Wrong AVERAGE WIND SPEED GRADIENT with increasing ALTITUDE

[GumidekCZ]

Reporting wrong wind speed GRADIENT defined in almost ALL mission across whole DCS and many 3rd party missions.

- now in most DCS missions, WRONG!

 

I will not research for ED what average wind speed values for certain map there should be set in ME. I can give only few examples from varios sources from internet, which show that its max speed is around 10 000 meters.

There are many many research documents available on internet which shows detailed wind speed gradient near the surface, and how its affected by towns, suburban areas, open country, seas,...

This my personal wind speed setup for one of my missions (Im not saying that this is 100% correct, just rough gues, what the gradient may be should look like):

 

 

[Ironhand]

Ok.  Not sure what you consider the bug to be. Aren’t the default values “0” and it’s up to the mission designer to enter the wind values they want—assuming they want wind in the first places?

[silverdevil]

i would like to mention that perhaps putting wind speed at 41 knots at 26000 feet is totally unrealistic. at that altitude wind speed averages are much more. i would not be that surprised if high altitude winds are not modeled. maybe that is part of the reason for your discrepancies in testing?

[GumidekCZ]

12 hours ago, Ironhand said:

Ok.  Not sure what you consider the bug to be. Aren’t the default values “0” and it’s up to the mission designer to enter the wind values they want—assuming they want wind in the first places?

I understand to what you want to tell me, and I must admit, that its not an ordinary bug. Let say, that DCS editor will allow us to tune amount of sunlight without connection to day time and date of the year. So if it will allow to you to set zero sunlight at noon... is it bug or not? We all know, that pitch black at noon is absolute nonsence, but if it is mission designer choise?  Same with wind, 0 knots(m/s) at higher altitudes when wind is blowing on ground, it is same nonsence, but editor now allow you to set it this way.

11 hours ago, silverdevil said:

i would like to mention that perhaps putting wind speed at 41 knots at 26000 feet is totally unrealistic. at that altitude wind speed averages are much more. i would not be that surprised if high altitude winds are not modeled. maybe that is part of the reason for your discrepancies in testing?

Your 26 000 feet is roughly 7,9 km altitude and speed 41 knots is around 21 m/s. According to chart form Den Hleder - NL, Avarage year wind speed at this altitude is around 23 m/s.

I dont know what calculations are you using, but for me, this is not unrealistic, especialy when you compare my wind speed gradient with the first graph on top.

Next time when you write about something unrealistic, try to put here some evidence, or rather to not write here at all.

 

* The only idea to solve this I have now, is to connect all wind speed to one value of speed on ground and new wind gradient slider, which would allow you to control steepnes of gradient and thus speeds at higher altitudes. *

Edited June 30, 2021 by GumidekCZ

[silverdevil]

 

1 hour ago, GumidekCZ said:

Next time when you write about something unrealistic, try to put here some evidence, or rather to not write here at all.

 

 

i apologize for your resistance to knowledge of upper level winds. i can see it popped some of your rivets. you may want to count them to see if any are missing. i was only offering a suggestion to your problem. this issue is so far out of the realm of who cares its not even close. put your obvious math intelligence effort into something worthwhile.

 

here is something for you to read while you have nothing better to do.

 

https://www.britannica.com/science/climate-meteorology/Upper-level-winds

[GumidekCZ]

1 hour ago, silverdevil said:

you may want to count them to see if any are missing.

Have them all , thanks

1 hour ago, silverdevil said:

i was only offering a suggestion to your problem.

Where? What suggestion? You mean your claim, that 41 knots at 26000ft is unrealistic? Thank you very much, but you didnt wrote any link to support your claim and on top, values of the wind speed are out of this topic. This is mainly about wind gradient across the DCS altitude.
That document you send in link is interesting, but unfortunately for me, I dont have so much time to read it. May be you already did, and provide us with proper gradient values for DCS maps. That action would be appreciated by me.

[Flappie]

I'm looking for sources. So far, I found this page which states:

 

Quote

The most favourable altitude in term of wind power is, quite difficult to exploit, at approx. 10,000 m (32,800 ft), where average wind speeds can exceed 45 m/s (equal to 162 km/h or 100 mph).

 

It seems you're both right:

• Average (as in "world average") is around 45 m/s,
• There are places on Earth where it's more like 25 m/s (the first graph of OP shows the Netherlands average winds).

Hence the word "average".

[GumidekCZ]

12 minutes ago, Flappie said:

I'm looking for sources. So far, I found this page which states:

Thanks, but I same as above, must note here, that this topic is not about speed value at single altitude, but about gradient from ground to DCS max alt possible. See the graphs I send in first post.

[Flappie]

Yes, I think I understood your initial report.

Though it would be good to have global wind data, not just data from one, two or three places on Earth in order to change the current DCS algorithm.

 

I've not tested this, but I assume the current DCS algorithm doesn't take the theatre into account. So maybe it would be a good start to check if a new algorithm could match global wind behaviour accross the world. I mean, for instance: "Anywhere on Earth, if wind at 26 kft is 45 m/s, wind at 6600 ft is around X, wind at 1600 ft is around Y, and wind at 33 ft is around Z". Because if this doesn't work globally, it means it wll be a much bigger work for ED devs to code, which means you won't be seeing a change anytime soon.

[Bailey]

I think a good temporary fix for everyone would be for ED to take out the auto adjustments that the ME forces. 

[GumidekCZ]

14 minutes ago, Flappie said:

 it means it wll be a much bigger work for ED devs to code, which means you won't be seeing a change anytime soon.

I'm totaly aware of that, expecting to be fixed with fully finished AH-64

Still, you all know, that 1600ft speed value is now connected to 33ft speed. So how difficult can be to connect rest of higher alt speeds all together with some coeficitent multipliers (green numbers at my setup) and add some slider control to be able to adjust the gradient. This solution will cause no need to rebuild weather system in DCS, but only DCS mission editor. Easy to control wind by just one speed value at 33ft and by adjusting slider.

The mission wind will be than more realistic, than it is now in many many many missions without zero wind speeds. I hope that we all aim for realism in DCS. This one would need just only "small" rework of wind mission editor.

[Ironhand]

15 hours ago, GumidekCZ said:

On 6/29/2021 at 7:25 PM, Ironhand said:

 

I understand to what you want to tell me, and I must admit, that its not an ordinary bug. Let say, that DCS editor will allow us to tune amount of sunlight without connection to day time and date of the year. So if it will allow to you to set zero sunlight at noon... is it bug or not? We all know, that pitch black at noon is absolute nonsence, but if it is mission designer choise?  Same with wind, 0 knots(m/s) at higher altitudes when wind is blowing on ground, it is same nonsence, but editor now allow you to set it this way.

I guess where you see a bug, I see maximum flexibility.

 

Not that it matters but averages are averages. The actual values at any time can be higher or lower. At this moment wind speeds over Butami and Anapa:

 

 

                Butami                                            Anapa

 

Altitude (m)        Wind Speed (m/s)               Wind Speed (m/s)

 

12,000                            20                                            18

   9,000                            7                                              14

   5,500                            7                                              11

   4,200                            5                                               8

   2,000                            2                                               3

      250                            0                                               3

      100                            1                                               1

        10                            2                                               1

 

And, FWIW, at this time the 12,000 m winds over the northern Crimea are 6 m/s. Speaking of other maps, the same altitude wind above the Strait of Hormuz is 2 m/s.

 

And, ED, please don’t force any more gradients on us than we already have.

Edited June 30, 2021 by Ironhand

[GumidekCZ]

7 hours ago, Ironhand said:

I guess where you see a bug, I see maximum flexibility.

I guess where you see maximum flexibility, I see totaly unrealistic winds in majority of missions.

7 hours ago, Ironhand said:

Not that it matters but averages are averages. The actual values at any time can be higher or lower. At this moment wind speeds over Butami and Anapa:

                Butami                                            Anapa

Altitude (m)        Wind Speed (m/s)               Wind Speed (m/s)

12,000                            20                                            18

   9,000                            7                                              14

   5,500                            7                                              11

   4,200                            5                                               8

   2,000                            2                                               3

      250                            0                                               3

      100                            1                                               1

        10                            2                                               1

Where did you get these values? Im very intereseted to see the source.

I will send you one of many I found as interesting wind gradient source:

http://showcase.netins.net/web/wallio/MZW.html

It show very similar gradient, same as other graphs across the internet (with maximum speed around 12000m (~40kft)). Than the wind strarts to slow down, commonly due to shear winds or other atmospheric phenomena. Sadly your provided data dont include speed at higher alt than 12km. Most of DCS players will fly higher than 12km only very sparsely, but ballistic or A-A missiles commonly climb higher than that.

8 hours ago, Ironhand said:

And, ED, please don’t force any more gradients on us than we already have.

ED, please, don’t be forced by anyone to do anything you don’t want. Do it your way as always. Neither me or Ironhand we can’t represent majority of DCS end user community. So explore the costs and benefits for regular DCS player, who use Editor tool, to create his own missions for his friends, or just for himself.

If you ED find that Editor dont need any improvement now, PLEASE check your missions and tune the higher winds, to not be the Zero, but something more realistic. Many thanks.

[Ironhand]

6 hours ago, GumidekCZ said:

Where did you get these values? Im very intereseted to see the source...

...Sadly your provided data dont include speed at higher alt than 12km. Most of DCS players will fly higher than 12km only very sparsely, but ballistic or A-A missiles commonly climb higher than that.

30,000 m over the Strait for that time was: 44 m/s; over Batumi: 34; over Anapa 31; over the northern Crimean Peninsula: 29.

 

My "source", such that it is, is the atmospheric modeling application Ventusky. So the values will change depending on which of the atmospheric models you're using. My point was simply that averages are averages and, unless you know the time period the average samples and the range of values used to create the average, you can put any number in those boxes and and it'll be as "realistic" as the next. If the range of values for 12,000 m spans a year's time and the high and low are 40 and 1 respectively, then any number within that span is "realistic".

 

FWIW, Ventusky uses a time span of either 1 minute or 10 minutes, depending on the atmospheric model chosen.

Edited July 1, 2021 by Ironhand

[silverdevil]

I think it is reasonable to believe that some periods of time will be different than others. Just temperature would make a difference. Maybe the effect of temperature on atmosphere density should be modelled too.