They don’t have to match the real world. They should match the sim world.
You said that METAR’s often don’t match in the real world. If that was the case, then why do they even exist?
Well, it can only be accurate at the time it was issued, the next METAR comes out 30 minutes thereafter, the weather however is not static for 30 minutes. On the other hand, the quality of the weather stations around the world is very different. I had a METAR once in real life coming into Teheran reporting clear skies but we had to hold for over 1 hour because of a snow storm going on. What you use as real world pilot is ATIS, as this is more accurate.
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First you misunderstood what I meant. Second @BER811 is correct as well.
What I meant was, that with Meteoblues prediction model the weather won’t always match the real world weather 100%.
Well considering we don’t have any way to look up a METAR equivalent in-game and ATIS is completely wrong, we kind of have an issue.
I’m glad some of you are happy with “live” weather that sometimes sorts of reflect the real world but having weather in-game that reflects weather 12 hours ago isn’t exactly my definition of live weather.
I don’t think anyone is looking for 100% representation. Meteoblue’s weather models are great, every time I check their information it is dang close to what actually has and is occurring. The problem is how its implemented into the sim.
I’d be more then happy with close enough to reality weather if I had a way to get it out of the game for flight planning, and had accurate ATIS. Right now neither of those things exist. When I hopped into the game earlier I had live weather with conditions that mirrored what was going on 8-12 hours earlier in the day. That is not by any means acceptable.
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Here’s a Wikipedia article about METAR:
A typical METAR contains data for the temperature, dew point, wind direction and speed, precipitation, cloud cover and heights, visibility, and barometric pressure. A METAR may also contain information on precipitation amounts, lightning, and other information that would be of interest to pilots or meteorologists such as a pilot report or PIREP, colour states and runway visual range (RVR).
In addition, a short period forecast called a TREND may be added at the end of the METAR covering likely changes in weather conditions in the two hours following the observation. These are in the same format as a Terminal Aerodrome Forecast (TAF).
The complement to METARs, reporting forecast weather rather than current weather, are TAFs. METARs and TAFs are used in VOLMET broadcasts.
Basically, it’s just a simplified and standardised report of a weather. It’s not detailed enough to actually create what the weather really like and where certain clouds are at. they’re very generalised, and mostly covers the information that the pilots can’t see out the window. For everything else, it is left to the pilots’ discretion and decisions to fly how they want to fly based on both the METAR reports as well as the outside conditions that they see.
It is also dependent on the rate of observation and reporting as well. If no one is observing and making updates or if the equipment is set to observe and transmits the reports at the same rate, then the data won’t be updated at the same rate.
That’s why the sim needs Meteoblue to “predict” what it looks like in the sim based on the limited data that the METAR provides. And then simulated to what it thinks it looks like in the sim. So there are bound to be inaccuracies here and there, but sometimes it could also be accurate. Both conditions could still hold true to the METAR observations by their standards. The rest is just simulated or predicted. Not showing what it actually looks like because the data itself is already limited.
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I know what the hell a METAR is. If you’re trying to tell me that METAR’s aren’t in any way a representation of what is actually happening at the airport then I guess I’m just an idiot.
But yeah, this is working GREAT and totally represents live weather. No fixes needed!
6kts from 36 is reality.
Current METAR (known to be completely false and unreliable no use in the real world)
KETB 220735Z AUTO 07003KT 10SM -RA BKN041 OVC055 04/03 A3019 RMK AO2 P0001
Current weather conditions according to Meteoblue.
Suddenly we can’t trust METAR’s at all because MSFS gives us weather from some sort of alternate universe.
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Yes, there are quite obviously several different issues with the in-game live weather. Some quite significant and systematic. Given what the weather system is intended to do, however - model the weather system tin three dimensions, and globally - it is impossible even in theory to ‘fix’ most of them by using METAR as the sole source of data. Or, unless you would be happy with a weather system that changes instantaneously from one state to another, to follow METAR reports slavishly. Real-world weather changes continuously, not in discreet stages. METARs represent local conditions at the time the observations were made.
A global weather simulation of necessity uses a predictive system. It has to, since there simply aren’t real-world sources of data available to do it any other way. You have to’ predict’ what you expect the weather to be now, in places where real-time data isn’t available. Which is almost everywhere, almost all the time. And predictive weather models are, per chaos theory alone, never mind a lack of data, inherently prone to greater and greater error as time progresses. What some people seem to be asking for is a predictive system that continuously updates itself so that it always matches the real world. I’ve seen no evidence that such predictive systems exist, and frankly I can’t imagine how they ever possibly could, per basic logic alone.
None of this means that MSFS ‘live’ weather can’t be improved. I’m sure it can. But not by fantasising about impossible things.
And as for the real-world use of METARs, a wise pilot surely uses them, when available, as a source of data. They shouldn’t however ‘trust’ them to the extent that they expect them to be right all the time. The best source of data e.g. wind when arriving at an airport is whatever ATC tells you. Or the windsock if there is no ATC.
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this talk about how metars and tafs are useless and nobody should use them anyway is truly “1984” level of bizarre.
if the weather in msfs actually did resemble the actual observations reliably, the msfs fans would be posting metars and examples of the weather in game side by side and saying “looki how accurate our weather is”. so remember that.
metars don’t matter anymore, because msfs doesn’t/can’t/won’t match them… if it did, it would matter…
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I think the right word might be ‘deduced’ weather.
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And about thunderstorms everywhere? … this is becoming frustrating and annoying, every place i go there is thunderstorms…nothing compare to reality…please improve it…or fix it…
Another way to look at it might be the contract with Meteoblue may not have been the best negotiated one.
I’m sure this isn’t the final product, and no doubt work is going on behind the scenes to improve things.
Does anybody know how long it takes to update the weather in sim 1hr , 5 min etc?
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My understanding is that it’s continuous; there’s no update frequency.
Like the weather outside; it doesn’t change every hour.
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From what I read in PC gamer mag, the weather is updated twice and day and then predicted from that information. So you get weather say at 1200am but dont start to play the GAME until 800am, the game takes that info and predicts what the weather will be like 8 hours later.
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Well see then that’s a problem. Metars are updated every hour and tafs every 6 hours… TAFS will always deviate from Metars a bit because the forecast is a 6 hour 12h 18h and 24h Rolling period. Tafs are however still very good predictors of conditions to be expected, therefore good enough for flight planning.
Metars are usually very accurate because they have 1hr observation periods and if the weather deviated in any major way they would issue a SPECI.
Metar stations with unreliable data or with maintenance being conducted would have a $ at the end of the text line.
Anyhow the problem is this. They are not giving enough data to the predictive model. Doing only two 12 hour data periods and trying to predict 24 hours of weather would give you weather less accurate than a TAF
This is why folks are complaining about the weather seeming like it’s delayed.
The update interval needs to be increased to 4 like a TAF
Secondly we need an accurate way to get in game weather reports. We can’t reliably use real world weather reporting products because unlike a metar based system that gives you 24 reports a day
The MSFS world only uses 2 real reports to create a procedurally generated and dynamic weather scenario.
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My beef with all this is that when I activate live weather my destination and departure airports seem to get the same type of weather when in actuality it is not the same type of weather in both places. A little frustrating to say the least.
That’s not likely to happen. The NEMS forecast model that MeteoBlue supplies is used by dozens of different real-world clients. Microsoft/Asobo is only one of many end-users, and I doubt that MeteoBlue could or would create a special rapid update model just for Microsoft.
On the MeteoBlue website, there is a lot of background information on the various model products they supply. The worldwide NEMS model used by MSFS is based on a 30km grid. The model generation begins at 0000Z and 1200Z each day, and even on a supercomputer, takes about 5 hours to run. Creating a predictive atmospheric model based on initial conditions is one of the most computationally intensive tasks known.
The data that goes into the model initialization include all worldwide airport METAR reports for that hour, as well as weather observations from ships at sea and automated oceanic weather buoys, upper air RAOB data from weather balloons (which are also launched at 0000Z and 1200Z), as well as upper wind data from the motion of clouds in satellite photos, supplemented by ACARS reports of upper winds and temperatures from airliners in flight.
The model output from the 0000Z run is made available to end-users around 0530Z, and the 1200Z run is released about 1730Z. For each grid point (latitude / longitude coordinates), the model will contain data for each discrete hour from the model start time to 24 hours out.
There are weather models that refresh more often. The US GFS worldwide model is run every 6 hours, but only the 0000Z and 1200Z runs include data from weather balloons.
The US also has a RAP model (RAPid update), that is run every hour, but it only covers the continental US.
Again, I don’t think there is any possibility to have MeteoBlue supply a more frequent model update than they already do just for MSFS.
The best hope for more accurate airport weather would be to supplement the model predictions for airport surface weather with real-time METAR observations - at least for wind, pressure and temperature. Supposedly Asobo is already doing that - or plans to do it, but if so, it is not being done consistently, and they have never provided a detailed explanation of exactly how Live Weather is actually implemented.
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Thank you for the insider info. It all makes sense!