Its a 129 euro computergame for heaven sake. I comes close … never will be perfect
To “get rid of haze” in a flight sim is, in-of-itself, an illogical request.
To fix how its implemented is a good request.
It should use the best source available, which usually is the METAR, that real world METAR does not correspond to actual weather could happen, I mean the METAR is updated once every 30 min usually and is only applicable for the area close to the airport. Is it always perfect? No, but that is not an excuse for the sim to have wrong visibility. Visibility should correspond to the METAR. What everybody here should take into account though is that reported visibility is the visibility at ground level, not the visibility at altitude or the slant visibility. Visibility can be better or worse at altitude.
Yup … and visability can be complete different also in even just a few minutes …. So even that can cause diffrerences
Many people shout a lot … but hardly understand metars / aviation weather
Or generally visibility in aviation. This discussion is sooo old and it usually is just all about (wrong and/or unrealistic) expectations. There is no way to win that discussion or satisfy all expectations and the only way out for users and developers is giving people a slider to control haze on-the-fly.
I did not know that, but doesn’t that mean that the actual weather conditions (as we want to have in the sim as realistic as possible) would only be accurate to the level we expect when METAR is updated?
Some examples might help. At the end of 4R at KMDW, which is just under 10 sm from the Chicago Loop. Top is the clear weather preset, bottom is live weather ingesting the 10sm METAR. I can just barely make out the top of Willis Tower (height 1450’), and the rest of the skyline not really. Now the sim is always reduced to 10sm, but assuming the real world visibility actually is 10sm, is that what you’d expect? The definitions I’m pulling here say a black object should be clearly discernible at the reported distance from just above ground level (1.5 meters).
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.
Peace out!
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?
Could this be part of the problem? (no time to test myself until next week):
Exactly, could be! Which would mean they have no clue whatsoever what they are doing .
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.
Yeah, that pop-in fog is „awesome“.
Yeah I think the sim looks far superior with it. It possibly needs to be toned down a bit but other than it looks great.
But if you’re not too bothered about playing the sim super realistically why not just change the weather or fly somewhere where there’s less haze?
Is a great new feature BUT is a bit to excessive and need a tweak because it is everywhere
Well a form of haze is in most parts in the world