How to get better weather in Career mode (maybe)

Discussion Hub Activities, Career & Challenges
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Hey y’all,

while fondling around with sim settings yesterday, I found a possibly, maybe, eventually working way to get rid of the atrocious Live Weather implementation in Career mode. Works as follows:

Step 0: have MSFS2024 started, in Career mode, with the mission select world map open.
Step 1: make sure Live Weather is enabled under Options → General → Online.
Step 2: on the world map, click on a mission you wanna fly.
Step 3: immediately after the very first mission overview screen pops up (the one with briefing and mission schedule on the left side of the screen), go back to Options → General → Online, and switch off Live Weather.
Step 4: start up your mission as usual.

Do not skip Step 1. Every time I tried starting up a flight with Live Weather still disabled, the mission wouldn’t load, perpetually stuck in the loading screen with that rotating circle in the lower right corner of the screen.

Once you’re loaded up, you’re parked under CAVOK skies, 15°C, QNH 1013 weather - basically the good old “Clear Skies” preset of flight simulators of yore.

You’re still going to encounter the occasional random shaking, and there’ll always be a light wind. But for now, I’m going to attribute those small inconveniences to thermals (consistent with the weather, altitude, and ground surface you’re overflying) as welll as the inexcusable, inexplainable design decision to enforce “realistic”, i.e. “completely overdone” turbulence model onto Career mode.

Also, be aware that you’re working in perfect flying weather now, so there’s no bad weather bonus to be earned. I found this one to be quite significant, usually around one quarter to one third of my total mission earnings, so it might slow down your rate of income and disappoint fellow shareholders and investors in your honorable company. Not as much as losing one aircraft after another in 60 kts gusts on short final, though.

Now I understand those results might be anecdotal. However, I’ve had this work for me for around a dozen or so missions since yesterday, so it looks reproducable.

Would love to hear from you good folks of Simulator Land if this, albeit a bit janky, workaround actually works on your machines as well.

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I guess the purpose of what its doing, is lost on people. You only get VFR conditions, and NON LIVE weather until you get your IFR Certificate. then live weather is turned on.

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Fix worked for my first test flight, gonna try more later today.
Hope Microsoft patches the issue soon. It’s not live weather, it’s permanent extreme turbulence and it is ruining a buggy but mostly decent career mode.

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It would be better if the game offers an option for gamers to choose whateve weather they like

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But IFR Certificate is a very early Certificate that most players will try to complete without any specific purpose, and needs to be unlocked for other Certificates.

And most players unlock it while either they haven’t even had a company, or only have a 172 and a long grind with it ahead. Unable to toggle off live weather or lower the turbulence option in assistance for career mode literally makes the career mode unplayable when there are some big-scale bad weathers going on in real life.

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This is absolutely a quick and dirty workaround for an issue that shouldn’t be there in the first place, yeah.

I’m not going to blame Asobo for their weather and turbulence implementation, overdone as it may be. Some people are fine with 30 kts crosswinds at 5000 ft. Some people will argue that no, you absolutely wouldn’t fly a teeny 172 in those conditions, and therefore you shouldn’t do so in the sim, because of realism. And I’m perfectly fine with both of these opinions. Enjoy the game the way you wanna enjoy it. That’s what simming was alll about since its earliest days. Also, this is a single player game mode. Let players play the way they want to. Open up the ■■■■ weather, and realism options.

What I’m disappointed about is the user experience in Career mode, especially for new players. This game mode was supposed to be all about the gamification of the flight sim genre, giving the players purpose and things to do, instead of relying on their own motivation and fantasy. And I’m willing to say that MSFS2024 does achieve this goal, all in all.

It’s the pitfalls on the way though that make it feel at least very unforgiving, if not broken.

  • Why isn’t there a warning label not to sell your first company airplane, unless you want to spend literal days grinding money to buy another one for ten times the price?
  • Why isn’t there a warning label not to do your IFR cert unless you want to suffer in terrible weather conditions?

If they’d given players these absolutely crucial bits of information, I’m sure they would’ve saved on a ton of negative feedback.

This is the underlying problem of Career mode in my opinion at this point, the lack of information about the consequences of your actions. Which is a real bummer, since the player guidance and gradual build up towards more complex activities is really, really well done. Once you give the player crucial information, you allow them to make informed decisions on how to advance in the game. Without that information, though, you just fsck them over.

Until this is fixed, Asobo should at the very least allow players to customize the weather, or at least change the turbulence model. And until this is done, I’m perfectly fine tricking the game into putting me in clear skies, 15°C, beautiful flying weather, despite it being a stormy November night outside.

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The HOMIE coming in clutch with the save. THANK YOU!

Edit: After a couple of missions enjoying sub 5kt winds and clear skies, I just received a huge bonus for bad weather. Don’t discount some surprises lol

This is a rant from now on. I’m not sure what Asobo or Microsoft were thinking for this career mode. Hardcore simmers are gonna do their thing no matter what but for casuals or people like me just getting into simming it is a ridiculous ask that I spend 50 hours flying a C172 and land it with a 30kt cross/head wind.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m half grateful that I was thrown to the wolves and it’s quickly improved my landing skills, but this plane was simply not made for flying in that IMO(and probably technically speaking). Why release a game with locked live weather right into the storm season when you know you’ll have new people hopping on who’ve never flown? That was a dumb move, guys.

I’m about 2 missions from being able to buy the Cirrus Jet after having spent literally 50 hours sweating my nards off trying not to bin my Cessna on touchdown. As a new pilot with no experience, I’m glad to say my only restarts were in the first few hours of the game in perfect weather and no restarts needed for these 30kt wind landings on 600ft runways. It ain’t pretty but I got paid.

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I just wish there was a way to see how bad the weather is at a destination airport before accepting the mission.

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It’s not lost on people and this is an inflammatory comment. There is a thread with over 200 replies of people having broken “live” weather that is not live and completely unrealistic.

If it worked as intended I would agree with you.

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I only had the chance to try this on one flight last night but seemed to do the trick for me. Still had a bit of turbulence and a light crosswind on landing to keep it interesting.

Hopefully the times of spending 50%+ of a mission income on repairs are behind me.

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This is great thanks, especially with the weather we’re having over the UK right now.

Now watch them turn the option off.

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I transferred my airplane to South America, Amazon. No icing and the winds are much milder than North America right now. The only downside is lots of clouds and so far daily thunderstorms.

I’ve been simming a long time and never really explored that area. This gave me a reason to go.

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I need to travel south. My first career flight was to Toronto and was given VFR to land during a snow storm with zero visibility. I don’t see how that flight would even be allowed (maybe I’m wrong). In these scenarios if the map is going to provide VFR and the weather doesn’t align, there should be an option to toggle it off.

It really did feel like the game was trying to snipe my only discounted plane and wants me to reset my career :slight_smile:

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Great tip from the OP. The final straw for me before I started looking for some workaround was being forced to take off in my 172 in 20kt tailwind. The weather in Career mode is insane, WAY TOO OFTEN. Frigging jetstream stuff at 100’.

I’ll be utilising this ‘fix’ until an Asobo tester actually gets into a plane in career mode and says “gee these winds can’t be right…”

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You have to pray to the weather gods.
That’s what happens in the real world.