Live Weather Does Not Match

Bug Reporting Hub Weather & Live Weather
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446

EDIT: For the moderators here, who are looking for ONE thread = ONE specific issue

KTEX 091255Z AUTO 13007KT 10SM CLR 07/M10 A3034** (www.aviationweather.gov)
GAME: OAT 31 °C, A3010, 18005KT. I’m sorry, that’s simply not acceptable.

Two days before at KTEX:
Game: 30 C, A30.29
RW: 13 C, A30.52

From another user in this thread:
I just departed out of KTVL (Elev. 6268 ft) and got 29.92 plus 34°C
KTVL 071653Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM CLR 11/M04 A3021 RMK AO2 SLP195 T01111039

Is this enough specific for you MS/Asobo?

ORIGINAL POST:

Dear all,

I don’t want to create yet another thread about this, but since the latest “top-voted issues list” didn’t even mention the live weather anymore, I think it makes sense to bring this to the attention of the developers again. Some (maybe not many) users have been reporting that there’re still problems when it comes to weather injection or depiction in the sim, even after the latest patch 1.8.3.0.

First of all, “live weather” is much more than seeing some clouds in the sim and a METAR that says scattered xyz and go “oh, it’s working”. It’s about depicting cloud coverage, ceiling, temperatures (also dew-point, surface and aloft, OAT/ISA), barometric pressure and winds (surface and aloft) within reasonable limits—and by reasonable I mean minor deviations between current (real world) conditions and the injected weather plus the extrapolation done by the forecast model.

If I and others here were not using pilotedge, IVAO or VATSIM, inaccurate live weather wouldn’t matter that much. But also for fuel planning purposes it is essential to have a common ground to base your calculations on. And that can only be real-world conditions (again, within acceptable limits).

In my personal opinion, live weather isn’t working reliably. When flying in the UK, for instance, I see a good match for most of the parameters, with the ceiling being off by quite a bit, usually. The other day, I was flying in the Seattle area and had bad visibility and rain, just like the RW radar told me—however, the barometric pressure was off by 0.1 in, which is by far outside the tolerance (and I checked the local conditions before and after the flight, the pressure didn’t drop suddenly). Other flights don’t show any similarities between real-world conditions and the sim.

I still believe that the approach that the developers took with their engine should be superior to anything else we had before; the current implementation, however, is still quite buggy or not reliable, respectively.

TL;DR

If you’re experiencing live weather to be accurate (remember to look at all the parameters described before) in all your flights, please DO NOT vote but describe were you’ve been flying.

If you’re also experiencing issues with live weather, please vote and describe where you’re flying and which discrepancies you saw.

Cheers

447

exactly right, well said, the thing is, for us that take the flight simulator more seriously and not as a game, is very important that the main parameters of weather matches closely to what we have on ATIS, and that should match closely what is written on actual live metars (As it happens on real life).

As you said si not about hey look we see some clouds and they look very nice… that is not what live weather is about… In order to do proper pre-flight planning and calculations we need also the QNH, OAT, winds, ceiling, visibility, runway conditions, etc. to match as well… and of course during flight we need winds aloft and OAT to be somewhat similar to the forecasted ones (as in real life) and approaching our destination, some times under very different conditions that has to match as well…

Is specially noticeable in high altitude elevation airports and when you do relatively short flight to sea level airports, the differences can be quite dramatic and live weather should be able to deliver those…

Until that is fixed, I am very disappointed with that aspect, specially after all the propaganda that they did… but it was the same regarding navdata and “reality” of the instruments and avionics and everything else… so far… they have not deliver their promises…

4 Likes
448

I haven’t voted because that kind of accuracy isn’t important to me. I just play for the fun of it so I’m happy with a fair representation of the weather for a location and time.

Flew from Cyprus back to Heathrow a few days ago and got representative cloud along the route and a good headwind that was realistic of around 84kts and varied over time.

I also flew low level from Ipswich up the east coast around to Hunstanton in the TBM a few days ago when we had the yellow rain and wind warnings for that North Sea low pressure system. Lots of buffeting, visually looked realistic, crabbing to maintain heading etc.

So does live weather work? For me it does. Is it a fair representation of actual IRL weather? Couldn’t say for sure without being there in person to observe. Is it accurate? I simply don’t know.

Without knowing exactly what model data comes in and how often from Meteoblue and then what happens with it in the sim, it is just speculation.

I’ve worked in meteorology for 30+ years. Model data never matches observation when you get down to fine detail even with ultra high resolution (spatially and temporally) local models. And I suspect the data in the sim isn’t that good.

I guess “live weather” can have many guises. Some expect it to be hyper accurate analysis of current observations. Some will expect it to be just a GFS run every 12 hours. Or a blended approach. I don’t think anybody actually knows.

12 Likes
449

I mostly agrre with @GMWatbot the only really critical point is to have the same weather for everyone in multiplayer and, possibly, a nice and “realistic” (not necessarily REAL) evolution of condition during flight

I’ll wait to see what the next patch will deliver before voting…

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450

Thanks for throwing this thread up, I was disappointed to see them not have weather on the top issues list.

451

See the current METAR and having ATIS being completely different is all too common in western USA .

Not seeing it on the top issues was disappointing, too

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452

That’s what I’m trying to achieve here. :slight_smile: Quite happy with the contributions so far, just people stating their own opinion in a very healthy fashion. Thanks for that already!

453

and just in case Asobo is unable to fix it asap plz post the address where my lawyer can send in my REX invoice … :wink:

454

I really don’t think REX is the solution here. If the MS/Asobo engine starts working as intended, it’ll be superior to everything REX is trying to achieve…

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455

true, unfortunately that little word IF

456

I fully agree. I have purchased REX in the mean time to experience the live weather I expect while flying however.

As to OP; I experience very intermittent live weather - often none at all in various areas around the US and South America. I’ve been flying particularly in the Alaskan region for the better half of this patch, and I’ve had live weather work for me probably 1 out of every 4 flights - and even then, it seems to just randomly “turn off” and default to clear skies and variable winds @ 3kts (hey, at least it’s no longer 225).

457

I see alot mention the wind, but the live weather for me from the start and through every single patch remains the same broken mess.

When I load up the game, and load into my first flight, live rweather is amazing, immersive and looks tremendous. But as soon as I finish this flight, exit and set up a 2nd flight, live weather just dissapears, and it’s blue clear skies the world over.

The only fix is to completely shut the sim down, and load it up again, and we all know how long that takes with the “so not needed” press any key screen.

I keep getting excited each patch, thinking something as important as live weather would surely be fixed by now, but lo and behold, 3-4 patches later, still broke for me.

Just doesn’t make sense, what changes between the end of the 1st flight, and loading up a new flight?

458

I agree with your observations. What worries me is that the latest patch–except for the improvements in Japan–seems to have made worse items like LOD, water and water reflections, according to reports by others here and on AVSIM. I haven’t installed the patch, yet, but I’m not too hopeful that the weather will get any further treatment anytime soon… :frowning:

459

Testing with the latest Patch this morning at my Local Airfield here in the UK EGBP the hpa was out by 7 hpa compared to what real time data was showing, so I think that equates to approx 210ft in Altitude difference working on 1 hpa = 30ft. On the plus side wind depiction was about right and the cloud coverage was about right looking out of the window at home.

460

Weather seems to have improved for me this patch, thankfully. First few flights went quite well with live weather!

461

We use METAR reports and Meteoblue weather forecasts to represent the live weather experienced in the sim. They are updated at regular intervals, but they can lack precision. Most of the time they will match but sometimes, they will not.
If you observe wildly inaccurate weather, please submit a bug report .

That’s their latest comment on the weather issues. Well, I’m really concerned now.

I cleary expect some inaccuracies within certain limits, but this holds for all parameters and variables mentioned in my original post. Now we should only file a bug report for “wildly inaccurate” weather? What is that? Temperature off by more than 10 degrees? Baro off by more than 0.20 inHg?! Aloft winds off by more than 45 degrees and by more than 30 knots?

Are they abandoning the Live Weather topic altogether now? With its current precision, I won’t be able taking MSFS to VATSIM, honestly.

1 Like
462

I agree. The parameters of “wildly inaccurate” was left to interpretation. If I were in a situation where ATC told me winds 217 at 6 and they were actually 080 at 15, I’d be pretty annoyed. Thankfully it’s been fairly accurate for me this latest patch, but I’ll be keeping an eye out. I’m not going to bat an eye at some trivial single digit differences, but if reports from multiple sources are saying the same thing and the “live weather” option from meteoblue is saying another… something’s not right.

463

true, but since vatsim partnered with microsoft I suspect that the MSFS weather wil be the OFFICIAL weather and what you see out of the windows is just a bug :slight_smile:

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464

But thanks for the laugh…! :smiley:

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465

Weather for me seems to only work on the first flight. Going back to the menu and into a second flight completely blanks the live weather (clear skies). Restarting the sim is the only fix I found.

Works pretty well on the first flight, but having to restart the sim every flight is very frustrating.

4 Likes