DCS editor dynamic weather

Dynamic Weather

DCS features a dynamic weather system to better simulate weather systems in the game. The key difference between dynamic weather and standard weather is that dynamic weather dictates the weather conditions based on the differences of atmospheric pressure throughout an area. I do not pretend to know what that means.

Basics

Put some information on how to read the little flags here. Probably discuss low and high pressure systems and what it all means. Call the guy who consulted for the Bill Paxton classic "Twister" maybe he understands this stuff.

UI

The user interface for dynamic weather is quite bare bones, giving you control over just 3 values. These values are the Baris system, how many systems there are, and the pressure deviation of each system.

Baric System

Cyclone, Anti Cyclone, and None

Systems Quantity

Up to 6. Note that there has been a slight performance impact the in the past when using more weather systems. This is untested under EDGE.

Pressure Deviation

Custom Templates

Users can easily create, edit, and load weather templates for both standard and dynamic weather. This section will describe the table format specifically related to dynamic weather.

All customized data that is relevant to the mission editor are saved within your DCS\MissionEditor folder. Default location is listed below:

 C:\Users\<username>\Saved Games\DCS\MissionEditor\weather\dynamic

Standard weather and dynamic weather both use the same file structure to save each template. The data saved within defines the weather type used. For dynamic weather there are only three table entries used.

• atmosphere_type
• type_weather
• cyclones

atmosphere_type

Defines the weather system to be used between standard weather and dynamic weather.

 0 = Standard Weather
 1 = Dynamic Weather

type_weather Defines the barametric system used. (But may have little effect on what is depicted in the sim.)

 0 = Cyclone
 1 = Anti-cyclone
 2 = None

cyclones

Cyclones is a table defining the properties of each cyclone that exists in the weather system. An example table can be seen below:

   {
     pressure_spread = 100000,
     centerZ = 190000,
     groupId = 393,
     ellipticity = 1,
     rotation = 0,
     pressure_excess = 1889,
     centerX = -100000,
   }

centerX and centerZ

Defines the center of the cyclone.

pressure_spread

The size of the system's RADIUS in meters as depicted in the Mission Editor.

pressure_excess

The size of the main systems pressure differential. If "-", then the sim depicts the system as "low pressure" (cyclone). If a positive number, then the sim depicts it "high pressure" (anti-cyclone).

ellipticity

Defines the shape of the pressure system. A value of 1 is a perfect circle. Note that in the mission editor the shape of the cyclone will always be a circle at the position defined of a radius of the pressure_spread value. However the "wind flags" represent the actual shape and area of influence of the pressure system.

rotation

Defines the orientation of the pressure system as measured in radians.

groupId

I'm not actually sure what this means. It is present as part of the template file but not the actual table used in the mission file. I have not tested the absence of this entry so for now it is listed. It might be useless.