DCS editor Static Weather

Static Weather

DCS features a relatively detailed static weather system that offers finer control over exact weather patterns than the dynamic option.

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User Interface

The static weather interface provides the ability to directly control various aspects of temperature, clouds, wind/turbulence, and fog/dust effects.

Temperature

Sets the air temperature at sea level. Also affects the precipitation selections available.

Clouds and atmosphere

Base - Sets the lower limit for clouds in feet/meters above sea level. The lowest possible value is 984 ft, which is an arbitrary value that ED set several years ago, and has neglected to change despite multiple requests.

Thickness - Affects how far above the cloud base the cloud will extend. For example, setting a cloud base of 1,000 ft, and cloud thickness of 500 ft will result in the top of the clouds reaching ~1,500 ft MSL.

Density - Values range from 0 to 10, with 0 being clear skies, and 10 being fully overcast. Several of these values can cause issues in certain situations, such as clouds only rendering in a square pattern when set to 8, or a "blue fog" when set to 9.

Precipitation - 5 values, only 3 of which can normally be selected unless the temperature is 0 degrees C: None, rain, snow, thunderstorm, or snowstorm. At 0C or above, rain and thunderstorms will be available. At 0C or below, snow and snowstorms will be available.

Wind

There are four altitude blocks in which you can control the wind. 33 ft, 1,600 ft, 6,600 ft, and 26,000 ft. Wind can be given a speed and direction for each altitude block.

Turbulence

Value from 0-197 in 0.1*ft increments. Affects the "buffeting" effect seen in flight, and can be noticeably worse in certain areas such as low level flight, and better at high altitude.

Fog

Fog can be enabled or disabled via the check box. Visibility is controlled via a slider ranging from 0 to 19,685 ft, and thickness (how far the fog extends vertically upwards) is controlled via a slider ranging from 0 to 3,281 ft.

Dust Smoke

Dust smoke acts similarly to fog, however only visibility can be controlled with a slider ranging from 984 to 9,843 ft. The effect extends approximately 2,400 ft MSL vertically, which also means it is almost entirely ineffective on maps such as NTTR where the vast majority of the playable map area is well over 2,400 ft MSL.

Templates

DCS includes multiple templates for weather patterns by default, along with the ability to load, save, or delete new templates. These templates appear to be universal, and not adjusted for each map. In some cases this can lead to bugs such as waves appearing through runways near sea level and other strange effects, so use caution.