Wind direction

[alehead]

Dear ED Forum,

 

first off, I am really new to DCS World, after having spent years on FSX/P3D and more recently on X-Plane.

I have a specific question relating to the modelling of weather, as my observations do not make sense to me.

 

When I read a METAR, a weather report, I have information on the wind direction as a bearing and a windspeed, normally in knots. The wind direction is given as a bearing of origin, i.e. the direction from which the wind is coming. So, winds with direction 090° originate in the east and are blowing west. This means that the windsock for the runway should be pointing west, i.e the larger opening attached to the pole is at the eastern end and the small opening is at the western end.

In DCS World though, I have been seeing the exact opposite. Windsocks are pointing with the small opening into the wind, which is physically impossible, since that end is not attached to the pole...

 

I am confused... :huh:

 

Could anyone assist here or explain what is going on?

Thanks in advance

 

Andrew

[Svsmokey]

Russian standard is to define wind direction as flowing to , not from .

Welcome to the forums !

[Shadow KT]

There is no russian/western standard... As far as I know.

 

There are different wind direction tho: navigational (vector of wind, used for calculations, the direction in which the wind is blowing) and metereological (the one you are familiar with and is said by ATC, METARS, ATIS, etc.)

 

If you are setting the wind in the mission editor, using the static weather, you are typing navigational wind directions, also seen by the arrow there. You will notice that when you play the mission in the briefing and by the ATC you are given the meteo direction, which you are used to.

 

So double check your wind directions in the Mission Editor (ME), you will notice that the briefing direction is 180 degrees away.

[alehead]

Thanks Shadow for your reply...

The briefing uses the term nav wind (which I have never seen or heard of in any aviation or meteorological context). It is definitely not showing up in the briefing "the other way round". This is anything but conventional...

All the wind direction definitions I can find online (from weather compendia, Wikipedia, weather sites, government weather agencies) state that the direction is the origin of the air movement, not the direction in which the air mass is moving...

 

@SV: I see no difference in Russian METARs either. The only Russian difference I know is the fact that m/s is used as a unit and not knots.

Thanks for the reply.

Andrew

[Notso]

Thanks Shadow for your reply...

The briefing uses the term nav wind (which I have never seen or heard of in any aviation or meteorological context). It is definitely not showing up in the briefing "the other way round". This is anything but conventional...

All the wind direction definitions I can find online (from weather compendia, Wikipedia, weather sites, government weather agencies) state that the direction is the origin of the air movement, not the direction in which the air mass is moving...

 

@SV: I see no difference in Russian METARs either. The only Russian difference I know is the fact that m/s is used as a unit and not knots.

Thanks for the reply.

Andrew

 

Agree, everything aviation wind I have ever used always has the direction the wind is coming from, not the direction its going to. The only time this is slightly confusing is when looking at winds aloft charts - the barbs point in the direction of where the wind is coming from but the head is pointing to where the wind is going. In the pic, the wind barb shows winds are from the NE.

 

Not sure why the mission editor would not use the normal standard for wind direction. That’s pretty silly.

[Shadow KT]

Sorry ,my bad... The briefing also shows NAV wind, but you will see ATC and the wind sock be the way you know it.

 

Just because you haven't heard of it, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.... I've studied it in Navigation class.

 

Honestly, there isn't much confusing about it and it makes sense (just a different perspective).... That is what you use when you do any navigational math...

 

Anyway it is just a 180 degree difference and if you look at the arrow in the mission editor it makes sense what you are actually setting, nothing silly about it... I actually prefer it

 

Even if you don't... You now know what it is and how to "convert" it to what you want

Edited February 26, 2020 by Shadow KT

[Svsmokey]

Is the benefit of nav wind making wind triangles easier to calculate ?

[Ironhand]

:) Guess I’m just different. The first time I altered the wind in the ME, I just dragged the arrow around to point where the wind was going and never gave it a 2nd thought. Seemed very intuitive to me. Then again, there are a lot of things I don’t devote a lot of thought to...

[Shadow KT]

Ye, it is pretty intuitive.... I mean, you have an arrow showing you....

 

But yeah, people are just making too big of a deal out of this... There ain't anything special about it, just a change of perspective....

 

People use this wind direction all the time for wind triangles and navigation math... Maybe they just don't know it is called that way

 

Anyway, ATC gives the wind as it should, saying the direction it is coming from

Edited February 27, 2020 by Shadow KT

[alehead]

Thanks for your comments and replies.

I do not see this as being intuitive, even with an arrow, when the definition of wind direction is exactly the opposite and nothing in the manual is to be found to explain this.

What I am essentially entering is only the directional component of the wind vector.

 

For training purposes in the Yak-52 to see why I am having issues with its flight model, I wanted to set a headwind directly down the runway axis and ended up setting a fat tailwind...

 

No big deal here, just highlighting something I find to be totally unconventional. This is not just another perspective as you state, but more a change of the accepted definition of a term that leads to unnecessary confusion.

Of course nothing to lose sleep over :)

 

 

A

[Shadow KT]

Agree to disagree.

 

Happy flying anyway

[Aarnoman]

Would like to see this changed to conventional wind direction as well. I like many others have been confused by this when starting out in DCS.

[Flappie]

I've already asked devs about this subject a few years ago. The answer was basically, "no won't do".

[Schlingel mit Kringel]

             

First off: the issue OP was reporting here is not how wind is set in the mission editor or how it is given to the player, but that the wind socks itself are not working correctly (pointing INTO the wind with the SMALL opening, which is physically impossible as the big opening is attached to the pole and the small one is free flowing. The whole cone rotates around the pole depending on wind direction. The bug would have shown in the way that the cone is mirrored 180° while staying in the same place - in the below image, the small part would be on the pole while the cone is on the right side of the pole and the big opening would face to the right side. This indeed would be physically impossible.

I just set a static windsock in ME next to one that is part of the terrain (not player set. On Normandy High Halden. To check both types) and could not reproduce this. With wind set 90° in ME (coming FROM 270°, blowing TO 90°), the wind sock is pointing east correctly (small opening of the cone facing right and on the right side of the pole when looking at it from the south).

I assume it might have been an old bug that got resolved in the meantime, the topic is 4 years old after all.

null

-----

For the settings in the ME as it is discussed later in this thread: it indeed is incorrect the way it is right now. In the ME, you set the weather - so the wind is a meteorological function. And in meteorology, wind always is given as "COMING FROM", not "blows to dir" like it does in ME. You can see this in the below image with arrows/wind barb in the second column pointing at the south when wind is coming FROM south.

In aviation, we go along with this as we ideally want to have wind blowing from the front when we land and take off - so the wind can generate some additional lift instead of negating some. So we are travelling against the wind and hence want to know where the wind is coming FROM. Earlier in the thread it was claimed Soviet/Russian aviation uses "blowing TO" but i could not find any sources backing this.

The ME currently is using an oceanographic symbology (third column), which would make sense if it was a sailiing simulator - because with sails you want wind coming from the rear to generate momentum. You will move with the wind and hence want to know where the wind is blowing TO.

 

Since the wind information in meteorology and aviation are denoted the same way, the "Nav wind" in the briefing screen should read "Wind" instead and the "blows to direction" information should be removed along with the "meteo" description - show only the meteo wind value in briefing. It might be helpful to add the word "from" before the XXX° to clarify it for everyone. Also the "Navigational Wind Settings" label in the ME weather settings should probably read "Meteorological Wind Settings" instead for more accuracy. The wind settings in ME should define wind coming FROM direction with the arrow pointing at the direction the wind is coming from (pointing from the inside of the circle to the outside).

 

While writing all this above, i did some more tests with the dynamic weather system and it gets worse here - i think there might have been a misconception about meteorological symbology back when all this was programmed first and it mixed things all up.

The test mission i set up is an anticyclone, wind barb over Incirlik indicates 10 kts wind FROM west (anticyclone is rotating clockwise on the northern hemisphere).

In the briefing it then incorrectly gives me Meteo wind 62° (coming FROM east, should be FROM west like the wind barb indicated) and also the speed is incorrect (10 kts would be around 5 meters per second, 2 m/s is less than 5 kts). The wind sock i put on Incirlik though correctly indicates wind FROM west (camera looking north, wind sock on the right screen correctly floating with the wind to the east).

Here is some wind barb speed guide too for reference:

While looking for images, i also found this nice wind-sock wind-speed guide, it might be helpful as i assume this is not correctly modeled too

 

It would be great if @Flappie could point all this out to the team again so they can reconsider working on this - in my opinion, it is quite important to have such elemental basics of aviation correct in a state of the art flight simulation. There is lots of confusion about that topic (wind direction in ME/briefing/ATC) in the community, it comes up regularly and by that imho is damaging the reputation of DCS, it should be corrected asap.

             

[Flappie]

I reported the wind sock issue a while ago.

And the OP clearly told about both subjecs.

I'm not stubborn: if devs tell me "we won't do", I don't bug them with the subject. A no is a no.

[Schlingel mit Kringel]

Sad. Thanks for the feedback though.

[Slippa]

This is ridiculous. What an odd attitude to take about something so fundamentally wrong.

Can’t blame Flappie of course, maybe @NineLine or @BIGNEWY might explain what the reasoning is behind this?

[Schlingel mit Kringel]

1 hour ago, Slippa said:

Can’t blame Flappie of course

Yes, of course. Did not mean to imply that at all. Flappie does relay between devs and community, and i think he does it quite well.

Looking at that unusual vehement "no", i take this as a definitive, non-discussible "no" from dev side and won't ask any further. It's their sim, if they are okay with this, then so be it.

[Aarnoman]

4 hours ago, Flappie said:

I reported the wind sock issue a while ago.

And the OP clearly told about both subjecs.

I'm not stubborn: if devs tell me "we won't do", I don't bug them with the subject. A no is a no.

I would offer the counterpoint that things change (including dev attitudes) in the timespan of a few years, and I think it is worth rediscussing this. We've had a number of longstanding issues in the past that were definitive "no's" from the dev team, which have since been rectified more recently. Again, if you don't want to bug the dev team that's fine, but I would at least expect @BIGNEWY or @NineLine to rediscuss this.

[BIGNEWY]

7 minutes ago, Aarnoman said:

I would offer the counterpoint that things change (including dev attitudes) in the timespan of a few years, and I think it is worth rediscussing this. We've had a number of longstanding issues in the past that were definitive "no's" from the dev team, which have since been rectified more recently. Again, if you don't want to bug the dev team that's fine, but I would at least expect @BIGNEWY or @NineLine to rediscuss this.

Hi, 

we report many issues, many are fixed ( see our change logs ), some can not be, some are just low priority or there are more important task in front of them. We have limited resources, and have to focus our efforts wisely. Those choices may not always align with what you or I want, but the people who decide are in the best place to do it. 

thank you 

[Slippa]

I’ll still try to line up against the windscock as a point of principle, regardless.

We can’t have everything sorted, fair enough.

Thanks for answering.

 

[Slippa]

11 hours ago, Schlingel mit Kringel said:

i think he does it quite well.

He does a marvellous job and well done Flappie .

11 hours ago, Schlingel mit Kringel said:

 It's their sim, if they are okay with this, then so be it.

Yeah, but It’s their sim until it’s shared and sold. When we all invest in it, it’s kind of all of ours. We rely on each other to nurture it, at least that’s how I see it. 

- me getting all deep over which way the wind blows .

[RustBelt]

Seriously, it’s embarrassing that an aviation game won’t use a universal aviation convention. Especially something as simple as a reciprocal.