any actual simulator with AS. The only problem will be when it tries to install SimConnect or whatever it's using. But it can go without. It is pretty much a stand-alone add-on.

I have ASN for FSX.

Cheers,

Adrian

I am actually having some issues with your program on our new server. Its asking for Visual C++ libraries but no matter what I do I cant get those exact files to install because the version of Visual C++ that comes with Windows 10 is newer than any package I can find.

Hi Neon,

let me do a rebuild and come back to you. Some things may have changed since my last build, I know I switched to VS2019 since then at least.

Cheers,

Adrian

Hi again,

I've rebuilt the package with the newer installer version from VS2019. Maybe that was the problem.

You can find it in the same place (overwritten the older files).

Cheers

Yep that did the trick but I must be missing something. Program is installed and AS for P3D is installed. I am running the program via command prompt with DCSWeatherInjector.exe 12 2019 UTGB and then the program just sits there.

Am I missing something? Is there a debug setting?

What's the advantages with this program?

Better looking / coverage / clouds ?

No it pulls current or historical weather data from active sky. Which is a program for GA flight sims that will inject current weather directly into the sim real time. For DCS it grabs the current weather for the mission.

I have Active Sky, for X-Plane 11

With it, can you have all those clouds like with Dynamic weather, but no wind?!

Thank you

No you will have the real world weather and that’s it. It doesn’t do anything to DCS weather system.

Okay, thank you

Yep that did the trick but I must be missing something. Program is installed and AS for P3D is installed. I am running the program via command prompt with DCSWeatherInjector.exe 12 2019 UTGB and then the program just sits there.

 

 

Am I missing something? Is there a debug setting?

So the first thing that strikes me is that the executable should be named AStoDCS. So...I messed up the build :(. Very sorry about this. It's the end of the year so vacations and finalizing work is getting to me :).

I'll redo it and TEST it this time (I didn't re-install on my machine as the old version still works). Unfortunately, this project sits on my home machine alone so I'll get to it in about 8 hours. Hope I didn't mess up your plans.

Adrian

What's the advantages with this program?

Better looking / coverage / clouds ?

Hi Lenux,

so the drive behind this program was that I always had to put in the real world weather (historical or live) by hand in DCS in my missions. I took the weather parameters from Active Sky so I thought why not make the computer do this.

It doesn't place clouds, it doesn't make the weather dynamic. It just reads and puts in the cloud coverage and base, temperature, time and date, visibility (still testing this but the feature should be there), turbulence level, wind at surface level, FL066 and FL260 (following DCS static weather template).

The result is an actual DCS weather file that has all these parameters in and you can find it in the weather file list and load it for a fast real weather "injection" for your missions.

Your "dynamic weather" question however made me think about expanding this app over the "dynamic realm" as that would be an even more realistic depiction of weather (Active Sky also provides TAFs so... :D). And I am quite advanced in meteorology. Unfortunately, DCS weather system seems quite limited at first glance, but I can dig deeper, time permitting.

Thanks for the interest,

Adrian

So the first thing that strikes me is that the executable should be named AStoDCS. So...I messed up the build :(. Very sorry about this. It's the end of the year so vacations and finalizing work is getting to me :).

 

I'll redo it and TEST it this time (I didn't re-install on my machine as the old version still works). Unfortunately, this project sits on my home machine alone so I'll get to it in about 8 hours. Hope I didn't mess up your plans.

 

 

Adrian

Man I am just happy when people that build stuff and then support it. Right now I am hitting your script hard because our old weather system broke and it doesnt look like that author is supporting it anymore.

Hi Lenux,

so the drive behind this program was that I always had to put in the real world weather (historical or live) by hand in DCS in my missions. I took the weather parameters from Active Sky so I thought why not make the computer do this.

 

 

It doesn't place clouds, it doesn't make the weather dynamic. It just reads and puts in the cloud coverage and base, temperature, time and date, visibility (still testing this but the feature should be there), turbulence level, wind at surface level, FL066 and FL260 (following DCS static weather template).

 

The result is an actual DCS weather file that has all these parameters in and you can find it in the weather file list and load it for a fast real weather "injection" for your missions.

 

 

Your "dynamic weather" question however made me think about expanding this app over the "dynamic realm" as that would be an even more realistic depiction of weather (Active Sky also provides TAFs so... :D). And I am quite advanced in meteorology. Unfortunately, DCS weather system seems quite limited at first glance, but I can dig deeper, time permitting.

 

 

Thanks for the interest,

Adrian

One thing that I was thinking about is since your program makes a lua file, in theory you can load that into the mission after start and it would update the weather (I know you can do this with troops and other items, you basically inject a mission into another mission). So what I wanted to test is setting up a timer in the mission and then having your program grab the weather on a timer so that the server is reloading the file about every 30 min or so.

In theory it should allow us to change the weather with the sim running.

Hi Neon,

so I re-built with an additional check. It's in the same location of course. The name of the executable was OK because I changed it since my first build as I added the visibility feature.

In your particular case, the problem is because you are running the P3D Active Sky. I made this with the FSX AS version which puts the current_wx_snapshot.txt in Hifi/ASNFSX/Weather. As you can see that is because of the FSX AS version.

So please tell me (I only have AS for FSX) where is the file above for you and I'll add a new parameter to the command line to choose FSX, P3D or XP. It should be in Users/<yourUSER>/AppData/Roaming/Hifi/ASNP3D/Weather/ but let's be sure before I rebuild again :).

Adrian

One thing that I was thinking about is since your program makes a lua file, in theory you can load that into the mission after start and it would update the weather (I know you can do this with troops and other items, you basically inject a mission into another mission). So what I wanted to test is setting up a timer in the mission and then having your program grab the weather on a timer so that the server is reloading the file about every 30 min or so.

 

 

 

In theory it should allow us to change the weather with the sim running.

Yes, Neon, that was my aim actually. Unfortunately I have no LUA knowledge so I achieved only this first step. I wanted to make the app refresh the LUA file every hour or half an hour but when I saw that DCS didn't see the change while in a mission I knew I had to do something with LUA so I dropped it. The good news is that I can make the app re-do the LUA file periodically, so while you still have AS and this app started it would eveolve (the file at least).

Let me know if you want this modification or it's better this way and you'll do it via something like cronjob...

Adrian

If the app could do it that would be amazing. See I have my missions setup so that they go into the computer and grab the lua files the mission uses instead of the file being stored in the mission miz zip.

O course I have no idea what loading one weather over another would do. Hopefully it will update the weather but it worse case I think it would just crash the server.

So can you give me the name of the folder?

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||

vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

In your particular case, the problem is because you are running the P3D Active Sky. I made this with the FSX AS version which puts the current_wx_snapshot.txt in Hifi/ASNFSX/Weather. As you can see that is because of the FSX AS version.

 

 

 

So please tell me (I only have AS for FSX) where is the file above for you and I'll add a new parameter to the command line to choose FSX, P3D or XP. It should be in Users/<yourUSER>/AppData/Roaming/Hifi/ASNP3D/Weather/ but let's be sure before I rebuild again .

Hi Neon,

 

 

so I re-built with an additional check. It's in the same location of course. The name of the executable was OK because I changed it since my first build as I added the visibility feature.

 

 

In your particular case, the problem is because you are running the P3D Active Sky. I made this with the FSX AS version which puts the current_wx_snapshot.txt in Hifi/ASNFSX/Weather. As you can see that is because of the FSX AS version.

 

 

 

So please tell me (I only have AS for FSX) where is the file above for you and I'll add a new parameter to the command line to choose FSX, P3D or XP. It should be in Users/<yourUSER>/AppData/Roaming/Hifi/ASNP3D/Weather/ but let's be sure before I rebuild again :).

 

 

Adrian

Mine is actually /Hifi/AS_P3Dv4/Weather is also have AS fsx 16 if you want that one.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

OK Neon, so I've made a new build (same location) with these added features:

- obligatory simulator parameter which can be FSX, P3D or XP, no default

- application runs continuously and updates the lua file every 30 minutes

So now you should run it with

DCSWeatherInjector P3D 12 2019 UGTB

Don't forget to Ctrl-C or whatever else to stop it. I'll explore the LUA and mission editor features to do the actual injection, but that has low priority :).

Alright we have life. Two bugs

1. No matter what ICAO I put it is giving me back UGSB (default)

2. Where do I find the refresh.lua file that it makes? or does it only spit out METAR info right now?