DCS Reference/Dynamic Weather

Tools and workflow

To create good, deliberate dynamic weather systems, you absolutely need the following:

• A good zip manipulation tool — anything that lets you seamlessly browse, extract, and add to the file structure of a zip file.
• Notepad++ or a similarly competent text editor. No, not notepad.
• A conversion tool for angles and distances (Windows 10's built-in calculator does this well enough).
• Patience.
• Patience.
• Patience.

You need these because the basic flow of weather creation is one of:

• Creating a dummy mission where you place trigger zones as a first approximation of the pressure fronts.
• Extracting the mission Lua file from the dummy .miz.
• Copying the trigger zone coordinates (and possibly sizes) to a weather Lua file.
• Optionally, for a bit more precision, editing the mission file and re-inserting it into the .miz.
• Load the weather pattern and change pressure levels to achieve the desired result.
• Preview, hate actual result.
• Start over.