I’m doubtful Meteoblue data is of poor quality such that haze or fog is under-represented in sim. I suspect it has more to do with Asobo’s implementation and interpolation of weather. Happy to be corrected however.
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Meteoblue visibilty seems to go up to 20 km only but I found that even with less than 20 km it is completely clear in the sim. So I suspect they only look at the METAR and everything 9999 is considered unlimited visibility.
It is probably not so easy to simulate visibility accurately, the visibilty from METAR or Meteoblue is ground visibility of course. How visibility is changing with altitude depends on the depth of the layer and slant versus oblique visibility.
In any case, the current implementation doesn’t not represent the real world.
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Yeah it’s very weird we see a regression here, still not getting what was promised in the 2020 pre-release feature videos, as well as removing the aerosol / humidity slider, and then just release 2024… Controllable visibility sliders was available in flight sims since 20 years, but not in MSFS 2020 and 2024… Odd indeed
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The meteoblue visibility parameter is a misnomer and is probably measuring something else. There is also a mistake in their legend (which seems to show units in meters) vs the map (which shows units in ft). Compare the visibility maps vs the METAR maps w/ visibility reports and you will see severe discrepancies between the two (Eg: in south asia and the middle east).
What might be better to approximate visibility are other variables where METAR is missing. Things like Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD), CAQI, Particulate Matter (PM2.5 and PM10), and desert dust. Weather Variables | Technical Documentation
Keep in mind, METAR reports of visibility are approximate and have a high variability over time and in different directions. IMO, the idea would be to depict this in a rough sense. For example 5 KM visibility approximately in the sim : a tolerance of 1 KM or 2 KM on either side (especially if it is higher than reported by 2KM) is fine.
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