Abrupt change in weather/clouds during flight

Sim Update 15 Beta Weather & Live Weather
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1

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Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?

No

Have you disabled/removed all your mods and addons?

Yes

Brief description of the issue:

Weather changes abruptly during flight. Clouds disappear and a new set of clouds load in. Doesn’t happen all the time but breaks immersion when it does.

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

Provide coordinates (DevMode > Options > Display position)

Anywhere

Provide time & date of the observed Weather issue

22.3.24 9pm

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

Fly with live weather

PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

13600k 32gb ram 4070

Are you using DX11 or DX12?

dx12

Are you using DLSS?

no

: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:

2

Was about to make the same post now, seems like the abrupt wind and weather changes are back

2 Likes
3

Im not at the sim atm, these changes of weather does they are fluently or do they give stutters?
Also do they are on all sort of flightlevels or are they at the same level of altitude,
Also with aircraft type or part of the world.
This i would like to know to see if i can reproduce.
Regards

Sebastiaan

4

The change is sudden. It has happened 3 times to me using live weather mainly over the uk. The last flight it happened to me on was EGSS - EGPH using the fbw a320. The clouds all dissappear and a new set loads in. This happened about 40Nm from EGPH during descent.

5

I will try if i get similair experience with these later today when i get back at my pc
and report back here.

1 Like
6

Hi @andyjb1037219,
Did you notice this at any particular altitude? I’ll try to repro, but being live weather, this may be tricky if it is specific to a particular type of weather & that weather is no longer “live”, as it were…

7

Im running to atm but stars are visible changing time of day does not change clouds position
On the route to EGPH im somewhere between and past TLA and EGMQ
On south east asia server

8

I cannot reproduce the situation as you described it but
the fun part started when i tried to see the local weather when i drove home and set it to time and date at live weather and starten from EHAM, the weather was not showing as i saw live this afternoon, flying around a bit bored, opened up an old site i used few years ago ( suddenly popped in my thought) to see if winds were blowing correctly which it did as i read from the site i visit then i looked back at the sim while reaching an altitude of around 5000ft agl and clouds where suddenly everywhere.
Impossible to tthink it had to do with the site i opend, but what can be possible that the weather inject
between certain level of altitute like is more the case to what i think. Like it suddenly awakes and start to inject and comes to be alive.
This is my best i can explain of what i experienced and im not certain if this could be possible at all
but nontheless weird imo.

And so i vote and contribute to your find

Sebastiaan

9

I did not fly the EGSS - EGPH route, but did spend 1.5 hrs flying around the Shetland Islands using Live weather. (See pics of the flight here)

Only one station was reporting:
Sumburgh Live METAR Data

There was a wide variety of low-level clouds & rain squalls (I flew below 4,000 ft), but none disappeared or suddenly appeared. But maybe I needed to have gained some altitude, as per Sebastiaan’s comment:

Not a bad hypothesis, Sebastiaan! :slightly_smiling_face:

10

Thanks @SmotheryVase665

I took a look at your flight report with the pictures your link is refering to
And it seems to me when you started on the Out Skerries that you were in the midst of a circular center without clouds other than the edge of circle and the clouds came in later on enroute.

My question to you is; did it came up all of a sudden or did it gently came in.

My thinking than would be 2 ways from there either something on the server side maybe blocking
In startup of flight with injection or elsewise maybe it is somewhat under construction for testing in beta for injection of weather.

Anyone who knows please chime in

11

I dont do the beta, but i had it happen to me just once yesterday as well.

12

Gently changed over time. There were no sudden transitions.

13

Had same while on cruise not far from LHBP. The wether changed completely and all of a sudden i was 1000 ft above my set altitude, and the wind went 90 degrees to the other side.

14

Perhaps the sim time is a bit off and it corrects to changing metar?
I live in Eindhoven and had sun and some clouds here. 5km further is the airport and when i loaded it in the sim this afternoon it was stormy/rain weatherwise.

15

Wondering now if changing the sim rate causes this. Earlier in my flight a had upped the sim rate during cruise.

16

I don’t know how often the sim updates its live weather from Meteoblue, so if there is much of a delay, that could explain differences between what you see out the window & what you see in the sim.

I’ve loaded up MSFS while typing this, and the weather at my local airport in MSFS is pretty well the same as what I’m seeing out the window right now - 3/8 cumulus clouds. An hour ago there was 8/8 stratus cloud cover, so Meteoblue has updated at least once in the last hour. Of the 18 airports listed in the MSFS METAR window, three have data. I think this is correct, as the 3 are regional airports (two with commercial air service), the other 15 private or very small airfields that I doubt have weather stations at all.

So, if the sim is checking your position during flight & reading the data from the closest populated METAR station, and if that station is a long way from the previously read station, then that also might explain the sudden transitions, and might explain, in some situations, a discrepancy between actual weather & sim weather.

For example, the weather when you take off is (making this up just to illustrate): “1/8 clouds, wind SE at 5 knots”. The next populated METAR station that is on your flight route - maybe 100 NM away or more, is “7/8 clouds, rain, wind W at 35 knots at altitude 10,000 ft”. You just happen to be flying at 10,000 ft, so when the sim transitions, it flips from one to the other, causing the abrupt change.

This is all pure guesswork. What I also don’t know is if there is any algorithm that smooths transitions from one METAR reading to another, or if it is instantaneous. I suppose, if the latter, and the METAR at a station was not updated frequently, then even if you were parked at a gate, that could also cause an abrupt visual change if the two readings were significantly different.

@andyjb1037219: No idea about sim rate. It might apply if weather was not updated if the sim-rate was >1 & then when you went back to 1 the sim read the weather from the closest METAR station - that could be significantly different if you had travelled a long distance.

17

Well, fortunally is was looking at a live youtube EHAM program and when i flew to there it was more or less spot on. But perhaps it has to do that EHEH (eindhoven airport) is a military base as well and only in MSFS2020 as a thirt party airport because of that? But i had sun, clouds and storm weather popping in an out on this flight, all hard changes instead of overlaps.
As a sim i think it has the best weather visuals of all sims, but there is a lot to learn on this and how to get the weather flow in, front i guess

18

I was flying with live weather earlier, somewhere in Columbia, and while I didn’t see any massive changes (like fog or clouds appearing out of nowhere) like it used to happen in older builds, I did see several instances of existing clouds abruptly changing shape, in a similar manner to the terrain morphing. Haven’t seen this before, so I’d consider it a regression.

19

The problem is we really don’t know how live weather is supposed to transition. So, what is being seen could be a bug, or could be “by design”. If the former, we really need to get screenshots or videos to document what is being seen. If the latter, then you might want to vote for this Wishlist Item:

Note the comment about “rapid transitions”, which suggests that this issue has been around since at least May 2023.

20

I do quite a few long haul flights, and on every flight there is at least one, sometimes 2 sudden changes - mostly it’s an instant change in barometric pressure, so the plane is jolted, suddenly 500 or 1000 feet different from selected altitude.