Hello. I’m planning on buying MSFS 2020 quite soon and I was wondering about one thing. Are the winds aloft realistic when using live weather? So for example if I cruise at FL370 will the winds match real world or at least be close enough? Currently I only used XP11 and the winds aloft there are completely unrealistic. That makes the flight planning harder, because the fuel calculations will always be off.
not sure if this answers your question directly but i hope you find it a fun story all the same.
Some time ago me and a few friends were on a group flight on VATSIM. I was at FL360 and the guy in front was at FL340. I had a tailwind of about 100kts and my friend was probably at a 40 kt tailwind.
ATC came on and asks my friend if he can climb to 360. He said he could but “i’m supposed to be at 340.” Controller responds “yeah but you got a company traffic about 30 miles behind you (thats me) who’s got a 100kts on you.”
So my friend asks me what my ground speed is and i mention my tailwind as well and he’s like “oh…okay” He asks control if he can climb to 360 for winds and i’m pretty sure i heard the controller facepalm. The controller says “yeah thats the point. climb and maintain 360.” Lo and behold my friend picked up another 60 or so kts from the same winds i was riding.
tldr: Yes, winds aloft are probably more realistic than xplane from the sound of it. You will probably get “close enough” at best.
Yes. When matching MSFS ground speed in the aircraft to that of flight tracking it’s pretty much the same.
Haha, nice story. Well I think the best way to truly find out is to buy the game and try it out myself.
1 Like
The winds aloft predictions in LiveWeather come from MeteoBlue’s NEMS 30 global model. I use Foreflight for flight planning which has predicted winds from the NOAA GFS worldwide model. (Simbrief uses the GFS model as well).
When flying in MSFS I cross check the injected winds in the sim against the predictions in Foreflight, and normally find them quite close. Two independent weather models will always have a slightly different “opinion” of what the wind direction and velocity (and temperature) will be at any particular location and altitude - but I find them to match very closely almost all the time.
1 Like
Winds aloft are accurate. When I use MSFS I do check winds aloft as would be done when flying in the real world. Often times, the forecasted winds aloft match the in-game winds within a few knots.
Windy.com is a great resource for checking winds aloft without deciphering a winds aloft chart. Click wind on the right side of the screen then move the slider up and down to the nearest altitude followed by clicking on the map to get an actual wind speed.
1 Like
This is exactly the answer I’ve been looking for. Now I’m even more likely gonna buy MSFS 2020. Thanks for the reply.
Sounds great. Thanks for the reply.
I doubt you’ll regret it. One of the best decisions I ever made was to buy this ‘game’.
2 Likes