Windsock shows wrong direction of wind ? ​

[YoYo]

Guys,

I noticed serious problem with windsock, it shows wrong (opposite) direction. I set up mission with direction of wind NORTH (means 0) but the windsock shows wind from 180, lol. How is possible?

 

When giving wind direction in aviation, you specify where the wind is coming from, not where. So from 0 to 180, but windsock shows from 180 to 0 what is wrong.

 

I see someone reported it too.... 3 yeasr ago. 

 

 

[YoYo]

The issue is online and offline, see this. Offline mission, wind is from 35 according the briefing and what we see in the sim? LOL ?:

 

 

Easy to check it in this SP mission:

 

 

Pls fix it its a kind of big shame and noob issue if we talk about "simulations". Pretty please. ?

[YoYo]

Online example, wind is set from 0.

 

[YoYo]

I don't think I need to explain what this bug is, but I'm posting it just in case.

 

 

[YoYo]

btw. 

 

I checked the issue of what the smoke looks like and it seems to be a bigger problem. Maybe one of the patches broke something, or the IT coder didn't know the rules for specifying the wind direction to make an update?

 

See this. Wind 0 (means from 0 to 180). What the smoke shows? Opposite side too:

 

 

Smoke is from 180 to 0, not to 180? So the smoke goes against the wind instead of with the wind, which is a violation of physics ;).

 

 

So according to me I have a different theory, windsock and smokes are ok, but IT guy, who codded the wind did it in opposite direction.  If we are talking about a direction, e.g. 90 degrees, the wind blows from this direction to 270 degrees, not the other way around (like in IL-2 now). I have a feeling that whoever coded it thought it meant the wind was blowing from 270 (a preschooler's mistake). This means that when the wind is set to 90 in the Mission editor, it is actually blowing from the direction of 270 due to a coding error, which is an error and this is not the data we use in aviation. Interestingly, I recently persuaded a friend who is involved in real aviation to buy the IL-2 BoX, and he bought it. I wasn't flying at the time, but he noticed it right away. I told him it was impossible, I checked and he was right. The bug is present.

 

Please check it and come back with information. Can you @LukeFF ?

 

 

I'm a bit surprised by this issue. I haven't flown the IL-2 for quite some time (maybe year?), now I took it out of the drawer and it turns out that there is a fairly basic bug. Pls fix it.

 

Edited January 6, 2024 by YoYo

[SYN_Vander]

It has always been like this. For some reason the wind direction as set in the Mission Editor is not where the wind is coming from, but where it is blowing to.

Weird decision, but as long as you write it correctly in the briefing than there is no problem.

 

If the wind direction in the briefing is mentioned as "from N" and it is clearly blowing the other way then that is a fault of the mission designer.

Also good to know: Windsocks and some smaller smoke objects move with the wind, but some bigger smoke objects are static: They have to be oriented correctly by the mission designer.

 

Last but not least: You can set wind speed and direction on multiple altitudes. I have also noticed that wind direction at ground level can fluctuate quite a bit. Maybe that is still a bug.

 

Edited January 6, 2024 by SYN_Vander

[YoYo]

36 minutes ago, SYN_Vander said:

It has always been like this. For some reason the wind direction as set in the Mission Editor is not where the wind is coming from, but where it is blowing to.

Weird decision, but as long as you write it correctly in the briefing than there is no problem.

 

If the wind direction in the briefing is mentioned as "from N" and it is clearly blowing the other way then that is a fault of the mission designer.

Also good to know: Windsocks and some smaller smoke objects move with the wind, but some bigger smoke objects are static: They have to be oriented correctly by the mission designer.

 

Last but not least: You can set wind speed and direction on multiple altitudes. I have also noticed that wind direction at ground level can fluctuate quite a bit.

 

 

Thanks for confirming the issue.

 

But as you can see, even the authors of the mission have no idea about this issue. Because several official missions have bad descriptions. They therefore take the wind direction from the editor and treat it as a real data, just as it is treated in real aviation. Example:

 

 

 

Real wind here is not 35 but from 215 deg (in the game) in editor is 35. I checked few mission and issue is present. 

 

The solution is very simple, a line of code that treats this data in reverse from the editor. If someone enters 35, the wind is from the direction of 35, not as it is now, with this issue. In editor of DCS and SDK of MSFS is ok, setting the wind means "from" not "to", why IL-2 has a kindergarten mistake I don't know ;).

 

 

Edited January 6, 2024 by YoYo

[YoYo]

From the other hand, now Im doing dynamic campaign for IAR-80 ane here the descriptions was ok, wind is from north east, and in the game is ok, so someone here was aware that the opposite direction should be given to make it look like in real life:

 

 

 

In any case, there would have to be more modifications, not only "one line of code", pity.

[MajorMagee]

One of the issues here is that the continuously looping smoke effects are hard programmed to always blow from South to North. 

 

city_fire_loop, city_firesmall_loop and villagesmoke_loop effects can be selected and positioned within the mission editor.

 

Unless the mission creator always sets the lower altitude (<=1000m) wind directions to match (0) in the Atmosphere Options you will not be able to use these effects without a visual mismatch.

 

[SYN_Vander]

11 hours ago, MajorMagee said:

One of the issues here is that the continuously looping smoke effects are hard programmed to always blow from South to North. 

 

city_fire_loop, city_firesmall_loop and villagesmoke_loop effects can be selected and positioned within the mission editor.

 

Unless the mission creator always sets the lower altitude (<=1000m) wind directions to match (0) in the Atmosphere Options you will not be able to use these effects without a visual mismatch.

 

But you can rotate them in the mission editor to align them with the wind direction.

 

[MajorMagee]

True, but the step of orienting the AY axis is sometimes overlooked, so we end up with missions that reflect the mismatch as YoYo is experiencing.

 

Another source of this mismatch is the use of the random fire and smoke effects mod by Stonehouse, which greatly adds to the feeling of being part of a much larger battle. Unfortunately, the luascripts related to these effects provides no method to orient the smoke axis any way other than the default South to North.

 

 

Edited January 7, 2024 by MajorMagee

[Stonehouse]

Only my opinion, but I can't see any reason that you would want the smoke to blow in a direction other than that dictated by the wind. I believe that all such effects should simply pick up the prevailing wind direction for the lowest altitude band defined in the mission overall setup - so the 0-500m wind direction. ie you should not be able to set the direction of an effect contrary to the wind. The direction of smoke etc should be governed by the environment defined for the mission. If the devs really wanted it to be accurate the altitude of the effect above sea level should be checked against the wind altitude bands and the appropriate wind direction and wind speed applied to the effect. I could be wrong, but I would have thought that the wind band values could be easily passed to the effects api/function instead of a manual input especially if only the 0-500m one was used. I assume the mission environment variables are essentially global parameters.

Edited January 7, 2024 by Stonehouse

[SYN_Vander]

49 minutes ago, Stonehouse said:

Only my opinion, but I can't see any reason that you would want the smoke to blow in a direction other than that dictated by the wind. I believe that all such effects should simply pick up the prevailing wind direction for the lowest altitude band defined in the mission overall setup - so the 0-500m wind direction. ie you should not be able to set the direction of an effect contrary to the wind. The direction of smoke etc should be governed by the environment defined for the mission. If the devs really wanted it to be accurate the altitude of the effect above sea level should be checked against the wind altitude bands and the appropriate wind direction and wind speed applied to the effect. I could be wrong, but I would have thought that the wind band values could be easily passed to the effects api/function instead of a manual input especially if only the 0-500m one was used. I assume the mission environment variables are essentially global parameters.

 

I think we all agree on this. It shouldn't be something mission creators should worry about.

[Art-J]

Back to OP, it's not technically a "bug", but just unusual convention of using nav wind description (as for navigation calculations) vs meteo wind description (as in METARs, ATC etc.). 

DCS has had the same issue (and confusion) forever until they finally started providing both directions in editor and briefings with extra info about which one is nav and which is meteo. 

 

I agree, however, that if some mission and campaign creators in GB forget or are unaware of current convention (nav), then it's too easy for them to make a mistake of setting up opposite direction to the one which was intended.

 

Maybe GB should follow DCS example and at least provide extra explanation somewhere in briefing (if checking and re-doing winds in all missions is too much of work)?