Weather presets broken in several Discovery Flights/Landing Challenges

Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?

Yes/No (no difference)

Brief description of the issue:

Presumably due to the cloud layer adjustments in Sim Update 10, the weather presets have been broken in several existing Discovery Flights (and Landing Challenges).
For example, in Mount Everest, Mount Fuji, Lofoten Islands, Rio de Janeiro and Pennine Alps, the clouds are way too close to the ground now, and the highlighted mountains are being actively obscured. In Barcelona, Florence, Helsinki and Rome, a big part of the cities are now looking very dark because of the cloud shadows (previously they were entirely covered in sunlight).
In many others (e.g. Coimbra, Seattle, Mount Cook) the lighting is distinctly different now. While not an outstanding issue, I believe the older lighting looked better and helped showcase the areas more.
This also affects possibly several Landing Challenges (haven’t tested them all), like Mabuiag Island and Telluride.
This is still occurring with the live 1.27.21.0 build.

Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:

Mount Everest (low-altitude clouds)

Mount Fuji (low-altitude clouds, like fog)

Lofoten Islands (low-altitude clouds, like fog)

Rio de Janeiro (low-altitude clouds)

Pennine Alps (low-altitude clouds)


Barcelona (covered by cloud shadows)

Florence (covered by cloud shadows)

Helsinki (covered by cloud shadows)

Rome (covered by cloud shadows)

Mount Cook (lighting severely altered)

Mabuiag Island Landing Challenge (lighting severely altered)
Before/After

Telluride Landing Challenge (lighting severely altered)
Before/After

Provide coordinates (DevMode > Options > Display position)

N/A (See listed activities below)

Provide time & date of the observed Weather issue

N/A (See listed activities below)

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

The affected discovery flights can be accessed from the activity menu.
Low-altitude clouds: Mount Everest, Mount Fuji, Lofoten Islands, Rio de Janeiro, Pennine Alps
Cities obscured by cloud shadows: Barcelona, Florence, Helsinki, Rome
Lighting severely changed: Coimbra, Seattle, Mount Cook
Affected landing challenges: Mabuiag Island, Telluride

PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

N/A


:loudspeaker: For anyone who wants to contribute on this issue, Click on the button below to use this template:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

As an ex climber I can safely say that low cloud when at such hights is absolute realism.

As realistic as they may be, the weather presets of these activities are not compatible with the new weather system, and as such do not display the creators’ original intent. The point of Discovery Flights is to enjoy the scenery below, or as Jörg once put it, to “fly the trailers”, so I believe it is a bug when you end up getting something different than what the briefing and loading screens advertise.

1 Like

:wave: Thank you for using the Bug section, using templates provided will greatly help the team reproducing the issue and ease the process of fixing it.

Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?

no
Have you disabled/removed all your mods and addons? If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the Community Support section.

yes

Brief description of the issue:

IFR conditions, zero and I mean ZERO visibility. No ILS available. There aren’t even runway lights and to top it off a nice stiff 13 knot crosswind. How are you supposed to even line up on the runway in this challenge? I see videos from over a year ago where the weather while not perfect at least you can see the ground. I may as well just close my eyes and try to land on a bullseye. I see this was reported in the SU10 Beta program and subsequently ignored and swept under the rug.

Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:

Provide coordinates (DevMode > Options > Display position)

Provide time & date of the observed Weather issue

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

Attempt the Mabuiag Island landing challenge

PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:

SU 13

:loudspeaker: For anyone who wants to contribute on this issue, Click on the button below to use this template:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

1 Like

It’s not too bad actually. Just fly by instrument and come around dropping down. Eventually you get a break and can land by sight. Got a B on my first try. Screenshot by Lightshot

Once you come down a bit you can keep an eye on the water to your left as you bank around. At least for me, the engine died immediately after starting so I had to start it quickly… But so long as you recognize that and attend to it it’s not a real problem - you have plenty of altitude.

Yea see when i initially tried it was zero visibility all the way to the ground. The only reason i got close was i was driving the velocity vector on the synthetic vision to the threshhold. I retried maybe 5 times all zero visibility all the,way to the ground. Could barely make out the runway 20 feet off the ground. I closed the sim and came here to post a bug report. Then returned to get some screenshots for the report and the weather after restarting the sim was as you described it, clearing with maybe 1000 feet to go to the threshhold. Something is quite amiss with this one and yes the engine is dead immediately upon starting the challenge but thats another story for another thread.

Indeed, it got me in the mood for a few landing challenges. Every one of the turbo props starts with dead engines, but it’s so easily fixable it’s not worth making a report… for me at least lol

But yea it was solid most of the way to the ground if not all the way, but eventually I flew out of it heading back toward the runway after the U turn.

I can also confirm the Mabuiag Island challenge is totally broken now with heavy cloud cover and a storm. It was far different when I took the screenshots for the original bug report, and of course the in-game loading screens are still very misleading.

Looking at the challenges’s files nothing was changed apart from new localisations, which means they changed again the way weather presets are interpreted by the engine after SU10.

I guess I’ll have to go through the other activities again and update my bug report.

Just follow what I posted above. It may be “broken” but it’s also pretty easy to do. An A might be hard, but I got B on first try.

After checking out some of the activities I’ve already tested before, it seems that it is not only the weather presets that are broken now, but also the time of day. Not all are affected, but in several ones it seems that the time has shifted by one hour.

Mount Everest now takes place at dusk (was daytime).

Mauna Kea now takes place at daytime (was dawn).

Vercors & Ecrins now takes place at daytime (was sunrise).

Barcelona seems to have been shifted by two hours earlier into daytime.

Florence was shifted by three hours earlier into daytime.

Seattle was shifted by four hours earlier into daytime.

The iconic Courchevel landing challenge appears to have been shifted by approximately one hour later into daytime and it does not look correct anymore.

Similarly, the Transylvania (Halloween) landing challenge is now totally ruined.

In discovery flights it is possible to use DevMode to adjust the local time and fix them, but in landing challenges it is disabled.

The following discovery flights I’ve tested so far seem unaffected: Giza, Bora Bora, Naples, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Lofoten Islands, Melbourne, Pennine Alps, Venice and Sarajevo. Of course, the weather bugs in the first post still apply.

If a moderator or community manager happens to see this, please let me know if I should create a separate report about the time-of-day bugs.