Another day, another flight ruined by this bug….
2 go arounds and the bug still persists on every approach.
at 800..600 AGL headwinds of 6-5 knts,just fine…. then suddenly, under 400 AGL winds pick up to 40 KNOTS!! crosswind…
This is getting out of hand… its every flight now..
I will keep posting here until this thing is addressed.
Hi everyone,
I’d like to post an important update and also apologize if, in some of my previous replies, I sounded frustrated or harsh. At the time, I genuinely believed this was a core sim bug, and I appreciate everyone’s patience.
After extensive troubleshooting, I believe I’ve identified a system-level issue on my PC that was very likely responsible for the extreme wind behavior I was experiencing near the ground.
Sudden wind direction changes (sometimes close to 180°) and large increases in wind speed below ~500 AGL
These were not gusts and would remain until touchdown
This was not related to turbulence settings
Occurred at multiple airports worldwide
Happened with both default and 3rd-party sceneries
Reproduced consistently in every flight using Live Weather
My Windows Time service had been broken for years and was not properly synchronizing with internet time (NTP).
MSFS relies on correct system time to:
validate Live Weather requests
fetch and interpolate METAR data correctly (via Meteoblue)
Because my OS time was out of sync, the sim was very likely misinterpreting or falling back on weather data, which only became obvious during the most sensitive phase of flight (final / short final).
Re-enabled and repaired the Windows Time service
Forced a proper NTP resync using w32tm
Flushed the DNS cache
Verified that time.windows.com and METAR-related endpoints were resolving correctly
Disabling IPv6 completely and kept only IPv4 enabled
Live Weather data in Dev Mode matched real-world METAR perfectly
Weather Debug wind vectors became stable and coherent
Volanta, Navigraph Charts, and Beyond ATC all reported identical METAR data
Most importantly: the extreme and unrealistic wind behavior completely disappeared
I’ve already performed multiple ground tests, and everything is now behaving as expected. I’ll continue validating this during flights, but so far the issue appears fully resolved, for now.
Screenshot shows the weather debug now showing correct live METAR info and the atmospheric visualizer showing smooth, stable wind lines, updating normally and on the right direction acording to metar. (not the case before the troubleshoot)
While in my case the most visible symptom was extreme wind direction and speed changes close to the ground, it’s very possible that OS/Windows time sync, DNS, or IPv6-related issues could manifest as other Live Weather problems, not just wind, such as:
incorrect or outdated METAR data
sudden or illogical weather transitions
mismatches between in-sim weather and external tools
inconsistent Live Weather behavior between similar flights
Because Live Weather depends heavily on time-stamped data and server validation, any system-level desynchronization can cause subtle but very hard-to-diagnose issues.
This is not obvious at all, and the sim provides no warning when OS time sync or network resolution is broken.
If anyone is experiencing similar “impossible” Live Weather behavior, I strongly recommend checking:
Windows Time service status
NTP synchronization
DNS resolution
IPv6 vs IPv4 configuration
Who would have thought that a Windows time sync issue could be responsible for 40-knot crosswinds on short final inside a flight simulator? Definitely not on my troubleshooting bingo card.
Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas and insights, and apologies again for assuming this was purely a sim-side bug.
Hopefully this helps someone else avoid weeks of frustration.
EDIT (01/31/2026):
After 5 complete flights, I can confirm this solution resolved the behavior described by me in the original post. All flights displayed winds compatible with the current METAR, stable and predictable.
The extreme change in direction and speed is resolved.
This is really good info, thanks for being transparent and sharing. Hopefully it’ll help someone else!
That was very thorough and potentially useful to users which might experience similar issues, but how big of an NTP de-sync are we talking about? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? Because I’d expect that 99% of Windows 10/11 users simply use the following default settings to get their clock up to date:
That’s all I use in my case, and it seems to be autosyncing every day. w32tm service isn’t even active:
C:\Windows\System32>w32tm /query /status
The following error occurred: The service has not been started. (0x80070426)
Yet PC clock seems OK at first glance. Even if it was not 100% in sync but only a few milliseconds/seconds/even 5-10 minutes, would that really have an effect in the sim, given that METARs are refreshed every 15-30 minutes at best and most often it’s every hour?
In any case, I enabled Windows Time service and set it up to sync automatically from time.windows.com. Let’s see if that changes anything, though I dout.
Could it be that this NTP local issue is a very edge-case scenario and that the extreme wobbling during final is a more generic thing? Because things like turbulence wake are known to be very buggy after SU4 and even major 3rd parties such as PMDG have officially asked users to turn it off before attempting to debug everything (I’ve done the same and I think the 737 behaves a lot better now but I haven’t done any extensive testing). While others suggest to tune down turbulence to low/medium instead of realistic, as this affects level flight at higher levels (I still have some wobbling with PMDG 737 at high altitudes even with turbulence wake off).
That’s a very fair question, and I think this is an important distinction to make.
In my case, this was not a small time drift (seconds or a few minutes).
My Windows Time sync was completely broken — it had been failing for years and was unable to synchronize with any NTP server at all. Any manual sync attempt would return an error, and the system would silently fall back to the local CMOS clock.
So this was not about “being a few ms off” or even “5–10 minutes off”.
It was a hard failure of the time service, not a normal Windows setup.
That’s also why this issue is so deceptive:
The clock looks correct at first glance
Windows doesn’t warn you
Many applications keep working normally
But anything that relies on time-stamped server data and validation (like Live Weather) can start behaving unpredictably.
I fully agree that:
METARs are typically refreshed every 30–60 minutes
A small desync should not realistically cause this behavior
There are known post-SU4 issues related to turbulence, wake, and aircraft-specific modeling (PMDG/Fenix included)
I’m not claiming this is the root cause for all extreme wind or wobbling issues.
I’m only sharing what resolved a very specific and reproducible problem on my system.
In my case, once OS time sync, DNS resolution, and IPv6 were fixed:
Live Weather became stable
Dev Mode wind layers matched METAR consistently
The extreme wind shifts close to the ground disappeared entirely
So I do think this is an edge-case scenario, but one that can look exactly like a core sim bug when it happens.
Hopefully this clarification helps separate the two discussions, OS-level desync issues vs. known SU4 turbulence behavior.
Sir, that was exceptionally well explained. Makes perfectly good sense.
Today I had such extreme turbulence again on PS5. We don’t have the possibilities to change something on our time-stuff. Our console synchronize the time via internet usong ntp. I compared my systemtime with my radiocontrolled wrist watch and my smartphone. Everything is fine and in sync as far as I can get it displayed. I still have extreme turbulence near the ground trowing me around.
Doing a firemission with a shallow approach was very painfull as the wind slammed me into the ground suddenly.
This has nothing to do with time. The wild wind swings are caused by your rudder inputs. I was on final with the FBW a380, and I started getting the swings. I was too high to make the runway so I did a go around. I took my feet off the pedals, and the winds returned to normal. I performed a go-around, observing the same swings clearly caused by my rudder inputs. I recorded an OBS video clearly showing the issue for FBW. This is 100% reproducible.
excelent post
i will check today since i too was experiencing very strange wind behavior on short final and touchdown
in my case, what i noticed was a sudden and drastic wind direction change right at the instant when the wheels made contact with the ground
likely caused by the sim using one wind data while in flight and another wind data when on the ground and these two are different. for whatever reason
if this is the case though, i really think the sim should have some sort of buffer built in on the wind representation precisely for this kind of situation, if the wind changes, be it legit or caused by a bug, it should take something like, i dont know, say 60 seconds or so, to swing direction
having the wind swing 180º instantly, and i mean INSTANTLY.. is completely absurd
No, it’s not exclusively a rudder issue. It has occurred many, many times for me when I am not making any rudder inputs.
Headwind has the same bug in their 330-900. This make sense as their code is a copy of FBW. I don’t know what’s triggering your experience, but this is 100% reproducible in the FBW and Headwind aircraft. Just do a forward slip and watch the wind go crazy.
Fenix exhibits the same behaviour. Curious.
Well you clearly did not read any of my posts, neither the original nor the updates.
the issue here has nothing to do with rudder inputs. it was about live weather winds, extreme wind conditions suddenly happening under a certain altitude close to the airport on landings. (up to 180° flip in direction and speeds up to 45,50 knots)
regardless of the inputs.
As stated on my update flagged as “solution”, after resolving the problems with my router and connection configuration, the live weather in sim started to work properly and the issue is now gone.
You clearly did not test my solution.
Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• Yes I opened today a similar post in another section about activities (missions). Sometime the difference between the planned winds before accepting the mission and the real wind at arrival is so high that I experienced winds as strong as 50knots which are unmanageable with light planes
Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
• I use a PS5
If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•
9 months later and this still hasn’t been bug-logged? It’s not difficult to reproduce. Just set Turbulence to Realistic and try to land a 172. 4 out of 5 times it’ll try to fip over on you under 200’ AGL.
