The key word is “Typically”. As Nijntje91 pointed out, there is a standard refresh of the METAR on a scheduled basis, but if conditions change dramatically they can manually update it off schedule. Keep in mind, the world is not a clean constant even place. Winds, humidity, clouds, and yes, visibility from haze and such ebb and flow, getting better and worse. It is a live environment here in the real world, and the METAR is a snap shot of one place at one point in time. It is there to give you an idea of what is going on. It is one piece of a very big puzzle, not the whole picture.
So, is it great now, okay, no. But it is a dang good start, they are trying to give us what we want. Let’s give them some grace and allow them to get back to work on it and take what they have and make it better.
Ey, I actually wanted to convey the exact same point I just tried to highlight the impossibility of depicting the real world to the highest level in a computer sim to some people who expect sometimes a tad too much (not @anon50268670).
A METAR is just an observation, not a forecast, as soon as it appears on your screen its old news. We don’t really use it for flight planning other than checking if the TAF (forecast) is accurate by comparing it to the METAR. There is one exception, the METAR can have a short, 2 hr forecast attached, called a TREND. For short flights it might be more accurate as the refresh rate is quicker than the TAF. No idea if MSFS uses the METAR TREND, I think the use cases are limited as it doesn’t specify where within the 2 hr period the change would occur.
A lot can happen in 30 min time of course. If the weather significantly changes they could send out a new, updated METAR within the 30 min frame which is called a SPECI (special) Also visibility in METAR (or TAF) doesn’t go further than 10 km, (9999 means 10 km or more) so above that you need to somehow model visibility based on relative humidity (temperature / dewpoint split) or use other sources?
You will never get is exactly right, with visibility for example, if you know the relative humidity you could make some predictions and they might be reasonably accurate one day and completely off the other day as the visibility also depends on the amount of condensation nuclei in the atmosphere (solid particles) to condense on. Also visibility can be reduced by these solid particles themselves, examples are smoke, smog or sahara sand.
Officially everything suspended in the atmosphere is called an aerosol, thats why in manual weather there should be 2 aerosol sliders. One for solid particles and one for relative humidity. Or let the user adjust dewpoint and use the relative humidity ( based to temperate / dewpoint split) + aerosol to calculate visibility. Although I would prefer precise control of visibility for low visibility take-offs and landings (in meters), I don’t really care what it does in the background to make this happen.
i dont agree at all, its way worse now. with sudden changes that are totally unrealistic,
clouds way too low .
they should never have gone the metar way.
When implemented correctly and exactly mimicking the METAR this should be the most realistic way. Just a thought, cloud base and ceiling are measured from ground level, not sea level, e.g. a cloud base reported at 500 ft at an airfield 200 ft above MSL means clouds at 700 ft MSL, maybe they screwed that up?
I think the haze is overdone. another thing is that it grounds most VFR simmers for quit some days a year, so just like in real life. But in real life you go to hospital or worse if you crash.
This is what happens if Asobo listens to a small group of very loud gamers that want a “study sim” but still want outside view while flying.
Personally think the weather looks great at the moment. I don’t spend time worrying about how accurately it matches real world, as this is a simulator, not reality. But it looks realistic and that’s far more important to get right first. Once that is nailed down sure make it more like real world data - but that’s always going to be a work in progress.
My vote on this: No for getting “rid” of haze. We have not been able to fly in any other place other than the US (especially not in South Asia) because of the lack of realistic visibility depiction. Real world visibilities don’t look like a wintry day in Montana. What needs to happen is an improvement to the haze and smog depiction. Asobo has taken a step in the right direction here, and they need to refine their haze and smoke depictions to make it less intense in CAVOK conditions in the US. They also need to work on the abrupt transitions out of the “haze” area, both vertically and horizontally. In the hazy areas, when the visibility matches the haze depiction, the sim currently looks incredible. I can finally fly into New Delhi and not see the runway until I am at 200 feet, with no clouds above me either.
Can we get a hot fix to take away ridiculous requests to remove the haze? The weather system in the simulator is incredible. Ultimately it is the best weather system I have seen across multiple sims. Feel free to go outside and experience the real elements if it’s not enough for you.
If we need a hotfix for anything it would be for the stupidly annoying ‘enable freelook resets zoom’ bug.
■■■■■■■ impossible to zoom in on the instruments and clicking mid mouse zooms back out again.
But Asobo doesn’t know what hotfixes are so we probably have to deal another month with this ■■■■
Ontopic though: haze is a nice addition to the sim but i agree sometimes it’s too much.
Nice we finally have the ability to create some sort of fog by ourselves by setting a low cloud layer and chabge the density. Ubfortunately setting it to 0.01 is the lowest it can go.
I like how they stated in the very beginning that having a visibility slider is ‘not how it works in real life’ and now more then a year later we get these desperate workarounds for basicaly achieving lower visibility but it has to be more complicated because they’re to arrogant to just inplement a visibility slider.
Start listening to the community for real please. And stop this overly complicated approach for everything…
They can’t even release an update with basic control functions in VR, how are they gonna tackle complicated weather systems!?
They said on the Q&A they need a rest, they need to fix these issues THEN have a break as this isn’t good enough, as a paying customer I’m bitterly disappointed, to have these issues that should’ve been fixed prior to release is simply unacceptable.
I just tried to highlight the impossibility of depicting the real world to the highest level in a computer sim to some people who expect sometimes a tad too much (not 
.