DECOUPLE 33ft and 1600ft winds!

[average_pilot]

On 12/6/2024 at 2:49 PM, Lace said:

The coupled winds is based on real-world conditions, it is not there by accident or oversight and it is well understood by real-world pilots that winds slack and back as you get closer to the ground (in the northern hemisphere - they slack and veer in the southern).  It should be less pronounced perhaps, and is a gradual rather than step change, but it is a real thing.

The option to set them independently would allow anyone to put values as accurate as they'd wish instead of depend on what a suspicious black box puts there automatically for us that may or may not be accurate at all. That should be obvious.

[Lace]

6 minutes ago, average_pilot said:

The option to set them independently would allow anyone to put values as accurate as they'd wish instead of depend on what a suspicious black box puts there automatically for us that may or may not be accurate at all. That should be obvious.

It's obvious that some people don't understand how winds work.

[average_pilot]

1 minute ago, Lace said:

It's obvious that some people don't understand how winds work.

I don't follow your reasoning.

[Lace]

2 minutes ago, average_pilot said:

I don't follow your reasoning.

The way DCS does it is a bit backwards, but does make sense if you want to define conditions on the ground for airfield ops.  Really, you should define the wind at 1600ft and it should automatically adjust for the surface, but the link still remains.   It is realistic that winds 'slack and back' (in the Northern hemisphere) when approaching the surface due to friction and the Coriolis effect, so should be about 50% reduced, and backed by 30degrees (veer by 30 in the Southern hemisphere) compared with those at altitude. This is even more noticeable at night where the slacking and backing effect is increased due to colder, denser surface air, however DCS doesn't take this into account*.  The effect is reduced over water where there is less surface friction.  Again, not modelled in DCS's atmosphere*.

Having these independently configurable wouldn't make sense from an atmospheric modelling point of view, as which ever one you choose to define will effect the other.  It is just not realistic** to have the wind speed and direction the same at 1600ft as it is at the surface.

Perhaps ED need to place a note in the manual explaining this to prevent this confusion.  It isn't a bug, and it isn't wrong.  People don't intuitively understand it because unless you are a pilot or meteorologist, it is not something you will encounter day-to-day.

* AFAIK

** 99% of the time.  As always there are some unusual cases where this might not be true.

[average_pilot]

My point was that if you are free to explicitly input the values without restrictions then you can indeed account for the veering of the wind with altitude and the difference in strength due to friction with the surface, perhaps better that what the mission editor decides for us. Or use historical data when available. So, it's not detrimental but the other way around.

[Lace]

1 minute ago, average_pilot said:

My point was that if you are free to explicitly input the values without restrictions then you can indeed account for the veering of the wind with altitude and the difference in strength due to friction with the surface, perhaps better that what the mission editor decides for us. Or use historical data when available. So, it's not detrimental but the other way around.

Oh, for sure, one could manually make the adjustment.  My issue is that it is often reported as some sort of bug or mistake.  Where it does fall down however, is with EDs insistence to linking sea state with wind, which really is unrealistic, and results in people having to set a ridiculously high surface wind speed to get a pitching deck scenario, which then makes the coupled winds even more problematic.

The solution to that is to have an independent swell setting, and have small waves (chop) a function of surface wind speed.

[average_pilot]

53 minutes ago, Lace said:

and results in people having to set a ridiculously high surface wind speed to get a pitching deck scenario, which then makes the coupled winds even more problematic.

Why is that a problem? This is a tool that each one can use as they see fit.

[Lace]

Because to get a decent pitching deck you need an unrealistically high surface wind speed.  How often would you see real-world aviation ops (never mind carrier ops) in sustained 100kt winds?  In order to get the desired 30kts over the deck the carrier would have to be going 70kts astern!! 

[average_pilot]

I insist. You don't have to fly in those conditions if you don't want to. Just use sound parameters that make sense. What different people do with the same tool doesn't affect others.

[Northstar98]

On 12/13/2024 at 8:01 AM, Lace said:

It's obvious that some people don't understand how winds work.

And its obvious that the current system doesn't either.

We've been through this multiple times - as long as there are different locations with different elevations the current system is nowhere near realistic.

It overexaggerates the wind gradient over open ocean (and that's from documentation you yourself have cited), you even agree on this point.

There isn't any backing or veering - it isn't even possible as the directions are locked. So it's not realistic there either.

 

The best case scenario where this system is realistic, is if you only intend to operate within the vicinity of a single airport/in a confined area over land. Go outside of that area, and the realism goes off a cliff.

 

Just for an example, at RAF Akrotiri (75 ft MSL) at the time of writing (13 December 2024, 1050Z) is reporting 9 knots at 260°, Damascus International (albeit with a METAR station located some distance away), at 2000 ft MSL, is reporting 12 knots at 340°.

If I try and have an accurate speed for the former in DCS, the speeds at the latter are now 50% greater. As the direction is also locked, it's not only significantly greater, but it's also practically orthoganal to what it should be. While 340° is a crosswind at Damascus regardless, it's not difficult to imagine a situation where setting accurate winds for a particular aerodrome results in not only a crosswind where there shouldn't be/wasn't one IRL, but one where the wind is significantly stronger than it should be at another aerodrome. 

If I instead try and have accurate speeds at Damascus, now the speed at Akrotiri (and at sea level) is 6 knots as opposed to 9, so the IRL speed should be 50% greater than what I have. Because of the slower speed, I also have to make carriers go that bit faster to get my desired wind over deck - the waters on the Syria map are somewhat restricted, which can make route planning for them more annoying than it should've been, now that they're travelling greater distances in the same interval of time.

Then, over the sea, the typical gradient between sea level and ~2000 ft should be 1.43 (i.e the speed at 2000 ft should be ~1.43× surface speeds) according to a document you yourself cited, but in DCS it's a little over 2, so it's already exaggerating by ~71% faster than it should be in that case.

Whichever way I slice it I can't get them both realistic, any attempt I make will result in a zero sum, merely exchanging which location is accurate at the expense of others. And because they're rigidly locked together with a model that assumes a constant gradient regardless of terrain, making a compromise is far more difficult than it would've otherwise been were it possible to set them independently.

Were it not for this shortsighted locking of the speeds and directions, I could set up a compromise that gets Akrotiri and Damascus more in line with reality and closer to sanity (so I'm not dealing with crosswinds that are 50% larger than they should be for instance).

On 12/13/2024 at 8:20 AM, Lace said:

Having these independently configurable wouldn't make sense from an atmospheric modelling point of view, as which ever one you choose to define will effect the other.

But it would make perfect sense to get around the current limitations of DCS' weather system, especially so on maps where there are suitably large elevation differences andf where you want to support both land based and carrier operations.

On 12/13/2024 at 8:20 AM, Lace said:

It isn't a bug, and it isn't wrong.

Unless you want to do carrier operations or operations at sea, where it overexaggerates the gradient by a significant margin.

Unless you want to set backing/veering, where it prevents you from doing so.

Unless you want to try and best set the weather for multiple areas (particularly where there are sufficiently large elevation differences) - the locked set up makes it far more difficult than what you could otherwise achieve.

 

Yes, the solution to all of the above is for DCS to have a better weather system, ideally one that allows you set up more localised weather. There was supposed to be a weather update beyond just graphics, but IIRC it's been years and years since there was any mention of it and even then, we've got no idea what it'll even consist of or even what the rough plan for it is, if indeed there is one.

Edited December 18, 2024 by Northstar98
clarity, grammar, spelling

[Bremspropeller]

1 minute ago, average_pilot said:

How did you reach that conclusion from what I wrote, especially from the part you quoted? Genuinely curious. Maybe that way I'll find out why I'm failing to communicate what at first I thought was an easy concept when I decided to participate in the discussion.

I misread your statement, hence I deleted my post in the meantime.

 

But then again, I could just as well recite the rest of my post:

The wind model is flawed and needs fixing. It's not just the hard-tied windshear between GND ant 1600ft and the linked seastate. It's also the ILS logic and it's tie to the required wind to activate it. Right now, in order to activate the ILS during fog, there needs to be a wind in place that would dissipate that very fog.

[Lace]

@Northstar98

I totally agree that the system is far from perfect, and can be improved in many ways, I am simply explaining why ED chose to deliberately implement it in that way.  It's not a mistake or a bug, but nor is it 100% right.  You absolutely should be able to make tweaks, change local settings, etc.  The whole atmospheric modelling should be completely reworked into something like XP12, as what we have currently, is a massively oversimplified model with some nice eye candy effects.

[Red_Camarada]

no news regarding this topic?

[draconus]

On 2/8/2025 at 1:42 PM, Red_Camarada said:

no news regarding this topic?

What news do you expect? You can read some in depth explanations from the devs themselves here:

 

[Red_Camarada]

12 hours ago, draconus said:

What news do you expect? You can read some in depth explanations from the devs themselves here:

 

What kind of news do I expect? Seriously?
maybe the kind of change that let us set 30ft and 1600ft wind individually, would be nice. In fact it is has been done by one of our community members so this should not be a 7000 men hours for ED

[draconus]

13 minutes ago, Red_Camarada said:

maybe the kind of change that let us set 30ft and 1600ft wind individually, would be nice

Well, you heard them, no such plans untill another iteration of weather system.