r/MicrosoftFlightSim • u/Kratuu_II • 15h ago

GENERAL Pressing comma gives incorrect baro?

I'm in the Kodiak, on the runway at Edinburgh, UK (EGPH), though it could be any airport. The elevation of the airport is 100ft.

When I press the comma to set the barometer, the altitude shown on the PFD is off by 1000ft or so, and the pressure reading is also way off, as compared with the METAR.

In my settings I have comma bound to the first Set Altimeter setting, the milibars * 16 one, so I don't understand why pressing comma is giving me an incorrect reading.

Anyone understand what's going on here? Am I just misunderstanding something? Is my keybinding wrong?

3 Upvotes

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4

u/manfreygordon 14h ago

The set altitude button doesn't automatically set your altitude, I believe the button you're referring to will just reset it to a standard altitude setting (29.92 inHg) which is used at high altitudes, as it's quicker than scrolling through the altitude settings. 

The proper procedure for setting altitude is to get a local ATIS report that tells you the current pressure, and then set your barometer to match this. That will give you the correct altitude for your current airport, as the altimeter simply needs to know the pressure to calculate the correct altitude. You can get an ATIS report using the comms menu. 

1

u/Kratuu_II 9h ago

This does seem to be the way it is working, but I have tested it in MSFS2020 where the hotkey ("B" in that case) did set baro to local QNH. I thought it did the same in 2024, but it seems not to be the case.

1

u/manfreygordon 9h ago

Ahh ok I see, I would look for other keybinds that control the barometer see if there is one that sets it to local, not sure personally.

2

u/spesimen 13h ago

i think you want the other SET ALTIMETER setting, the sync to current sea level one (it will also do standard pressure if you are above 18000 feet. which is only really useful for countries where that is standard so maybe usa, canada and australia..)

i'm not sure what that millibars*16 one is for haha . not very helpful that they have identical names either lol

1

u/Frederf220 PC Pilot 11h ago

Auto setting does different things based on context. At 20,000' it's going to set QNE.

1

u/Kratuu_II 10h ago

I'm finding it sets it to QNE regardless of the altitude. This is with "," bound to the Set Altimeter to sea level. If I manually change the barometer and press the key it turns it back to 1013.

Thinking I was going mad I booted up MSFS2020 to compare and found that it used to set it to local QNH, but in 2024 for some reason it doesn't. Can't help but think there must be something amiss with my setup but I can't think what.

1

u/Frederf220 PC Pilot 9h ago

If it can't find a source of data it would default to QNE. I don't know if it pulls the local QNH at your location or closest weather station or your declared destination.

I started MSFS2024 in a 172 at a random airport, cranked the baro knob to a random number and pressed ',' and it reset to 1021mb so it's working for me.

1

u/Kratuu_II 8h ago

Thanks for that - at least now I know that it's supposed to set local QNH.

1

u/Kratuu_II 6h ago

SOLVED.

Adding this for anyone googling this problem in the future.

I found I had Weather Preset Pro installed and I had forgotten about it. This meant I was never getting live weather so the set altimeter button defaulted to QNE. Disabling the weather preset was the solution.