No, you’re not in the minority - it is absolutely fun. I completely agree and I nerd out over it both in the sim and real life.
But my point was that it’s not just for fun, it’s actually meaningful in the real world. It’s all there for a reason. So when it’s wrong, or bugged, or casually hidden, or poorly implemented, or poorly explained, or missing altogether, it’s dangerous.
Fortunately, that doesn’t have any lasting consequences in the sim, but man it’s sure frustrating.
Absolutely, and I completely agree.
I’d glossed over that aspect and focused more on the how this is broken/lost in Career Mode and it’s unnecessary for it to be this way, even if viewed purely from an entertainment standpoint.
All of that safety knowledge gained over all these decades of flying can, and should, be incorporated here and it won’t take away anything, but will only add to it.
that is irrelevant in the case I mentioned…
for the case detailed, the mission screen said it was VFR for landing, there was no way of knowing that this was not the case.
however, when I go there, there was zero visibility in the sim… so the sim had calculated (less than) IFR conditions for that airport… so why was that not reported?
how can you plan, if you have no idea what weather is going to be?
you cannot land a plane in sub-IFR conditions when it doesn’t have ILS, so you would not take off… also if you got there the airport would be closed, you’d be redirected.
what I said was… in reality, other websites using real data showed that airport would indeed be under IFR conditions… in other words, they reflected the conditions that the sim actually had when flying here.
and we see it all the time…
today, I flew a flight from France to Southampton, this time , the mission screen clearly stated it was LIFR takeoff, LIFR landing…
however, given Southampton has ILS, I could fly it…
when I got there… VFR conditions, no low clouds at all, you could see for miles.
this is the crux of the problem , it doesn’t matter if its using real live metar data with interpolation or forecasting models.
it should be using the same weather model/data for flight planning as it does when actually flying the flight.
currently, its completely random what weather you will get when you get to the airport.
so you waste time on mission because you cannot land.
it’d not be so bad, if it created lots of missions at larger airports that have ILS, but it doesn’t, the vast majority are into tiny airports.
Many of the small airports don’t have METAR stations, so I wonder if it’s just showing the data from the nearest METAR station, which might not match the actual conditions at the small airport?
With career mode, I tend to look at a weather site like Ventusky before even thinking of flying career flights, as I’m currently flying in the Alps and low cloud can ruin your day!
Just running a checklist: Did you move the time slider to the mission time? Did you have the map layers displaying the winds in combination with that? That’s usually the best indicator of what the sim thinks it’s going to give you. If you’re using third-party resources to compare, you also need to check them at the scheduled mission time (within the past 24 hours) - not necessarily to current weather.
I’ve noticed that the resolution of the winds and weather in some parts of the world is pretty coarse, so I assume without METAR augmentation, there’s a lot of bleed and interpolation happening. I imagine that’s particularly true near coastlines, where the change in surface friction and subsequent reduction in wind (as happens in real life) may not be accurately represented. You may be getting the winds from the open ocean, for example.
I think that’s often the case in the Miyake cargo mission we all have to do. The surface wind map in the sim often shows the strong crosswinds flowing across the airport unabated, when there’s actually a volcano on the island that should theoretically abate or re-direct them on the leeward side (where the airport is), to an extent. But since there’s currently no active aviation weather observing station there, you’re getting the modeled forecast winds, which again, have a spatiotemporal resolution that isn’t well-known to the end user.
Same goes for clouds/visibility. You’re right - I don’t trust the popup categorical conditions, either, even if the time slider is set correctly. But they do seem to be a bit more accurate when it is, especially if there is a weather station at the airport in question.
If the aircraft has SV (synthetic vision) you can land it anywhere. I launch to any destination regardless of weather: with no instrument approach and the worst weather - I just use SV and VNAV.
*For which kudos the PC-12’s VNAV, it works really well even recalculates path very well if I need to do a last-minute vector.
In mountainous terrain, you just need to fly through the valleys.
Again, would be great if Career Mode used public-use, charted airports for the appropriate types of missions.
yup, had the red dot…
in fact you don’t even get the cloud/visibility status on the mission screen until you get the red dot (you get UNKN).
as you say, for wind, I tend to use the wind layer…(with time slider set correctly) but doesn’t help visibility.
look, I know its new, and all software has bugs (Im a dev, so very aware of it ;))
so I’m just reporting what Ive seen, hopefully to help others and also reporting to let devs know,
ofc, I can work around sometimes, but the nice thing about career mode is, you can pop in, plan quickly, and spend time flying … so this is an area I think they need to fix and streamline.
No, it’s all good - that’s solid reporting IMO. I’m still trying to drill down these kinds of outliers in order to get a better understanding, especially in the absence of any official explanations. In many cases, the system does seem to work (albeit still not enough info), but there’s a lot of cases where it doesn’t and I’m still in troubleshooting mode in those instances.
For me it’s the same, I especially made sure to put the time slider to reflect mission time and also got the red dot and green VFR light. The winds I did not check that time, because that wind layer still has its bugs and after checking one mission for runway length, I have to go all the way back to main screen to reenable the layer (and even then it often does not change when moving the time slider).
The METAR history also gave me VFR conditions for my expected arrival time, but as I already said, that was for a completely different altitude. That the conditions in the mountains can still be different from nearby airports outside the mountains is totally clear, but in my case it seems it was somewhat accurate if accounted for the difference in altitude. Maybe it’s really as @PCMRTumnus says and the shown weather conditions in the mission screen for airports without METAR are just taken from nearby airports (and also don’t account for the different altitude…).
Absolutely some bugs with those layers, especially after selecting a mission and going back to the map. That should be it’s own bug report.
And yeah, having to do that in the first place is just poor UI.
not in the case I highlighted…
I was landing in EBSL, closest airport with METAR is EHBK,
only 71ft different in height… (304ft vs 375ft) , 7nm distance…
in bit of Europe that is as flat as its Stroopwafels 
also as pointed out, today Southampton (EGHI) was shown as LIFR, when in fact it was VFR. and… EGHI has metar data.
its just wrong… plain and simple.
frankly, without looking at the code, its impossible to know why… it could just be the UI code is bugged, looking up the wrong airport. no ones knows (except devs)
you don’t need to mess about too much with the mission screen to see oddities,
like it not being an airport missing the visibility info for an airport, but go to another mission and its there (even in the same mission time window)
Does PC-24 in Cargo Medium missions work?
It already exists: Advanced map layers are unavailable after clicking on the mission then returning to the map screen
Yes. But you have to be careful about runway lengths. It needs about 1100m for both takeoff and landing, depending on conditions.
just found another interesting bug…
if there are two missions departing from the same airport, its pretty random which icon will show.
theres currently a light cargo and vip mission out of Reims (?),
I only notice because, I saw a vip mission there, then later came back, there was nothing… zoomed in saw the vip mission. next time, I came in was showing a light cargo there!
odd ,I thought, so click on airport and did show missions and indeed 2 missions.
(whilst only 1 icon showing)
so seems the map icon issues is worst than I thought.
it could be there are many more missions, but we are just not seeing them - as they are ‘hidden’ behind an icon for a different mission type.
I had a similar thing, but with two medium cargo missions. After checking the mission and going back, suddenly there was another mission at that airport and not the one I checked. After checking that one, I got the first back and the second disappeared.
You can see all the Missions from an Airport via the List on the Top left, regardless if there is an Icon for on the Map or not
I know that … but if you have lots of specialisations etc, the mission list is too long to be useful. so, you’d only be able to see the other mission if you zoomed in.
but why would you zoom in to the airport, unless you know its there?..
I don’t have time to zoom into every cargo (etc) mission, just in case there might be VIP one hidden 
its a bug, there is an ‘multiple mission’ icon we see sometimes (its diamond with little diamonds in it) , but it seems thats not always appearing.
ofc, I hope they implement a mission type filter at some point, then this likely would not be an issue then.
(as, I suspect the mission icons are just drawing over one another, hence why its random which one you see)
Yes. This is yet another shortcoming of the missions ui. A filter would still work wonders.
