VAICOM Testing and Development - OpenKneeboard Out Weather

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00][music] [music] [music] >> Okay, welcome back to another test and development video for VR comm.

[00:00:16]Uh still ripping along with the adjuster 2.0 40 implementation. Um Obviously, I'm not in that aircraft.

[00:00:24]Now, I'm in the F-16.

[00:00:26]And um the reason for that is I've sort of branched off a little bit from the development. I've left um Slaazy to work like a dog, and he is um continuing pressing on with the things that he's quite frankly better at than me, which is um working with um voice attack and command profiles and those sort of things. And so, he is working doing that, and I'm now putting my head down into open knee board and expanding um its functionality. So, open knee board out, I should say. Um you can see the view is just dropping here as the cloud passes through. So, this mission's been set up not with fog, it's been set up with low cloud. Um basically a cloud base below the airfield elevation.

[00:01:12]Now, one of the things with DCS that is great is this weather. One of the things that's not so great is this briefing menu.

[00:01:24]Um if you looked at this weather briefing here, you'd think it's fine and beauty here at Kandahar at um Bagram.

[00:01:29]So, we got um temperature 6°, well, it's snowing, I don't think so. Um QNH is what it is, cloud base 1,400, well, that's not the case, that's the above sea level cloud base. We're in the cloud here.

[00:01:43]Um we're at 5,000 ft, we've got cloud passing through on the ground.

[00:01:48]Um just the way DCS works. Uh the wind and turb is what it is um in meters per second. Um This uh always makes me laugh the 127 versus 307, but the wind is actually um from 310. That's where it's coming from.

[00:02:04]It's not You never report it as where it's going to. But anyway, so the wind is um So, that's not very helpful, but so what I wanted to do is um Now, um our open kneeboard allows me to expand a whole bunch of stuff.

[00:02:20]So, what I have here now is a weather ATC tab instead of um to say ATC and we now have a weather output, which is a meta for the closest airport. So, we've got um Bagram there now. Uh the wind 310 at 10.

[00:02:36]Um 1,600 m, patches of fog, snow broken 100, -4, QNH 1023, moderate turb below 5,000. Um and that's pretty much what we got. So, we got these patches moving through. So, I had to make a few sort of back-end code um assumptions based on broken, scattered, few about what the visibility will be. Um if we actually have DCS fog running, it will actually report it as fog um and the visibility that is actually set in the mission um by that fog.

[00:03:13]Um but if it is this case where it's this low cloud cloud coming through, you'll get fog patches or fog if it's actually overcast. So, that is a lot better cuz it gives you a better output of what the actual conditions are here.

[00:03:27]Um the other thing you can do with that is um if I grab a stylus and if I click on this meta it will change to statute miles and inches of mercury, which is pretty handy because that's how these aircraft are set up, so you can just dial it straight in.

[00:03:49]Um and if you click it, it'll change back again.

[00:03:55]Now, if the weather was like this in real life, um and we had to divert cuz we didn't have approach capability to get in here, um and land with this sort of visibility, which is potentially the case here, um with the CAT I ILS, you're probably not going to get visual in this sort of vis here, um without doing something dodgy.

[00:04:13]So, you would end up heading off somewhere else. Now, you really need to know where to go. Now, as we saw, the DCS briefing is pretty naff, so um you know, you can't base it on that. Um you can base it on the vibe, I suppose, and think it "Well, if I go down lower, it's going to be better." But I thought it'd be nice if we could have a way to have the weather at other stations available to us.

[00:04:35]Um so, what we have here is um our units, um which in this case are our ATC units for the different airports, um with their frequencies, um UHF and VHF.

[00:04:48]Um now, if I click on one of these, so I'll pick one down low where the weather's going to be a bit different. Um what about we click Bastion, um and come back up, I now have a selected airfield weather line, um which is giving us the wind. Now, these winds here, I think I can do a bit bit better with than that, and I believe that up here at elevation, I need to do a fair bit of testing though to validate it so it's accurate, that the wind is a lot stronger than 10 knots here at Bagram, I'd say. Um I just need to work out with the how that gradient wind works here.

[00:05:24]But I'll get there, um but the visibility is pretty good down at um Bastion. It's 10 K's. It is raining there with some snow showers coming through.

[00:05:34]Um broken at 1,700.

[00:05:36]Um 0° 1023. Um so, that allows us to make diversion decisions based on the real in game DCS weather. So, if we move down to Bastion have a look and let's just have a look and see what it looks like.

[00:05:54]>> [snorts] >> menu Uh choose a slot down here at Camp Bastion.

[00:06:02]That one.

[00:06:09]As you can see, they're giving us the the plus 6° and all the good oil here on how great the weather is. Um we drop in here and um yeah, no cloud on the ground. It actually looks not too bad. Um it's snowing as it said and as you can see the bit of rain on the canopy there.

[00:06:30]So, um it's accurate. So, we're getting um pretty good data out of that. So, I'm pretty happy with um the way the meta information is being extracted from DCS now and displayed to the bug open knee board out function. Now, you will get your meta information on your standard knee board. You just won't be able to use selected airfield weather.

[00:06:54]Um the other good thing is now, if we I can turn off um the DCS knee board by come overlay, but I can retain my open knee board out function, which means the integrity check will pass and you can use open knee board out on multiplayer servers um that require pure client scripts.

[00:07:17]Um other thing I've done on here, um getting pretty excited about how much functionality I can add to this knee board now, but um we got our tanker page here. Um remember we had frequency information like this.

[00:07:32]Um I've now picked up tanker page.

[00:07:39]Uh TACAN information from each unit. So, it will report who they are and you'll now have the TACAN pre- free uh channel and the radio frequency to talk to them.

[00:07:50]So, that's everything you need to go on air refuel.

[00:07:53]Um still working on it. Um if you've got some ideas on um what sort of information um would be great on this kneeboard, I'd be happy to hear them in the comments below.

[00:08:06]Uh there is obviously a limitation to what I can pull out of DCS. It depends what's available there um in its lure environment.

[00:08:15]Um but it's, you know, always good to get some feedback on that. Anyway, there's a little update. Thanks for watching. Catch you later. [music] >> [music]