MILVIZ WX weather radar - bites the dust !!!

[navymustang]

I can't believe this. MILVIZ in conjunction with Rex Simulations developed the P3D v5 version of the weather radar. An excellent radar package for use in any fixed or rotor wing sim. It has been running in my sim (and its P3D v4 predecessor for years)

I just installed v5.2 of P3D and found out that the WX radar no longer works. I posted a question in the MILVIZ forum and today I got this somewhat tongue in cheek answer from their tech guy "looks like v5.2 broke the code".

OK - they have had a working copy of the 5.2 release for weeks if not months ahead of any of us. You can't tell me these guys didn't know their software would no longer work with the latest release of P3D !!!!!

Shame on them !

He then went on to say "not sure if there will ever be a fix"

Wow !!  Is the margin on software sales that bad where you can't fix a broken product line? They even knew with P3D v5.1 that there software would not work when you have enhanced atmospherics turned on. They should have been working a fix since then.

OK - just blew off that steam - feel so much better now 

[bernard S]

milviz is a plonker i have had dealings with him

[Neil Hewitt]

Supposedly the APIs that let you extract weather data have changed radically and this breaks the way that the WX Advantage works fundamentally. That's from the actual WX dev at MilViz on the relevant AVSIM thread:

Just a side note on the technical aspect (since I'm the only guy on the team who works on the WX and I am swamped with milsim stuff), the latest P3D includes a new weather radar API which I am looking at using to replace the previous rendering system which is heavily dependent on hooks which is why new versions keep breaking it. However, for reasons explained previously, it is not number one on the priority list although it is by no means at the bottom (Curse of 10+ years development experience == high demand on milsim stuff. Gee have I been doing this for that long?).

Which was followed by:

Ok so update: I have the update more or less complete, but I am reluctant to release it at this time because the way the P3D API is simulating tilt and beam geometry is fundamentally flawed (0 returns with 0 tilt at certain ranges below clouds while showing full returns with 0 tilt above the clouds). We are working with LM to get this fixed, although we have no timeline on when this will happen.

So the issue is (supposedly) a problem with P3D, the update for v5.2 is finished otherwise. Since LM won't fix this before v5.3 at the earliest, I guess we're stuck waiting until they do.

MilViz has always been open that their military contract work is what really pays the bills, so it comes first, and there's lots of it now. TBH I've moved on from the WX Advantage radar and I'm using the ActiveSky XGauge which at least sort-of works (I believe it uses the weather data from the classic atmospherics which is why the radar return doesn't exactly line up with the weather in EA mode).

[navymustang]

Neil,.

Great update - that helps clarify things. 

[navymustang]

Any new info on the weather radar working with P3D v5.2 or 5.3?