Does anyone else see this. Seems to be since last patch. Tried with different aircraft and get the same with live weather and Unreal Weather.
This is the actual wind and not the instruments reading incorrectly. Example below with 150kt head wind but effect is there at any speed of wind and gust.
First pic on ground 150kt wind set showing 75kts on nose. I added some power and rotated and watched the head wind scale from 50% to 100% at 1000 feet (where i was going backwards). Dropped to a 200 feet and was able to make ground up again.
No idea how to get rid of this or if it’s a wider issue with the weather engine.
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I am a bit confused. Would the wind not get slower at ground level, in real life?
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Yup, what willisxdc says above. That’s how it is in reality. The degree to which this happens will vary somewhat according to how much resistance the ground offers (e.g. a forest slows the wind a lot more than a smooth lake), but there will always be some drop. Aerodynamics doesn’t just apply to aircraft.
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The reported behavior is not correct. OP is setting the surface winds or near surface winds. They should not be 50% of that value out in the open at the field, and you should not have to go to 1000 feet agl to achieve that value.
This is a bug that I thought was fixed several patches ago.
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Yeah but did they model this correctly and consistently? I.e., what wind are we configuring when we set a wind speed in the weather menu?
If we set reported surface wind in the weather menu then that should apply at 30 ft elevation as per ICAO. So if we set 150 kts wind we should see that at 30 ft, not at 1000 ft. If instead it is some free gradient wind we configure in the weather menu we would need to configure winds well above reported surface wind to achieve reported surface wind.
Edit: Cross-posted with @SkipTalbot it seems!
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Is there actually an issue when more realistic wind speeds are set?
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@scottiew1965 is reporting the same when using Live Weather and the Unreal METAR injector. We saw this behavior months ago:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/wind-speeds-still-too-low-at-ground-level-post-patch-2/274436
I’ve seen the surface winds match the METAR or forecast values since then, so perhaps this is broken once again, or the fix is not consistent.
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Thanks and agreed. All of that aside, this has changed since the last relase. Glasgow, for example, is right on the coast and flying in and out of there for a long time 99.9% of surface wind makes it from the west. It was great before as you could have a ball with horrible cross wind gusty landings (10/12 months in Scotland), you can’t now.
The wind you are given by the tower is the actual wind at the field @ the runwway. Coming into a good few airports over the years you know what’s waiting for you, especially in a heli. This also allows you to decide if the conditions, at the runway, are beyong the flight envelope of what you’re flying. I once made that mistake in a very old R-22, I will never do it again 
I am hoping this is a glitch of something else and not the way to fix approach stability of some of the aircraft. I was using Unreal Weather before the last update and the metar winds on arrival at the runway were spot on.
I dont know any other sim that reduces wind and gust by 50% under 1000 feet. Just to be clear, surface wind reported in metar/from the airfield is at ground level. This removes any guesswork or calculation prior to final approach.
Thanks all really appreciate the time to reply.
Yes and ground wind is the lowest reported at runway level, above that it can change or shear etc. whats happening in t he sim is this lowest level of wind is being moved upto 1000 feet and then run down to 50% @ 0 feet.
Got it.
I guess I never noticed the disparity. I never tried to fly with 150 kt winds.
I usually fly with “Live Weather” and just deal with whatever the sim gives me,
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ground wind in a metar for an airport is at runway level at the field … so already post ground effects. Cumbernauld up here has a massive hill to the north that takes a good chunk out of NE winds but the windsock and anemometer show the ground wind at the runway. If I fly 15nm to Glasgow that hill is much further away and doesnt reduce it by much, but again each airport has it’s own anemometers.
Learn to fly up here we describe many days as “4 pegs on your washing”
Windshear is also good brown trouser experience.
I hear you. Check the last 24 hours in my neighborhood. CYDQ. 30 kt winds are considered a breeze up here. Yesterday we had gusts around 45 kts and 35 sustained most of the day. This is where I got my pilots licence. We are tight to the Rocky Mountains and those kind of winds make things a bit bumpy over the rocks.
Doesn’t change the fact that I generally don’t fly in 150kt surface winds.
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Yesterday atis gave me winds at 39kt ingame
3000’ it was at 11kt, raising to 29kt on ground
Something is not working right
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The METAR wind is measured at 10 meters above the surface. So it would be lower right at the ground usually. But when I set the winds in the sim, I’d expect to hit close to that value at 10 meters when I’m out in the open, not up at 1000 feet like it’s currently doing.
I played with this and I’m not seeing the same effect in Live Weather. When the game released there were a lot of complaints that the Live Weather wind speeds were too low, and I think this same “feature” was in effect on the reported Live Weather winds. After the uproar from that, they probably just turned off this surface wind damping feature when Live Weather is on, but kept it on for preset weather.
Consequently, this could still screw up winds coming from third party METAR injection apps, since they’re using the simulator’s weather preset system to change the weather.
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I’m not sure the point of this thread, but we can all agree the weather needs A LOT OF WORK! 
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Have to be careful trying to interpret winds, especially surface winds.
Due to our proximity to the mountains here, we can have 25kt winds at the airport, 10kt winds in town (5km away) and 40-50kt winds 20 kms down the road. The effects of terrain can have profound effects on wind speed. If you have taken any mountain flying training you will learn that winds can be extremely variable depending on altitude in uneven terrain. A ridgeline can create a venturi effect that will cause acceleration of the surface winds immediately following a significant reduction in the lee of the ridge, even a complete reversal of wind direction.
One of the features of MSFS was to model the effect of terrain and other physical obstructions on the movement of air. I agree that there are some strange anomalies being represented here. Reported surface winds should be represented 30ft above airport elevation but we have to allow for significant variable in the surrounding areas as the result of terrain modelling.
My local field can be a very difficult experience when the winds are out of the south east as we have large hills immediately south and east with a pronounced valley in between. We are one of the windiest locations in western Canada with numerous windfarms as a result. It can be dead calm in one location and 50kt winds 30km down the road.
I caution users of the sim from putting too much stock into surface wind reports. Pilots do not plan flights based on surface winds. Upper winds and surface winds are two very different animals. Upper winds are an indication of the movement of the airmass at specific altitudes. Surface winds are fickle and sorely effected by local terrain. Forecast upper winds are the important flight planning tool. Just remember that they are called “forecast” for a reason.
We have all sat in our backyards with variable, gusty winds, blowing in the opposite direction of the movement of the clouds in the sky. Do you believe that airline passing overhead is concerned with the breeze in our backyard?
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I really dont know what is the point of your post…
Just said that winds were not really strong above 3000’ and they raised a lot in intensity the lower to the ground I was( not how it works IRL on normal terrain), and that they were 10kts off of what ATC gave me on finale
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the 150 was to prove the 50% issue what a lot of people are seeing is the ground wind is slower than it should be for the metar. I suspected it was always divided by 2 so sticking in a large number helps show it. My problem with the new issue is that when the wind at an airport here is 25 gusting 35 (this was from metar and actually the winds on these days at ground level), the sim now only injects 12 gusting 17 which is a huge difference.
This is part of the sticking plaster to put live metar data into US airports only. When you get so far away from a US airport now, the sim jumps wind, temp, pressure to in-sim live weather. For example taake off from KTEX and note temperature. It looks correct now but fly away, up a few 1000 feet and it jumps up again to be wrong.
I have a couple of scanrios set for bad weather/wind up here that are a real challenge at Wick with a gusting crosswind. Since this update the last 1000 feet t
So, if wind @ 1000 = 10 … at 500 feet it’s 7.5 and ground level it.s 5. This is a 1000 foot down reduction model instead of a metar ground up model. It’s like we went into a menu and reduced wind and gust difficulty to 50%. The prev model for ground wind for a time was great, it felt real, you could get a sweat up coming in.
I found some other threads from a month or so ago complaining about the same thing then it got fixed.
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I agree with you and get this, but i’m not on approach to my back garden, i’m on apporach to an airport with published wind I expect to be within a few % when i get to near ground level and not 50% of what it should be. That’s the issue. All sims (home and leveld) model ground metar then up. I guess you only notice if you’re used to dealing with metar and flying into fields that have much stronger winds.
To your excellent point, if there’s 25kts at the airport, I expect 25kts near the runway as I come in on final and not 12 (what we get in this version of the sim). The rest of the areas on approach can be variable.
But again thanks for the time, we also have some fields here that are highly VARIABLE. My first 15 hours in an R-22 were in gust variable winds, it was miserable but my word if you can fly in that …
Asobo … please … I know you’ve fixed the high alt field problem and thanks for that, can you model this ground up minus a few % maybe in the last few feet and get rid of the 1-50% reduction under 1000 feet of wind and gust it would be appreciated.
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