A week into this and not even a hint of a peep from Hi Fi Technologies!

Discussion Hub General Discussion
1

I wonder and worry if Metoblue has a monopoly on the weather in MSFS.

For sure we would have heard something about an Active Sky for MSFS by now. However they did release an update for FSX and XP yesterday.

If I’m not mistaken (I don’t do the Facebook/Twitter thing) June 25 2019 is the only time MSFS has been even mentioned by Hi-Fi (quoting from https://forums.hifisimtech.com/threads/summer-2019-development-news.10783/):

In summary, we’re very busy working hard on lots of different things, and we are excited to finally get to show off some of this in the coming months!

This is also probably a good time to talk about the newly announced MSFS trailer video and “Insider” website information!

So here we go:

-We know nearly nothing about this product and what integration and extensibility capability it will or will not have. Nor do we know when it will be released. It could be a year, it could be more.

-If a comprehensive SDK will be available, we don’t know when, and we don’t know if it will be viable to develop advanced weather engine technology with it.

-We are hopeful that we will be able to bring our passion, experience and capability in realistic weather simulation to this new simulator in any and all ways possible.

-In the mean time we plan to continue on our mission, making our products better and giving our users what they ask for, on all platforms they demand.​

There you have it. We’d like to once again thank all our customers and supporters for making everything we do possible. Thanks for your patience as we continue working hard on our ever-expanding vision of high-fidelity weather simulation. Stay tuned for more updates here in our forums, on our website, and on our Facebook page!

1 Like
2

We’ve posted on this on AVSIM. Summary: there is no wx interfacing capability at his time that we are aware of. We are locked out for now. We have foundation work prepared for this platform but for now it sits on a shelf while we focus on other platforms and solutions that permit our participation. We really hope we can join the MSFS party (again) one day.

Damian @ HiFi

16 Likes
3

Damian and MSFS team and Community,

Thank you Damian, for all you and your company has done through the many years, and thank you for providing this information.

I have read this summary and I’m not totally shocked that a top 3 (in my view) developer (Hi-Fi Technologies), or to be more precise THE WEATHER in a brand new flight sim took a back seat, put in the trunk, well even more accurate, left by the roadside!

No wonder the weather does not work in MSFS.

But this is on a new level. The greatest (looking) platform ever, and the weather is “unimportant”. YES the puffy cumulus look nice, the sunrises and sunsets look nice, but its all just a painting - THERE IS NO SUBSTANCE.

For this kind of information to just get shuffled aside by the community is…well there are words, and they are severe, but I will refrain. Should there not have been a greater UPROAR about this, that exceeded the uproar when the absence of VR was announced?

One has to ask if this MSFS community cares about weather realism - yes I do call this into question…a true “cardinal sin” in flight simulation. Without weather realism there is no aviation or flight, just a fake infant toy, beautiful as it is.

How will this industry survive if this is the “new” standard?!!!

More proof this is just a screen shot apparatus, maybe trying to be a flight simulator, but failing miserably.

The word SIMULATOR can be removed until the weather becomes more important than screenshots…will it ever?, is the zillion dollar question.

7 Likes
4

Thanks for the words. I am sure that MSFS wx issues will eventually be resolved. But we also hope that they open things up to allow third party development and further extension of weather so we (and others) can focus on the experience and features that matter to a decent percentage of us, that the majority mainstream user (and perhaps the core sim development vision) doesn’t care about. There’s no question they have done a fantastic job overall especially with the visual aspects, but visuals are really only a limited segment of the more-comprehensive aviation weather experience that we have been working so hard on the past 2 decades. So hopefully one day we can bring out AS for MSFS. Just imagine the possibilities!

If others feel the same way, perhaps more requests from the community will help get weather SDK extensibility more priority, or at least we might be able to get an idea of if/when this might come from the developers? BTW, it’s not just us (and other wx add-on developers) who could use this. Weather integration is important to nearly all genres of add-ons including Aircraft, EFBs, flight planners, ATC utilities and networks, and much, much more.

11 Likes
5

I truly believe they shot themselves in the foot with the broken weather issues and Xbox game appearance to everything.

This just must be a toy game for the new Xbox when released and simulation was thrown out the window.

Yet this game cost 120 US dollars.

I’m sad :pensive:

4 Likes
6

@LateAura49 Thank you for sharing the news, even if it’s not good. This is so extremely disappointing. I guess I have a new thing to rant about though. :pensive: :grin:

I can only imagine what you guys would do with the sim. A lot of crazy ideas came to me during the alpha testing period. I wonder what’s actually plausible.

1 Like
7

Is it so? I’m pretty sure I’ve spent five dollars last time I checked.
And back to the topic. Even though the weather is not working properly at the moment some places. It still works way better by getting new people into playing flight sims (yea its a game and its ok), then explaining why you need to buy extra “weather add-on” for $70 for some other sims. I would rather see this sim shine out of the box one day then spent another $200 on top of the game to make it work and look properly.

4 Likes
8

You don’t need a wx add-on, you never have. And you never will. But there are some who want this, believe it or not. It wasn’t really much different 16 years ago with FS2004 and Ninian Wang’s wonderful weather technology which was really the first volumetric cloud visualization system in a desktop flight simulator and very much improved experience across the board. It was great, but didn’t do everything and left weather enthusiasts wanting more. This breakthrough technology, coupled with extensibility allowed us to give the community what they had been asking for, at least in part. Other developers had their own visions and I think everyone can agree it was worth the effort.

4 Likes
9

Judging by the SDK, the ability to interface 3rd party tools with the weather is coming. No clue when, but it’s been planned for.

10

I understand you mean well.

When you say, its been planned for, I say the product has already been PAID for. The planning stage occurs BEFORE a product is released, planning actually should occur even before the first lines of code are drafted…there should have been years of planning years ago.

Excuses :no_entry_sign:

4 Likes
11

@LateAura49 Wow! Just wow. I am shocked you guys were not one of the first developers called when they got this new sim going.

2 Likes
12

Thank you mate

1 Like
13

Will everyone stop being whining babies about the weather. Other than the wind, everything else weather wise seems to be working. Want to know whose weather does not work with out an add on, Xplane. There are plenty of preset weather options in the sim and you can do your own custom weather, if they could just turn off the wonky gusting wind.

3 Likes
14

Just remind me again why I would need to spend $50 on a weather addon, like I did for X-Plane, for this sim? I’ve just flown from France to the UK through some stunning clouds and weather, and just landed in a healthy crosswind in the rain. The weather depicted in the sim, right now, is spot on to the real world weather. I flew into KSFO the other day with a thunderstorm raging and the rain hammering down, and it was incredible. I’ve never experienced anything like that in any sim, ever.

I’m not knocking ASXP as it did a good job of trying to polish a turd that is the X-Plane weather system and its comedy curtains pulled back as you fly through the clouds, and the weather there, weather gone, weather updated, weather back routine. Or are you lot just having tantrums because right now the winds in the USA are borked? Or is it that you’re just stuck in this sad old flight sim culture of ‘if it’s default, got to buy an addon’?

13 Likes
16

we hope so too!

17

I hope weather problems is going to be fixed, so we dont need another third party developer for that.

6 Likes
18

Europe weather is working fine and accurate but over the US and rest of the world winds are 225/3 ground to winds aloft. How did you get winds to work at KSFO?

19

Its beyond me that people want a weather addon for this sim. Just wow…

3 Likes
20

The winds and weather works fine in Europe and South Korea.

21

The SDK doesn’t support development of weather addons? Well that’s another promise Microsoft broke regarding developing the sim for serious simmers first.

2 Likes