RealTraffic Forum

Does RealTraffic's weather injection trigger turbulence? I could be hallucinating, but it seems that native PSX with online weather generally only simulates turbulence when the aircraft is within a SIGMET that forecasts turbulence. With RealTraffic injecting weather, I think I'm seeing more brief turbulence effects, outside of SIGMETS. I could be imagining this. Does RealTraffic send turbulence to PSX? And if so, what are the triggers?

You're not hallucinating. SIGMETs do trigger turbulence (that's a PSX internal function based on the provided SIGMETs), but RT also injects turbulence where the vorticity parameter of atmospheric model data suggests that there is a large difference in air mass velocity over a small spatial domain - resulting in turbulence.

Go to the weather page here https://rtw.flyrealtraffic.com/WX/ and select turbulence as the parameter to display. For locations where the vorticity is more than 0.3 m/s, there will be appreciable turbulence, and that gets injected into PSX.

A nice example of orographically induced turbulence is visible right now (Sep 18 5 UTC - Sep 19 5 UTC): Load the USA map, 250hPa pressure level, and you'll see significant turbulence in the lee of the rockies in the Colorado/Wyoming area.

Wow, this is really neat. It's nice to see the intermittent bumps.

Realism is what RealTraffic is aiming for.

While we are on the subject... How does RealTraffic handle thunderstorms? It seems like RealTraffic and PSX think differently about where to place thunderstorms enroute. If Hardy tells me I'm wrong, I'll believe him, but it seems like PSX enjoys putting cells close to the FMC route, perhaps to allow the pilot practice judgment and avoidance. I'm noticing now that using weather from RT (and "Set zones..." being unchecked for the first time in years), that the thunderstorms look different. Is this a coincidence? Or does RealTraffic place them differently?

RT does not place CBs. There is no facility for doing that in PSX (I iterated with Hardy on that some years back). I wanted to integrate radar data from the various sources around the planet to provide real storm placement. That is not supported by PSX.

What PSX does is look at the nearby METARs and places CBs based on which stations are reporting them.

That is in fact the one drawback of using GFS model data, it works really well for large scale weather systems (up to and including hurricanes/cyclones), but it doesn't work for CBs. They are local weather phenomena, and the only indicator for CBs the GFS model provides is the CAPE (convective available potential energy) which gives you an indicator of whether there's vertical instability, and information on the magnitude of that instability. But there's no telling whether CBs develop for sure, regardless of CAPE, so RT does not set CBs to be active.

Thanks, that's helpful.

RealTraffic is great BTW. I would never fly without RealTraffic, PSX, MSFS, and PSXTraffic. An essential combo.

If I understand correctly, RealTraffic injects METARs, which may contain thunderstorms, which are painted on the radar in PSX. If I fly into one of those, where does the turbulence come from? Does it come from RT's injected turbulence model, or from the PSX-native "thunderstorm experience"?

Those come from the PSX thunderstorm model.