As a follow-up I’m flying around the local area again ( outside a METAR bubble, albeit not that far ) and now it’s actually matching quite well - there’s still a bit of cloud down to ground level, but the several layers of broken cloud going on in the region here are being represented. What’s changed since earlier is that there’s no rain around anywhere in the area anymore. I still get the feeling it’s inserting mist/fog instead of rain, but that’s just a feeling.
Edit: well it’s matching everywhere but the local GA field which does publish METAR - the weather at that field doesn’t match the surrounding weather or the METAR or an earlier METAR- and again it’s cloud down to ground level - so yes, something is wrong no matter what, and it’s been this way for weeks. Doesn’t matter whether the weather is live or forecast model or even made up on the spot, random bubbles of nonsensical local weather around airfields is a problem.
Exacty, i also live near an airport that doesn’t report METAR. Maybe thats why we notice the global change they did after su7? They didn’t only add the METAR weather near METAR airports. They also completely changed the global weather, that i also have tried to explain. I bet it were to make the global weather fit the local weather or something. But it should have been the way around. The local METARs should have been made to fit the global weather. So sad really. The whole weather simulation changed to fit simple METAR near airports. And also made the weather less accurate globally.
Can we please get the global weather model we had back and then set the weather as METAR says only at airports that reports METAR or the option to select weather model in use? Then i can avoid those unrealistic weather conditions set globally and around METAR airports. Those issues we experience since su7 may not be because of METAR or weather model. If it’s not then fix the issues. We have had those issues more than a year now. But we can only report what we see and from the update notes you give us together with those sim updates. I know 100% that weather were changed more than what was noted in the release notes of su7.
Weather release notes su7:
Weather
Improved METAR ingestion into live weather
You can now consult real airport METARs during flight from the Weather panel (only when Live Weather is active)
Updated .WPR file versioning for weather preset edition. Now handles both coverage and density for cloud layers (Formerly density became coverage). Backward compatibility has been handled
It is now possible to put clouds below sea level (-400m) for regions such the Dead Sea
Fixed AGL / MSL UI display in weather panel
Setting wind with weather panel is more coherent with in-game wind near ground
Fixed unit conversions in weather panel
Minor UI improvements in weather panel
Would help to get more information about changes of weather in the future. That would help giving feedback and report issues.
Going back to a long-past post, the only way to do a proper, non-anecdotal analysis would be to collect and compare data from meteoblue, the sim, and airports both served by METAR and those not.
I’m not talking about pre-su7. That’s all anecdotal at this point. I’m talking about now. There’s a lot of talk about these problems, but nothing really empirical, specifically as to how far off it is and the timing thereof.
Some are blaming metars, some are blaming meteoblue. Where’s the truth?
I’ll throw in my anecdote that it wasn’t right pre su-7, either, in fact it was laughable how off it was (and I have plenty of historical video of me saying just that).
Depends on what you mean by off. I think you mean inaccurate. And that may be true for you that needs it to be accurate to those METAR. But it behaved much more accurate to how weather behaves in real life. And here were i live the weather were also much more accurate than it is now. I couldn’t compare the weather with METAR at my local airport because it doesn’t report METAR.
Here we go again. If the planning tools do not exist within the sim’s internal weather engine, then it doesn’t matter how realistic it looks. If I’m flying VFR into an area of IMC and have no way to know whether it’s going to be that way, then the system is useless.
It’s not just METARs, we’re stuck on that. I posit that it’s well beyond METAR, that all of the data are not granular enough and not timely enough to be accurate with use of flight planning and execution, which is, again, a major part of modern aviation.
But then again what would be wrong with an option to set only forecast model? I have never asked Asobo to completely remove the METAR injection.
Feels like we that don’t need it to be as METAR says and more preffer a realistic behaving atmosphere needs to be forced to use this METAR injection even that neither of those sources has 100% accurate information in real time.
I rather have one global source of weather even if it’s not accurate all the time.
I could plan my flights checking forecast data. I know that is not accurate how it’s planned IRL but it worked for me. And the weather could behave like weather in the sim.
I know some want historic weather, is that also wrong as an option? I’ve seen that thing in active sky and other 3rd party tools.
Here are the 1-hour visibility forecasts from meteoblue and NWS. If Meteoblue is injecting these data into the sim model (I have no way of checking right now), then it won’t be accurate. The resolution of the meteoblue and those weird nodes makes me cringe. Not useful for flight planning.
That’s not the point. The point is the meteoblue data are not accurate. And if they’re the basis for the weather in the sim, we need some other truth injected.
The way they called it brought wrong expectatives. It has never been a “Live” Weather since it was initially based only on Forecast. They should have named it “Dynamic” Weather as suggested here Live Weather Does Not Match - #1008 by mdapol or “Forecast” Weather.
That is exactly correct. Despite what some may think this sim has NEVER had ‘Live’ weather. And here is the dirty little secret…it still doesn’t. While were at it I’ll let everyone in on another secret, it never will.
We have always had…
…currently have,…
…and most importantly ALWAY WILL have ‘Dynamic/simulated’ weather in this sim. Regardless of what data source(s) are used. That is not opinion, that is just basic fact. It is a simulation after all.
In order for Asobo (or anyone else) to give us actual ‘Live Weather’ via METARs or any other sources, those sources would need to update and transmit for every location on the planet, every second of the day. Obviously that will never happen but for the sake of debate, even if that were possible what happens if an official update is missed?
To me it’s simple, get rid of Dynamic Meteoblue/METAR injection hybrid currently being experimented with.
Go back to Dynamic Meteoblue only injection we had at release. After that, work on improving it both data wise and graphically.
From the consumers (our) side, get over ourselves and understand it ain’t real life, it’s a computer simulation.
An approximation interpolated to the current time is “Live Enough Weather” to just be called “Live”. There’s too much emphasis on the semantics of what that word means. If it resembles the current state of the global atmosphere, updated to the moment, it’s good enough for that label. They could tack on a disclaimer to temper expectations. “Approximated Live Weather” or “Live Weather Simulation”. I guess folks would then be cued to expect some error. They’ll never know why there is error though, and that’s one of the main issues in this discussion. Is it the model? Is it a Flight Simulator bug or limitation? Is it a data issue? Client side or server side? Who knows?
I agree though, they should focus on a single source, and the strongest one for this application is a numerical forecast model. I’ve seen the model nail frontal boundaries both spatially and temporally. Of course there’s significant error all the time, but every time they try to tack on more stuff from new sources, they just wind up breaking things, one step forward and two back style.
I wanted to add some information about this you wrote:
The thing is the data will always improve after every single calculated model by it self (machine learning). That means those models will get more and more accurate overtime without even do anything manually. Those calculations takes old data and compares it with those newer observations that have been done and improves the next calculated model. Will it be 100% accurate in the future, who knows? But what we know is those calculations fit the global picture of the simulated weather because thats what it is a simulation.
The graphics rendering in the sim is on Asobos side though. But better data in the future i bet will also make the atmosphere look more accurate too.
Using those METAR will never improve in the future. They will have same amount missing of data in the future as well. If they not change the update frequency to happening in real time as you explained. But it will always be a local report. No information outside that area.
It’s so annoying that there is snow cover in New Zealand. There’s like +16C around Milford Sound and water is frozen in game… I can’t use live weather over South Island because of that. I really hate snow in this game.
