General questions about NZ + FSX

[iikke]

Hi everyone!

I recently bought the FTX NZSI from Orbx and thought that I would practice some GA flying in New Zealand area since my current location (Finland) is not that great for VFR simming.
The mountainous region of NZ seems like VFR paradise! And FTX SI is the best scenery I've ever seen so far . Of course I can't compare it for the real thing since it's like 15000km away, but at least I wan't to believe it's accurate.. Either way NZ seems to be the most versatile (and beautiful) country in the world in terms of geography! At least for me..

Anyway, without blabbering too much I hope you could answer some questions, since most of you are probably living in NZ irl too.

- If you fly in the southern parts of South Island, how do you obtain weather? I haven't found Metars for any airport on South Island, except Christchurch.. I've tried REX weather engine (old version) and it also has metar only for Christchurch and everything else is interpolated.. FSX has ATIS and weather station for Queenstown, but no other program or online metar-service has weather for Queenstown (pretty strange). So my question is: how do you set the weather for South Island?

- Before registering to the forum I browsed here for few days, and found that there was a file that updates the FSX native NZ airspace to the current NZ airspace, all the links to download the file were expired though.. There was also a file here that changed the upper airspace boundaries and the radio frequencies for them. Someone on the forum had made them. The links to download were expired too. Is there any way to download them?

- I chose Queenstown as my "main airport" and also downloaded FTX AI package for GA traffic. Theres not much activity in Queenstown area due to the mountainous terrain and it was said on Orbx forums, that FSX AI traffic system makes it impossible to make traffic fly and avoid mountains. I downloaded the GNZLAP AI traffic, but it made a huge impact on my system (I think because of the FS2004 textures). Even thought GNZLAP made a lot of traffic appear in Queenstown and Milfor Sound the Islanders, Cessnas, Piepers etc. always crashed in a mountain during climbouts and approaches. My question: Do you all have the same problem, or do you folks in NZ has something to cure the problem?

Thats all I can think of for now. Big thanks in advance! Hope you have the patience to answer

Greetings from Finland!

[FlyingKiwi]

Glad you're enjoying flying here!

To answer your first question - in real life there are a lot of airports around New Zealand which have METARs, terminal forecasts etc. but unfortunately only a handful are utilised by the FSX weather engine. I'm not sure why this is but presumably it's based on where the data is sourced from. There is a website called Metflight which is the real world source of met information for NZ, but you need a paid subscription to use it. To give you an example, in the Queenstown and further south area you can actually get METARs for Queenstown, Wanaka, Alexandra, Invercargill, Dunedin, Gore, Milford Sound and Manapouri in real life.

[Ian Warren]

Hi ya Ignat, Welcome to New Zealand so speak and NZFF, for starters in FSX there is only three weather stations that report and work with the real world weather themes. In Christchurch we these famous North-West winds making it blustery and warm and creates very dynamic skies , I have tried everything to replicate the conditions but this is one area that is lacking.

Regard to the system spec and how smooth your FSX runs all depends on the system specs , here we a lot off different variations , this is shown up by the screens taken , generally it a case off adjusting the sliders till you get it working best for you.

[johnkiwi]

Wecome to New Zealand. I use Active Sky for realtime weather, and link it to the VATNZ site to get more than the 3 basic metars. As Ian has said though it still only provides a generic cloud formation unlike the real world...

[emfrat]

Hello, Ignat - this thread may be of interest:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=24466

[iikke]

Hi,

Thank you for the answers. Im already downloading the FSRealWXLite to try out! But I guess if you get the most correct weather from VATSIM in NZ, shouldn't it be possible with all weather engines eg. REX, Active Sky, FSREalWXLite and so on? Either way, I'll try the FSRealWXLite, sounded pretty good!

Regarding the AI traffic committing suicides by flying into mountains, there's no cure available?

I got the custom upper airspace file + AU and NZ intersections, haven't tested yet. The airspace file I was talking about in previous post was AT90OCEN0.BGL, which should change the boundaries of lower airspaces in maps (but it won't change how ATC handles itself). The link to the tread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5337&hilit=airspace
It is pretty annoying to depart Queenstown, fly overhead the airport at 2500' and controller says "You're leaving my airspace", wth?

I'd wan't to change this:

To this:


Thanks again for the info. Going to try the VATSIM weather from Invercargill to Dunedin and back to Queenstown.

[NZ255]

Hi,

Thank you for the answers. Im already downloading the FSRealWXLite to try out! But I guess if you get the most correct weather from VATSIM in NZ, shouldn't it be possible with all weather engines eg. REX, Active Sky, FSREalWXLite and so on? Either way, I'll try the FSRealWXLite, sounded pretty good!

If you have another weather program then it should interpret VATSIM weather the same...at lease at the reporting station. I use Active Sky Next. Just make sure to file a basic flight plan if you use active sky to active the vatsim weather (and check the box in settings)

[iikke]

Just tested FSRealWXLite in Invercargill and OMG NZ came to life! And that weather program is pretty nice for a free program. It even shows you winds aloft and temps! Something that REX didn't show with VATSIM weather. Thanks for this idea, this was exactly what I was looking for!

[Ian Warren]

All the years I have been here, that is one program I have not tried out FSRealWXLite.

[mjrhealth]

RXweather lite is quiet good used it till ASN came along.

[emfrat]

Thing is, WXLite will pull down the weather info, and whatever else you have in the way of cloud textures, themes etc will use that info.
In FSUIPC I have various weather things set, including a layer of puffball cumulus at a nominal 6000'. FSUIPC is also set to allow external weather, which is why you can see them below the big black rainclouds that WX Lite has called from the FSX default weather.
In my FS9 Classic and FS9 Modern installs, I have Rex in one and Active Sky in t'other - but WXLite doesn't work in FS9

[omitchell]

In my FS9 Classic and FS9 Modern installs, I have Rex in one and Active Sky in t'other - but WXLite doesn't work in FS9

I use this combo in FSX and P3d, Rex Texture Direct and Rex Soft Clouds ( a cheap must) and ASN. Works really well together. But the thing is there is so many texture programmes and so many wather programmes out there (Both freeware and payware) so it is a matter of just finding out what works best for your system and setup.

[Sonnyj]

Web site says ...

FSrealWX - Weather AddOn for Flightsimulators FS2004, FSX, P3D and Xplane

FS9.1
*****
FSRWx Lite + FSUIPC Wide = ok

According to the fsreal forum it should work with FS9 , maybe you need FSUIPC??

Perhaps an earlier version of FS Lite. Certainly worth a crack. and worth using.

[omitchell]

Web site says ...

FSrealWX - Weather AddOn for Flightsimulators FS2004, FSX, P3D and Xplane

FS9.1
*****
FSRWx Lite + FSUIPC Wide = ok

According to the fsreal forum it should work with FS9 , maybe you need FSUIPC??

Perhaps an earlier version of FS Lite. Certainly worth a crack. and worth using.

You can grab FSUIPC here http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.html and it is freeware and payware in the same installer