Also if you have not done it and are interested to, could you try to use base weather presets and the free mode presets clouds mode ? Floyds Epic Clouds for Microsoft Flight Simulator | MSFS
Then hopefully youāll see the big gap between clouds the sim is able to display using those presets and the Live weather clouds that are most of the time cumulus like clouds, very few diversity and not as real as they could be. Before SU5/SU7 we had clouds that were closest to what you can find in the presets and made each flight different.
Letās quote the Head of MSFS, Jorg Neumann (Sep 29th. 2021):
Weather for us is a Big Deal. It is something we are heavily, heavily investing in. I think with Meteoblue we have a great partner. Late this year you will get this first Update (remark: SU7), weāre planning on another which will be really awesome when it happens. It will probably be in 2022, it could be as late as 2023. Weather is one of those things. Itās where planes live, itās got to be awesome. We will get it as good as you can get it. That is really the goal.
Obviously the goals have changed, as a āsafe assumption that the weather system will be among the items seeing improvements in SU13ā is all there is to expect. Thatās far from AWESOME.
Thereās silence on this mysterious further Update ever since.
To Jorg Neumann:
If there has been a change in priorities, please communicate it openly! We then sure all have better things to do than to waste our time for a lost cause.
but then what will happen to the engagement metrics? how can they drag those weather fanatics along for the ride until the end? no - better to make them Hope and Believe there is some surprise in store coming soon
I would like to know if the future of weather is to make it even more accurate or more believable.
I see it like this.
Many asks for thunderstorms for example. I want those to happen when the atmospheric conditions could cause those to happen. Then if that is what will happen in the real world weather is not super important to me if the thunderstorms actually feels like a thunderstorm that i feel the need to avoid and be aware that those can develop anywhere like a thunderstorm develops IRL when flying in those types of atmospheric conditions not instantly appear from nowhere because a METAR recently updated with a simple TS notification. Where did that TS develop and came from is my question?
And i have seen many asks for different cloudtypes but those cloudtypes needs to be formed because of specific weather conditions IRL. If they randomly add those cloudtypes they will appear in locations that not fit the climate.
Here are some pictures of a VR flight I just did from Saskatoon(CYXE) to Regina(CYQR) with various cloud layers from near ground up to 30000 ft.
Overall, VR clouds in SU12 look much better I think, compared to the SU12 2D clouds I saw earlier today in this thread.
Only things that annoy me atm. in VR, are the thick rain clouds that look grainy sometimes and the foggy/misty clouds that kill frame rates.
Sometimes itās surreal and intense to fly in VR.(like in this flight)
settings:
clouds - ultra, texture related stuff - almost all highest setting,
dlss - mostly balanced, quality if fps allows
3080TI / i9 11900K, Quest 2
after a couple of minutes seeing nothing, you start to fly in and out of these pockets.
Pretty spectacular, cause the view is always different, you get a sudden perception of enormous depth, with hugh clouds around you. Also light dynamics are impressive.
Summer fast approaching in Northern Hemisphere, and so many opportunities to make this sim more realistic by ADDING challenging! āpop-upā isolated thunderstorms are so badly needed. Even building towering cumulus are DANGEROUS to fly near or in (in real world but sorely missing in MSFS). There have been great improvements of WHERE the clouds are supposed to be on live weather in recent months, BUT the cloud types and those dangerous isolated thunderstorms are nowhere to be seen. This is likely due to the short lifespan of said storms, there must be a way to integrate these?
Asobo could use a live lightning map to know where thunderstorms should be and have the sim ābuildā the Thunderstorms on the flyā¦ Real Time Lightning Map :: LightningMaps.org. When there are āattemptsā of thunderstorms within the sim in its current state, its laughable because cloud heights are nothing like they should be; thunderstorms build from TOWERING cumulus clouds, and we get in sim at best 3,000 height cumulus puffs that morph and melt away like getting cotton candy wet.
As said throughout this thread, at sim launch we had towering cumulus clouds, a true overcast, and even thinner higher clouds that were opaque not just little puffs of white here and there like we have now post SU5-ish.
I would atleast want to know what their plans are with the weather in the future. I remember we as community asked to get the pre su7 weather model back as an optional feature in one of the q&a after su7 were released because we were unhappy with the changes in su7 and they said that they didnāt see the point to do that and then ignored us that actually like the weather model they released together with the sim at release 2020. Nobody said it were perfect but iām 100% sure nobody asked them to completely change weather model. Iām pretty sure it would have been much easier to implement weather tools that matches the MB-model than try make a METAR blend in well with the MB-model. Or why didnāt they add the METAR as an optional feature? Now we that liked the weather at release begs for an option, is that really fair? Maybe for those who likes the METAR blending we have now sees no point have the pre su7 model as an option. But iām sure those is not all of the users that sees no point with that. Because iām one of those users that sees the point having pre su7 model as an optional feature.
The most important part or aviation needs its own update. At least can we have 100% density clouds like pre su7?! Every cumulus cloud in real weather is a mostly transparent blob. Please please work on randomness and weather injection. The best part of the early days in sim was the true feeling youd never know what youd see!
Did some recreational flying towards the foothills of the bavarian alps just now, and Live weather was accurate insofar as there were indeed rain showers in the vicinity. However, irl they didnāt result from whispy fair weather cumulus ( or are they? Look more like SC I would say) for certain:
Perfect example of clouds that are too small to produce anything but very light rain and certainly not the curtain rain burst below.
I have a question that maybe someone much smarter than me can answer, Is there a limitation within the weather system that means thunderstorms can only be programmed around the location youāre flying through?
Even before SU5 storms were only ever nearby, unlike in real life where you can see lightning in the cloud tops over 300 miles away.
I wonder if this post I put in the Wishlist area may be a way to ātemporarilyā fix the isolated thunderstorm/supercell situation? This would still require some upfront data entry or someone to design a program that could generate said xml files even if Asobo were to somehow implement this? Ability to add Supercell and Isolated Thunderstorms alongside Live Weather?
55,000 cloud top supercell thunderstorms tonight in Texas/Oklahoma USA. And this is what live weather outputs? Probably cannot make it out but Iām at 10,000 feet and those clouds ahead are supposed to be the area of this storm. Sorry but this is lameā¦
This is speculation, but I strongly suspect weather (and perhaps seasons) may have something to do with one of the yearās development surprises. I would personally be surprised if there wasnāt something bigger planned for weather this year and it was only confined to very marginal changes.
If weather improvements end up being one of the surprises, though, this thread is a good example of how they can backfire and actually seed resentment in the community given the perception of silence on the issue.
If there truly isnāt anything bigger planned for weather in 2023, MS should consider farming this out to a second party. Compare the progress WT has made with the AAUs and itās just night and day compared to stuff like weather that has stagnated or gone backwards over time in the big picture.
I wanted to add that below is a preset supercell I threw in, although it looks terrible (out of place and kind of like a stalk of broccoli or a bad wart coming out of the ground) this is more of the buildup and height of clouds I would expect from a supercell. i.e. seeing this from appx 70 NM away and depending on visibility furtherā¦ but visibility in MSFS is a whole other category that I wonāt go into here - it needs BIG improvements as well.
Would love to see that. The only way itās going to be possible and meaningful is if they integrate real-world radar (including precipitation tops and hydrometeor types) on a much-faster update cycle to eliminate as much lag as possible. Iād shoot for a goal of no more than 10 minutes lag, which would align closely to real-world data lag and be useable with operational aviation weather products in many regards.
Storm direction is generally indicated by radar, so animate it in the direction itās heading using that. Then if the next sweep shows diminishing or intensification, animate that as well. Youāve got 10 minutes to play with.
Render the anvil (and overall cloud) height by using the tropopause height, which doesnāt change a ton over short distances. Use the wind at that height to render downwind anvil direction. Use areas of extreme dBz to create the overshooting top, etc.
Oh my, watching this video made me happy but also very sadā¦ I remember the excellent release weather system. Such a shame to lose a huge part of our beloved sim, and not sure we will ever see such great clouds again in MSFS. There seems to be no interest at all by Asobo to ever change them back. Thanks for sharing, and glad you had so much āpast evidenceā to be able to present to us!
thanks for reminding me - I donāt look at my old videos(alpha) and screenshots from release anymore - have gone through some flights now (again about 300 hours) - but the weather is always the āsameā yes more or less clouds somewhere - onroute clouds mostly at the same height (every time) - now and then dense clouds (but not continuous like in the video consisting of one cloud area and consistent, but cumulus clouds mixed together - as always since SU7(9) and sporadic ātinyā storms (supposed to be storms - I think : -) and rather no lightning etc. etc.) !
I hope that the āamazing and unbelievableā weather update mentioned by Joerg (in one of the Q&A) will still come !!!
