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Archived MSN Zone Real-World Weather


rfnagel

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Here's an interesting one:

 

I download archives of the last real-world weather files for FS2K that hosted were on the long-since gone MSN Zone site:

 

http://fs2k.zone.com:80/fronts.bin

http://fs2k.zone.com/metars.bin

http://fs2k.zone.com/metars_and_winds_aloft.bin

 

...on the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) from:

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20190421053133/http://fs2k.zone.com/fronts.bin

https://web.archive.org/web/20041210200236/http://fs2k.zone.com:80/metars.bin

https://web.archive.org/web/20041210191154/http://fs2k.zone.com:80/metars_and_winds_aloft.bin

 

...and uploaded them to my web server at http://bhservices.us .

 

Open your "FS2000.cfg" file with WinDoZe NotePad, edit the following line in the file:

 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Weather]

WeatherServerAddress=fs2k.zone.com

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

 

...to read:

 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Weather]

WeatherServerAddress=bhservices.us

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

 

...and save the "FS2000.cfg" file.

 

Start FS2K and it will alow you to download the real-world weather from within the sim (the ".bin" files will be downloaded from my web server)... it works just like it did back in the day :)

 

It's really a shame that there isn't some way to copy and paste METAR data (e.g. from https://www.aviationweather.gov/metar/data ) into a file, somehow convert it to the MSN Zone ".bin" files, and then load them into FS2K.

 

Anyhow, I thought this was kind of neat :)

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Here's an interesting one:

 

I download archives of the last real-world weather files for FS2K that hosted were on the long-since gone MSN Zone site:

 

http://fs2k.zone.com:80/fronts.bin

http://fs2k.zone.com/metars.bin

http://fs2k.zone.com/metars_and_winds_aloft.bin

 

...on the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine) from:

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20190421053133/http://fs2k.zone.com/fronts.bin

https://web.archive.org/web/20041210200236/http://fs2k.zone.com:80/metars.bin

https://web.archive.org/web/20041210191154/http://fs2k.zone.com:80/metars_and_winds_aloft.bin

 

...and uploaded them to my web server at http://bhservices.us .

 

Open your "FS2000.cfg" file with WinDoZe NotePad, edit the following line in the file:

 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Weather]

WeatherServerAddress=fs2k.zone.com

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

 

...to read:

 

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

[Weather]

WeatherServerAddress=bhservices.us

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

 

...and save the "FS2000.cfg" file.

 

Start FS2K and it will alow you to download the real-world weather from within the sim (the ".bin" files will be downloaded from my web server)... it works just like it did back in the day :)

 

It's really a shame that there isn't some way to copy and paste METAR data (e.g. from https://www.aviationweather.gov/metar/data ) into a file, somehow convert it to the MSN Zone ".bin" files, and then load them into FS2K.

 

Anyhow, I thought this was kind of neat :)

 

Thanks! Works well. Without checking out the actual files, I assume the metars loaded are just for months, days and times, regardless which year, right? Because I load sim with current time and it loaded just fine apparently, worked in a snap....

 

Pic attached, after Meigs takeoff heading west.

 

fs2002 real weather MSN zone archive.jpg

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Thanks! Works well. Without checking out the actual files, I assume the metars loaded are just for months, days and times, regardless which year, right? Because I load sim with current time and it loaded just fine apparently, worked in a snap....

 

It doesn't matter what your sim's date and time is, and the date and time is not included in the binary files. The weather for the binary files would have been whatever the current weather was when they were available on the MSN Zone.

 

I used the Wayback Machine ( archive.org) to retrieve the last files that were hosted on the MSN Zone for Flight Simulator's weather. There was only a very few of them available that archive.org had retrieved and saved, and these were from December 10 2004 (you can tell the date from the numbers in the above URLs in my first post for archive.org ).

 

P.S. I'm pretty sure that the sims ignored the "fronts.bin" file, as the one that I downloaded from archive.org was zero bytes. About the other two files, "metars.bin" and "metars_and_winds_aloft.bin": I'm not sure which one (or if both of them) are used for Flight Simulator's real-world weather.

 

Anyhow, in a nutshell, when retrieving the weather within Flight Simulator with these files that are on my server, it is simply setting up FS's weather using the really old weather files that they (at the time) had on the MSN Zone back in the day.

 

Hehe, as you can probably tell, I'm easily amused LOL! This was simply a 'proof of concept' sort of experiment. I just thought it was kind of cool to see Flight Simulator ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING when clicking on the button to download the weather, verses popping up a 'server not found' error message :)

 

Like I posted previously, it's really a shame that there isn't some sort of METAR2Bin converter of sorts so that one could convert current METARs to BIN files that FS could load directly.

 

P.P.S. I've twiddled around a bit with the old utility "Wetter 2000 v1.7" for FS2K, but it's rather a pain to go through all of the steps to import current METARs into the utility. Not to mention, without a valid registration code for Wetter, there is no way to select multiple METARs of different locations to set up "local" weather areas in FS (the old routine that used the MSN Zone would actually set up local weather zones for the whole world (or most of the world), I THINK?). Of course, being able to purchase a registration code for Wetter is long-since gone.

 

I've come up totally empty searching on, ummm, 'questionable sites', for a reg code LOL.

Edited by rfnagel
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It doesn't matter what your sim's date and time is, and the date and time is not included in the binary files. The weather for the binary files would have been whatever the current weather was when they were available on the MSN Zone.

 

I used the Wayback Machine ( archive.org) to retrieve the last files that were hosted on the MSN Zone for Flight Simulator's weather. There was only a very few of them available that archive.org had retrieved and saved, and these were from December 10 2004 (you can tell the date from the numbers in the above URLs in my first post for archive.org ).

 

P.S. I'm pretty sure that the sims ignored the "fronts.bin" file, as the one that I downloaded from archive.org was zero bytes. About the other two files, "metars.bin" and "metars_and_winds_aloft.bin": I'm not sure which one (or if both of them) are used for Flight Simulator's real-world weather.

 

Anyhow, in a nutshell, when retrieving the weather within Flight Simulator with these files that are on my server, it is simply setting up FS's weather using the really old weather files that they (at the time) had on the MSN Zone back in the day.

 

Hehe, as you can probably tell, I'm easily amused LOL! This was simply a 'proof of concept' sort of experiment. I just thought it was kind of cool to see Flight Simulator ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING when clicking on the button to download the weather, verses popping up a 'server not found' error message :)

 

Like I posted previously, it's really a shame that there isn't some sort of METAR2Bin converter of sorts so that one could convert current METARs to BIN files that FS could load directly.

 

P.P.S. I've twiddled around a bit with the old utility "Wetter 2000 v1.7" for FS2K, but it's rather a pain to go through all of the steps to import current METARs into the utility. Not to mention, without a valid registration code for Wetter, there is no way to select multiple METARs of different locations to set up "local" weather areas in FS (the old routine that used the MSN Zone would actually set up local weather zones for the whole world (or most of the world), I THINK?). Of course, being able to purchase a registration code for Wetter is long-since gone.

 

I've come up totally empty searching on, ummm, 'questionable sites', for a reg code LOL.

 

Thanks for the explanation, well, its still nice to see that the "real-world weather" button does something..

 

I personally use(d) FS Metar with FS2002 if I want to get actual weather, however only can download metar file from vatsim for instance, open it manually in FS Metar, and then send it to FS2002 thru old version of FSUIPC, the download through FS Metar doesnt work, it tries, but never finishes... i fiddled with fsmetar.ini links syntax a lot but no luck...

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Thanks for the explanation, well, its still nice to see that the "real-world weather" button does something.. I personally use(d) FS Metar with FS2002 if I want to get actual weather, however only can download metar file from vatsim for instance, open it manually in FS Metar, and then send it to FS2002 thru old version of FSUIPC, the download through FS Metar doesnt work, it tries, but never finishes... i fiddled with fsmetar.ini links syntax a lot but no luck...

 

One option is to search for local airport METARs at https://www.aviationweather.gov/metar/data (or https://www.aviationweather.gov/metar/board if your simply wanting some extreme weather to fly in), copy and pasting a specific METAR into an online decoder (such as https://e6bx.com/metar-decoder ), and then manually setting up the weather from the decoded METAR directly into the various weather settings as global weather within Flight Simulator. Of course, needless to say, this method is a PITA.

 

I really wish that I could find a valid reg code for Wetter 2000 v1.7, I think that it would work fairly nicely for setting up multiple local weather areas in Flight Simulator.

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  • 4 weeks later...

There is a way to capture METAR, TAF, and WINDS for ActiveSky wxRE.  It's a bit cumbersome, but it does work.  It involves copying each weather type and pasting it into the respective defmetar.met, deftaf.taf, defwinds.wmo files located in the ActiveSky wxRE Folder.

Thoughts?

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  • 4 months later...
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