X-Plane can be configured to model real-world weather conditions. It does this by downloading weather report data from a server, operated by Laminar Research. That server, in turn, periodically fetches three total files from two different sources at NOAA: one for METAR-format weather condition data, and another source for two grib2-format files describing, separately, winds and turbulence. Read More

Every week for the last ten weeks I’ve thought “I should really write a dev blog post” and then…not done that. This isn’t because all is quiet on the Western front – on the contrary, everyone on the team has been really, really busy, and the dev blog is never the loudest thing shouting for attention. Read More