Survey: Pilot Weather Related Decision Making
 

Hello,

I am conducting a survey on VFR pilot weather related decision making for a post graduate study. If you have a spare 10-15min it would be great if you could help – the survey comprises of assessing 5 in-flight images.

This survey is targeting pilots, therefore only complete this survey if you have some flying experiences. Please click on the link below.

Click Here: In-flight Decision Making


Thanks very much for your help.


Stephen

Permission was sought and given from PPruneAdmin to post this survey.

Done ! Will be interesting to see your results

Done

I would suggest that you add a comments box at the end to give qualitive information

I would say that my graphics aren't good enough to give a meaningful answer to some of the questions and I would have liked to point out my reasoning

You need real photos -- not screen shots generated by a simulator. There's 2 altimeters that have been deliberately blanked out.

You also need a map showing the destination to give perspective to the weather forecast.

I abandoned the survey.

There is an assumption that some of the flights would even have been commenced VFR in the first place!

I also felt that the quiz was lacking in realism. I can understand why you used computer-generated images, but would suggest that you could have gotten more realistic ones. For example I was uncertain whether the first picture was flying over sea or flying over forest, at first. Some of the flight simulator scenery packs would make for much better images.

Trees in Canada are much taller than trees in the UK. I can't comment on trees in New-Zealand or on FS, but I have been caught out misjudging distances whilst walking in Canada. This will certainly have affected my guesstimates of altitude and visibility.

I might not choose to fly in some of the weather you've shown, but if you're truly 'nearly at' your destination airfield, the question isn't whether it's safe to continue but whether it's safer to land than to turn back. To be honest, I don't particularly enjoy flying along just under cloudbase but I wouldn't have felt particularly threatened by any of the pictures you provided. I would have worried about embedded cumulo-nimbus in some of them.

All of your terrain was basically unlandable and reasonably flat, so I was less concerned about cloudbase than I normally would be. Given an engine failure the chances are you're ending up in the trees whatever altitude you're flying at, though at 3000 feet you may have just that bit longer to work out how to restart the engine. The chances of being caught between rising ground and cloudbase weren't particularly high.

I found your assessment-of-cloudbase questions quite interesting. The decisionmaking questions were harder to answer, because ordinarily you have so many more factors to take into consideration than a simple picture can give.

Yes, this was a major factor in my answer to your questions.

Likewise I had to give up, no way of judging height without which you cant guage vis or cloudbase, suggest you might want to use one of the photoreal scenery packs or similar.

Regards

UA

In addition, although the altimeters were blanked out, in several shots the VSI was indicating +500fpm climb, which skews the perspective.

There is no indication given in your preamble as to whether we should be taking that into account or not?

If you do not include the hight of the aircraft in your photos, you cannot gauge the hight of the cloud base.

Also, using computer images to gauge depth is next to impossible.

Looked at the first three, I wouldn't have taken off for a VFR flight in those forecast conditions - I'd have planned IFR.

I personally do not find it easy to judge how far above me the cloud base is - usually I don't know where it is for sure until I'm level with it.

So I didn't complete the survey - there's no option for "I wouldn't have taken off".

I think that the basis for the survey is flawed, so I haven't completed.

Your assumption is that Flight Sim's weather system gives a realistic perspective. I have always found that MS perspective is nothing like reality when it comes to weather.

It's impossible to compare visibility in MS Sim to real world weather, and the clarity of the terrain vs real world clarity gives totally false clues.

If you want a valid result, you should use real photographs.

dp

I have to confess to reading this thread and then looking at the survey.

It is immediately noticeable that a simple compture graphic simply does not give the information required to make a judgement.

Critically pilots have an immediate reference to cloud height - and to some extent visibility by knowing roughly what height they are at. They also look at the windows at the side - both laterally and downwards and those views offer a lot more information.

Finally we know that the US must be a very ugly country, as virtually all US manufacturers block the view outside with a massive panel - something my aircraft does not have...... So my forward view is at least twice as big!

For a UK audience the inclusion of a 3800' cloudbase forecast in several of the examples is deeply unconvincing - that would rank as the 'best day of the year' here!

It's also deeply unlikely in UK that a 3800' forecast would turn into the sort of weather depicted here, unless crossing high ground or someplace unrelated to the forecast.

On the other hand I found the visuals quite realistic and comparable with the 'turn back now' sort of scenarios that are familiar here when a 2000' cloudbase is regarded as a gift from heaven.

I suspect most of my answers were based on the percieved granularity of the surface.

If your post grad study is looking at genuine in flight decision making based on flight conditions then you are way off course using these images.

I've been flying long enough (20 years) and using flight sims long enough (PC based through to level-C) to know you cannot establish any reasonable situational awareness or assess conditions based on 3D rendering and graphics with a limited field of view, certainly not from a pc game, and probably not from any still image capture.

Even if you had images or photos which conveyed the conditions accurately, decisions made in the air especially decisions relating to weather (both subconscious and conscious) come from continual assessment of conditions all around you - at a very basic level "Is it getting better? Is it getting worse?" (weather on track, off track, behind, towards alternate etc).

You simply couldn't (and woudn't) make a decision from your information. I suggest you might want to rethink your research method. All you'll get from this questionnare is "how inaccurate is the Microsofts Flight sim engine at portraying weather conditions and altitude". And I can already tell you that - 'very'.

I did it for a larf but as others have said, there are no proper visual clues. You wouldn't rely on the information and pictures that you gave to make an assessment.

Or is it really an assessment on how awkward pilots are...?:)

Images unrealistic, guestimate of cloudbases. I can't see the point without better resolution. Did it anyway just for a larf.

Difficult to judge weather from those images if I don't know my height

Agreed. Computer-generated images (fidelity unknown) are no good for this survey. Sorry, but I abandoned the survey after looking at the first image.

Hopefully constructive feedback.

one more thing. Which forecast would give you a visibility of more than 9999? No TAF surely.

From the numbers and over flat territory most of those flights would have probably been possible in VFR but not much fun.

I agree that it would have been much better to use real pics. I am professionally involved with flight simulation and weather (both separately and jointly) and I am pretty clear that most sims can not display visibility accurately, far from it.

Personally, I have a feeling that this study has a different goal than accuracy and that is why I completed it. I won't elaborate but I think I can see where he is coming from and if I am right, then I guess he is onto something which will make most comments here insignificant, because it is not about what it appears.