My live weather has been iffy over the last week.
Weather has been relatively OK for me. One interesting note is that when I first initially load up, there’s some pretty neat weather sometimes which I am assuming is MB based and then BAM there’s a ‘redraw’ which I believe is when the METAR decides to shove its way in. Often times less neat and more bland than before. This happens within the first 30 seconds or so of the sim loading into a flight. Another issue is the weather stops showing clouds after a certain time. I’ve been doing hops back and forth between the US and China. Weirdly from the US-China the weather stopped and it’s just all clear. However, going from China to the US yesterday, there was weather all the way, so IDK.
Again today for me. After 3 hours of flying it stops injecting clouds. Same with what happened yesterday. Winds and pressure are fine. Why the 3 hours mark?
Details of flight would help…
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this whole weather issue not being live…it needs to be addressedc or remove the feature forever.
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Since SU11 I had reasonable Live weather depiction, but unfortunately today between 15:30 Z and 15:50Z Live weather decided it was time for the rubbish “SU7-allTCU” effect to return. I hope it’s a one-time event.
Here’s the situation on arrival in EDDK:
where some high AS cloud would have been appropriate;
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Keep in mind, you’re looking at a live camera shot versus data that has been processed and injected and then has to have ‘time’ for the sim to interpret and play it out. Sometimes the weather is spot on and sometimes it isn’t. Comparing your photos, it looks like the live camera view’s weather is on the left side of your sim photo. Also remember that METARS update minimum every 60 minutes, so even though the live camera is showing certain weather, the sim still has to catch up. More often than not, when I see what an airport says the weather should be and where it is in the sim it’s often already blown to the side of the airport or hasn’t blown in yet. It’s there. Just not 1:1.
Thrursday, February 23, 2023. Portland, OR had a ‘MAJOR SNOW EVENT’. With live weather turned on, and departing from KPDX, the sims weather shows nothing to match the real world weather conditions. Why is this such a hassle for Microsoft and Asobo to resolve? This is way beyond annoying! If they can’t resolved they should have never stated that the sim display real-time weather conditions.
Is there any snow depicted nearby? Maybe a wider overhead shot from a couple thousand feet up?
The area had received 10" of snow. I would think that that the game should be showing some snow on the ground!
There is a specific post for snow issue: Snow Cover or No Snow Cover
Also remember that Live weather is based on MB forecast and METARS where available. There is no source that can provide a real on time weather everywhere on the globe. I agree that “Live Weather” let people think that the sim is able to reproduce the weather as it is outside of their window but it is impossible to have such system. They could have called it “Dynamic Forecast Weather” instead.
There are definitely gridded snowfall and coverage data for the US, usually no more than 6 hours old.
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For sure that’s a good source but the sim is only using MeteoBlue and METAR sources to generate Live Weather in the sim. From a previous Q&A, they said they are working with MB to get more detailed data for snow coverage.
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I’m aware, just pointing out that more up-to-date data exist, albeit limited in geographic coverage. It unfortunately goes back into my observation that MB data seem to lag, which affects other areas of live weather accuracy.
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Limited usage of data to me seems to be the root cause of many flaws, not only regarding snow coverage:
LIRN today was reasonable, if only we could get rid of the erruptive smokevanes that don’t resemble any cloud structure I have ever seen in my life. To the west (right side of screenshot) everything is fine, otherwise it looks like some side craters of Mt. Vesuvius errupted.
Data regarding convection are available on the METEOBLUE website, however they don’t seem to be taken into account, otherwise the whole area would have looked like the right side of the screenshot, and I’d be a happy camper.
Webcam:
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I think what’s happening in a lot of cases is any cloud perceived to contain precipitation is modeled coarsely in 3-dimensions to look like a cumulus (cumulonimbus, TCU, etc), including dark shading common to the type. It often makes it look overly dramatic. Whereas in reality, there are several layers of clouds, tilted updrafts and downdrafts, etc. It just doesn’t do thin stratus or cirrus layers well at all, and those play into the presentation of thicker clouds, masking the volume to an extent.
I’d like to see more blah days like your picture - a murky, thin overcast in haze.
Also, I’m wondering if what you’re seeing on the south side isn’t part of the injected forecast model and it just didn’t turn out the same or the timing was different from when you took the live webcam screenie? Sometimes it’s just a forecast/actual discrepancy.
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Since SU7 that’s the only type of cloud the weather engine seems capable of producing. I think it has to do with the scale of the weather simulation: before SU7 the simulation was run over the whole planet, with SU7 we now have “cells” in order to “inject” METAR data into those cells and let the weather engine create the clouds accordingly. Due to the much smaller area of those “cells” the outcome is sometimes akward, and the devs themselves seem to need time to figure out how to manipulate the injected data so that the outcome makes sense.
At least that’s how I imagine the system works these days…
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It tries to inject other clouds, but the 3D modeling makes them all look like cumulus. The layers and positioning themselves are often accurate, though they can be off by a few hours.
But I don’t think there’s any proof that a METAR injects “cells” that cover certain octals of the sky over others (for instance south vs west) because a METAR doesn’t give that info (unless you’re dealing with severe weather).
That’s an oft-repeated trope, but it wasn’t a global simulation. It is an injected forecast model that is allowed to move over time within certain bounds, then it’s updated every so often. But it wasn’t taking a modeled parcel of air and lifting it to its saturation point. It just possibly had more convincing cinematics. There were (and still are) all sorts of seams, gaps, and inaccuracies, but it does seem to be getting better. I did a flight last night using pure dead reckoning and the winds aloft were dead-on to the forecast.
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