Jorge asked for details on the historical weather question in the Q&A. I didn’t pose the question so can’t speak for the fella who did however, these are the reasons I’d like to see an option for it:
Lets say I’m simulating some multi hop flight, like a round the world tour, or if I’m using a career mode addon like neofly, etc…when I come back to the sim to start my next flight / hop, I want to be able to pick up from exactly where I left off. If I haven’t had time to come back to the sim for a week, the weather conditions are now completely different to when I landed.
eg.
Take off from EGLL at 12:00z 1/1/21 - Light clouds, wind 230@3.
Landing EHAT at 16:00z 1/1/21 - overcast, light rain, wind 355@35.
Nasty landing conditions, great immersion…except now I don’t get to return to the sim for 2 days real time and when I spawn back in at EHAT at 17:00z (an hour to refuel) the weather is clear skies, light winds even though the date is still set to 1/1/21…cos that’s what the weather is right now.
Immersion killer. Disappointment. I was looking forward to a hairy take off in bad conditions.
So, in answer to your question in Q&A, no I don’t want to be flying in weather from 1954. I just want to be able to pick up a journey where I left off. FSX did this perfectly well either by using the in built weather from Jeppesen or, later after the Jeppesen connection stopped working, the ActiveSky addon. You just selected the time and date you wanted and world wide weather for that specific time would be downloaded. Obviously, there was a limit on how far back data was available but, if I recall correctly, data went back years.
That data is still available, ActiveSky is still working fine in FSX.
Oh yeah, and of course…in a month or so it’ll be possible to set the date to the middle of winter and find yourself flying in 25 degree heat. That’s just something that seems silly. I mean, why wouldn’t you want historical weather from the date you’ve selected?
Let’s say it’s mid July and someone wants to do a test run for the Cannonball event that’s scheduled for Boxing Day, they spawn in at KFJK with 26/12/20 selected (last years event date, obvs can’t have weather from the future) so they can test the icing effects and find out how low they’ve gotta be to avoid it…and it’s 30 degrees in the shade. Hmmmm.
Some might say why not just set up the weather you want…well, then you get no variation. Weather is like that for the whole trip.
I used to use the weather history feature in ActiveSky/FSX to fly in storms that hit my area, for example large snowstorms to practice interesting IFR approaches. I know, I can set any weather that I want, but it was fun to use weather that actually existed. I think it was one of those features that was just interesting.
Think it could have something to do with that the other solution simply injects a certain metar report (or limited set of metar reports) globally. Which is a lot easier to do than to roll back a global weather simulation model to a certain point in the past.
What might be trivial for older solutions, might not be as clear cut for this one.
They’re injecting data into the sim. If they can inject it they can keep a history of it and inject that instead at a users request. Even if it’s not possible to find complete data sources for historical data, it’s certainly possible to start logging historical data now so we’ve got data from the moment it starts being stored.
I don’t think you understand how Live Weather works i FS2020.
It’s not just a matter of injecting some data into the sim and and let your PC figure it out.
Simulating a huge chaotic system like the global weather based on data from a large, but not infinite, number of sensors takes immense computing power and is therefore done server-side. So the injections you mention are done on the server, not the client.
Even with super computers available, it takes some time to do, which is why we see them struggle with getting it fairly correct all over globe at any particular time.
As far as I can tell, data for billions of cubes of atmosphere must be stored for every time frame, so the you that can download the relevant ones for you choice of time and place.
Not saying it cannot be done, but why not accept it as a fact when they say that historic weather provides a huge challenge in terms of the amount of data needed to be stored.
The difficulty of the implementation is beside the point. Jorge asked for an explanation of why we’d want historical weather.
It’s like no-one at Asobo ever found a reason not to fly with live weather, live time, live everything. Say it’s midday in France and you want to take off at 7am cos it’s all pretty with the mist and whatnot…but when you spawn in with 7am as your time set the weather you’re getting is from midday. No mist, high temps, etc, etc. Not the cold and dewey morning you were expecting.
Well, you did imply that they could easily do it if they wanted to by simply injecting what they injected the first time. That’s what I reacted to.
The reason Jorg asked for examples of why people want this feature was that it would give them a better foundation for deciding how to address the issue.
If people won’t be satisfied unless they can choose any time and place and get exactly the same global weather experience as when it was live weather, then I fear they’ll have to pass simply because of the storage requirements.
But a solution to your example where you can wind the clock twelve hours backwards or forwards, would perhaps be feasible.
One could also imagine a library of interesting historical weather situations that people could load.
So, just to add my thoughts to this, (and a bit of moral support to @SwoopGB). Jorg has specifically asked the community to explain how we would want to use a hypothetical historical weather feature in the sim. That Live Weather isn’t working perfectly in the sim right now is besides the point (for this topic at least), as we’re addressing something else — a feature request for the future.
I’ve got a couple of use cases for historical weather:
A few months ago I did a multi-leg VFR cross-country flight in a Cessna across the US South. I used Live Weather (because I personally find that the most immersive), and while I’d originally planned the trip to take place over 3 evenings in a particular week, it actually took me several weeks to complete. This was because the weather turned bad unexpectedly, and there was a stationary weather front stuck over the South East, which meant for foggy IFR conditions for more than a week. I’m a patient guy, so I was initially happy that such an important element of real-world flight was now influencing my simulated experience (e.g. with the go, no-go decision). But after a few days I was pining for some historical weather, so I could get away from the IFR and just complete my flight (without resorting to standard weather themes or less-immersive METAR injected weather solutions).
I love to fly in the US. The Pacific Northwest is one of my favourite places to fly, but it’s also got pretty bad weather a lot of the time (especially in winter, and is often misty at night or early in the morning). I live on the other side of the world, however, so it’s often cold and misty there, early in the morning, when I want to be flying during my afternoons and evenings. I’d love to be able to load the weather from the day before, in the afternoon, so that I can still experience realistic weather, albeit warmer and more suited to daytime flight.
As some have mentioned above, the ability to fly in certain conditions (e.g. near epic storms) that happened in the last week, at a time when I wasn’t actually free to fly on MSFS, would be fantastic.
OK - I now understand at least these reasons and MS/Asobo can now have some context. For me honestly it’s so far down my list of stuff I could never see it get high enough to be addressed.
I do recognise that my wants undoubtedly make you feel the same
Hehe, yes we all have our own priorities. I must admit until this sim came along, I never rated it particularly highly, but I had noticed that many of the third-party weather tools in other sims really highlight the feature, so there must be some demand out there for it. It was only when I did that cross-country flight where I was endlessly grounded, that I saw its true value.
For training purposes (and I would love that one day MSFS becomes suitable for some kind of real-world training, even if I don’t necessarily expect it) historical weather is a really useful tool.
I have no problem with historical weather being implemented. This is my take on the matter.
Long ago (1993 I believe), there was no real weather in MS Flight Simulator, but the gap was filled by a product called Real Weather Pilot for Flight Simulator version 4. That was one of the greatest days in flight simulator history. I personally have never gone back.
When I fly in MSFS its all real, airspace rules n all.
If I have VFR plan and run into IFR conditions I file IFR and continue. If the IFR conditions force me to fly to an alternate airport, then I do so, this is fun stuff to me. If I intended to fly a VFR flight and IFR conditions persist, I don’t fly until VFR conditions return. If I should have to wait too long to fly VFR and I simply can’t wait, I could chose clear/fair skies, but this never happens to me, I just file IFR, because I enjoy VFR and IFR - low n slow and high n fast - the dynamic unknown environment.
I personally never want to spoil myself and have it my way, I prefer to have to adapt to the conditions/situation, its so much more fun to me…keeps the brain active/sharp.
All that said, if the MSFS team can implement a historical weather feature that does not hinder performance (bandwidth) for live users, then I have no problem with historical weather.
I suppose users wanting historical weather would have to use the group only multiplayer feature.
Historical Weather ? Where ?
Anywhere on the entire planet ? How far back ? ( I suppose to be beginning of recorded weather )
Maybe a nice addon would consider implementing that feature if the ROI ($$$) were there but I doubt if we will ever see that feature implemented inside the core MSFS.
Meteoblue offers historic weather data (30 years) as a premium service. So the data is there and available. It’s a matter of will, cost, and implementation.
There probably isn’t a business case for it unless it was offered in some sort of combined subscription service for MSFS users. But who would be willing to pay that kind of money just to have historic weather?
So… Rather than “Historical weather” which, where the heck are they going to store all that data and who’s going to pay for it, and really? It’s that important to you?
Seems to me a MUCH better solution is better control of the weather, so, if you want a particular flight, you can actually build whatever weather system you want, along the WHOLE route you want to fly, the ability to create weather systems, a low here, a high here, a huge temperature or pressure gradient here. And make it easy to use.
That will serve two purposes, it’ll let you fly in exactly the conditions you want, (and it won’t require ANY storage of data), and it can be a HUGE tool for teaching kids and adults about the weather. And think of the fun you can have creating tornadoes and hurricanes and checking out the sunset you just created.
“I suppose users wanting historical weather would have to use the group only multiplayer feature.”
The only setting not available would be live weather / live players. All other modes would work fine. Right now it’s possible to be flying with live weather while the fella next to you is in clear skies.
