Again thunderstorms everywhere, even with a nice weather…
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For me they have never been fixed, even prior SU5 I quite often got lightning in conditions that were not appropriate and also didn’t match real weather.
I sometimes think that the calculation of the thunderstorm probability is based on future or past weather while cloud coverage is based on current weather and thus you end up with this discrepancy between clouds and lightning.
Quite annoying, I hope it’s on their list to fix.
I already said it earlier, I’d rather have them thunderstorms/lightning disabled entirely until they get it properly done than living with the current state.
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It was fixed for a short time, but re-introduced a short time later, but well before SU5. I also get strong downpours under nearly every little low puffy cumulus cloud.
I noticed this starting this week. It’s in every region in the world.
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Yes, it’s still a thing.
Never went away. So it can’t have come back.
We had lots of rain over the weekend. I was so excited, did lots of flights and no lighting, and rain was pretty much exactly as it was where I live, where I was flying.
Then I decided to do some development work around my airport. Opened Dev mode, did a little work (noticed a couple of lightning flashes). Finished, reloaded the airport, and restarted the sim. Got back in. This was about an hour after my previous flight. Weather hadn’t changed outside (raining, low clouds, no thunderstorms anywhere). This time, FS was back to all thunderstorms and lightning again.
I’d love to know how they determine when to show lightning and when not too. And I’d like the option to turn lightning and thunder off. In the past, I’ve gotten lightning on lightly cloudy days. I haven’t noticed that since SU5, but, since I don’t know why they show lightning, I can’t say whether it’s working or not, or was I just lucky not to get so much lightning since SU5 until last night.
Same issue occurs in many instances even when using REX Weather Force. As well I will see big thunderheads that don’t produce lightning at all. Same for me, has been like this before SU5.
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I remember the dev’s stating that they’d addressed the issue a few SU’s back, but it seemed like the next one brought it right back.
To be fair late august to late September is storm season especially down south because of the late summer southern heatwave and my state had an unusual warm period were we had upper 80’s/ 90’s alot and little storms have actually formed out of nowhere if you used the phone app called (my lightning tracker)
They said they did, but I found blue sky lightning immediately after the fix supposedly went in. They asked for additional reports about it, and then that’s the last we heard about it. It’s been a problem ever since.
Folks thought the bug went away, but really it was just the weather changing.
They probably also dialed down the overall prevalence of the lightning, but they didn’t fix the root cause of the issue, which is that the lightning parameter triggers when there isn’t appropriate weather drawn in the simulator or actual real world storm activity at that location.
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I live in Florida, and do a lot of flying here. Near constant lightning is realistic. For here. But certainly not everywhere.
Kev
Not whining. Just asking for the option to turn it off, or at least an explanation of how it’s determined whether lightning and thunder happen. We don’t get many thunderstorms here in the northeast, and it’s pretty distracting having lightning all over the place just because there’s some clouds.
@KevyKevTPA actually, that’s a good point. It’s as if they polled what storms are like in Florida, and applied that to the whole country.
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Keyword, formed… Lightning can start being seen rather early in these types of rapidly building thunderstorms before they get real big. Some small thunderstorms can produce lightning before the tops reach 12,000 feet but you’re still going to notice a built up cloud system not just scattered cumulus or lightning coming out of practically clear air. Lightning can come out of nimbostratus and altostratus though. Perhaps Asobo will refine how the sim might handle rendering of building storms or (BLDUP). Perhaps that is what is happening in the sim where metar is reporting developing storms and where thunderhead (THD) are non metar but instead TAF? Graphical forecasting supersedes area forecasting now which would be awesome to be able to see reflected in the sim in real time.
Surely indeed if in fact there is a build up of a thunderstorm/s. Does lightning come out of broken or scattered cumulus clouds there in Florida before they become cumulonimbus? What do you mean by constant lightning?
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I should let @KevyKevTPA answer, but, every time I’m in Florida, they have quickly passing thunderstorms nearly every day, and often multiple times a day. Out of nowhere. One minute it’s sunny, then a storm forms above and passes, then 15 minutes later it’s gone.
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Alright, think I’m on the same page now. Yeah it can happen the same over here in Texas too, gulf coast region especially. In many cases they can build literally right over major airports here such as KIAH where humidity is extreme and convection is increased through the intensified heat from all the concrete of the airport. 
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Oh, yeah. I have a friend west of Dallas, and she has thunderstorms ALL the time. Surprisingly few tornado events this year, though.
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Was gonna say DFW too but I ain’t been there in ages.
Cheers!
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That is the very heart of the problem here.
As far as we can tell from previous discussions, the sim isn’t using METARs or TAFs for lightning or any clouds it draws. That’s coming entirely from Meteoblue’s numerical forecast model. And it seems that when the forecast model thinks the conditions support the development of possible thunderstorms, the lightning switch gets turned on in the simulator (regardless if there actually are storms present IRL or in the forecast model). Meanwhile, the clouds are coming from a completely different part of the numerical forecast model that probably isn’t talking to the lightning part of the model at all. So the sim draws whatever cloud layers it thinks are appropriate, and if the lightning switch is turned on, those clouds start shooting bolts.
Additional logic needs to be added to the sim to either cull the lightning to areas that have cumulonimbus of X thousands of feet tall, and/or when the lightning switch is turned on, the sim needs to generate some corresponding cumulonimbus of sufficient height. Because it seems that lightning is coming out of the wrong cloud types, and the afternoon pop-up Cbs that frequent places like Florida are just missing entirely.
A couple friendly suggestions for the next time you post here:
- Stop making really bad comparisons. We’re not paying for real flight training and time in an aircraft. We’re paying for a video game with advertised features that don’t work. It would be like if I bought an airplane operating handbook listed in new condition, but some of the pages were missing. Then when I went back to complain, the seller told me I should be thankful because the actual plane costs way more than that handbook.
- Stop dismissing other people just because the issue isn’t personally important to you. IRL if you can hear thunder, the majority of pilots are grounded. There’s dangerous wind shear, severe turbulence, or IMC in the immediate area. So you can see how this issue would screw up a vast amount of flights for anyone trying to use this sim with any semblance of realism, not to mention how it also ruins the fun when you just want to go for a flight and have to deal with wacky, unrealistic weather.
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That’s right, Meteoblue! Thanks for the info, that is how it seems to be happening. Plus one for the refined logic in how it’s currently being done.