I remember when I flew AF, if I was lucky, I might see bad weather. Campaigns always started clear and calm, and if the campaign lasted long enough, or if the Falcon gods chose to grant you this gift, the weather would get worse, sometimes even getting completely socked in. So soupy that you could only see to about your wingtip. Needless to say, this makes things a bit more interesting, but was all too rare. It affects target and weapon selection not to mention makes navigation and operating around the base more challenging. Weather is an absolutely integral facet of air operations, but which flight sims have a good weather system? That list is short.

So I wanted to explore the weather system in BMS. I've only flown in good weather so far, no worse than fair, which might have a bit of turbulence here and there, some scattered cumulus and haze, but doesn't add any additional challenge or decision making in the campaign. That was good as I got back in to F4, but I feel ready for some stormy stuff. I posted about it over at the BMS forum, seeking guidance on how I could get my atmosphere on. I wanted to start generating weather that was variable and unpredictable, and that changed from location to location.

https://www.bmsforum.org/forum/showthread.php?30320-Configuring-campaign-weather

I had fooled around with the different settings in BMS. Probabilistic, deterministic etc, but have no clue what I'm doing. I do know that the weather never got bad, over several campaigns that lasted up to five campaign days. After getting some advice in that thread I decided to try the WeatherGen program by Tyrant.

https://firstfighterwing.com/weathergen/

And it's great program. In just a few minutes I was able to generate a new weather map for my BoP campaign. I kept clicking random until the weather near my base was lousy and saved it. Loaded it to the campaign and fragged a mission. Stepped to the jet to find a solid overcast with rain. Forecast for the target area was improving. Not knowing exactly what to expect over the former republic of Yugoslavia, I made a simple BARCAP with a HTS and a couple of HARMs. This loadout is good even if the cloud deck is solid over the target. Unfortunately, my campaign is currently at night. I snapped a couple of shots, but I'll need to wait for dawn to get some good ones.

The whole mission I kept reminding myself to check the debrief to see what the wind velocity was. But of course upon landing I had completely forgotten. But it was stiff no doubt. Takeoff was only slightly more drift than usual, as I was more or less in to it. But as I turned right (east) coming out of Palese, I got in to the crosswind. Check the FPM here, almost off the HUD. The rain doesn't show well in the screenshot, it's there, but hard to spot.




I climbed out to 25,000, entering the clouds at 7,000 and breaking out around 12,000, and turned north, in to the wind. At that altitude and at full mil, I was barely clocking 270 knots. To test how much effect that was, I turned back to the east, and without advancing the throttle the Viper accelerated to 370 knots. So cool. As I neared the coast I shot down three J-22s and the cloud deck began to break up. As I flew further north, it became much nicer with calming winds and broken cumulus. This is what I wanted. And it's amazing. Big thanks to Tyrant, who not only made this cool program, but has been very helpful to me as well. I still don't really understand it all, but the fact I could easily generate an awesome campaign environment in just a few clicks is fantastic.

The landing was epic, as the FPM at times was off the HUD, just a little X in the corner

Here you see the improving weather in the target area. Again, apologies for the nighttime shots, but there's a war on ya know.