In case it’s not clear from the screenshot: the clouds are sitting on the water, the cloud base is at sea level or below.
Also, of course, there is no rain, but lightning, while the METAR of the next large airport (PHNL, about 20 nm from the location of the screenshot) reports showers in the vicinity (VCSH), but no thunderstorms.
I love how the few people who defend live weather don’t seem to be able to defend their opinion with even the slightest bit of evidence or intelligence.
Here are two screenshots I shared the other day from a flight on Saturday.
Three different values, the 19kts from the southwest was the real-world value. Which seems to be pulling info directly from Meteoblue’s wind map.
Meteoblue has all the right information if you check any of their models, it’s as good as anyone else out there. The problem is the implementation of it in the game.
Wow, what a list.
I would like to see some consistency and accuracy with the wind and other weather. Landing at YBAF (Archerfield) on Sunday ATIS and the planning map had two completely different versions of the wind direction and strength. Note that, even though I can’t remember the exact strength, it was supposed to be approx 10 or 15 kts and coming from a direction suited for a 28R landing. During final I was feeding lots of rudder (C172) to keep lined up and the lower I got the more trouble I was having. It turned out that I had the wind from right rear at 30+ kts! Many airports have multiple wind socks and often none show the same wind direction and or strength. Thunder and lightning cracking & booming with almost clear skies, so the list goes on. I haven’t bothered to check if the weather reflects that of any real data because it’s too unreliable and I have no way of telling which data to believe, if any. There’s too many of us having problems for this to not be an issue.
I’m not 100 % sure if that’s true: If you look at the example I posted before, the value you’re referring to is not correct; instead, it’s the in-game value (including the windsock) that was spot-on (in comparison to the most recent METAR). Funny though, usually I’m also seeing these weird “8.13 Kts, 192°” values in-game, but this time, it was an even 160/6.00–just as if they’d injected the METAR this time…
It’s just unpredictable and unreliable.
EDIT: Have we ever speculated why there’s even the possibility seeing three different values for the very same variable…? I mean, it should be the same data source anyway, shouldn’t it?
Trying to catch the snow in Calgary, Alberta all week using real world weather… All white outside with falling snow and in the Sim, there is a thunderstorm instead and nothing on ground! Tried with every spell of snow last couple of days and nothing! Real world weather is definitely broken!
Well, I was just saying what was accurate for me, which was the one on the map. It matched the METAR in my case and was the exact wind displayed on Windy using Meteoblue’s data. Regardless it’s a total crapshoot and doesn’t seem to be a priority at all to fix it.
They didn’t even consider a SDK for the weather until recently, because they were sure to get it done themselves. They have all the data to create (live) real-world conditions, otherwise the partnership with Meteoblue wouldn’t make any sense. The weather should work the way they explained and advertised.
And this game leaves plenty of room for 3PD. Plenty.
I’m not defending anything. I’m not comparing the weather to third party apps. In the game live weather is working and i don’t care if it’s not the same as outside my window. It’s a dynamic weather, it can’t be 100% accurate. And i rather have dynamic weather than 100% accurate weather. I don’t want weather to refresh in the middle of the flight.
There are much more important issues. Weather accuracy is just for immersion, it doesn’t break the game, doesn’t ruin your flights. Developers should first work on important issues.
Maybe I wouldn’t put it so drastically, but my personal involvement on these forums and on Twitter proves that I’m very close to your statement.
Why I’m not agreeing here is simple: “It’s a sim, first and foremost, but you can also approach it from a gamer perspective, if you wanted to”, it’s been stated like this on countless occasions by MS/Asobo. Now, as “a simmer” and as soon as well-implemented 3PD’s planes are available, I want to be able to:
Go to www.simbrief.com, enter all the required information, get my briefing, my block fuel, check the weather on www.meteoblue.com en-route, departure, destination and alternate and download my flight plan as a PDF.
Start the sim(!), put the block fuel in, set up the plane and fly according to what I expect from the briefing. That could mean that the wind is 26015KT instead of 24011KT at the destination, but it must not leave me without fuel 50 NM short of the destination, just because the winds aloft had nothing to do with the (real world) data I got during briefing.
It’s a game first.
It doesn’t ruin anything. None of my flights were ruined by weather.
You seem to not understand the trade-off of dynamic weather. It works as prediction. You either have an accurate weather which refreshes every 10 minutes and completely breaks the immersion or you have dynamic weather which is changing while you fly but that’s only possible when AI or whatever predicts the weather. I want dynamic weather. You can’t predict how the weather will be with 100% accuracy.
It can be improved but it shouldn’t be a priority. There are more important issues right now.
Commenting on the weather issues: I noticed in Malaysia yesterday that weather was 100% accurate (temperature, pressure, and very close to accurate winds which is reasonable variation from METAR).
In general, I have found that the winds aloft that Live Weather provides compare favorably with predicted winds aloft from other sources.
Surface winds are another matter…
Unlike METARS there is no such thing as “real-world” winds aloft based on current observations. The actual winds aloft are only directly sampled twice each day when weather balloons are launched worldwide at 0000Z and 1200Z.
All other winds aloft provided by aviation weather sources come from a predictive forecast model no different than what MeteoBlue provides. In my flights I normally cross-reference the wind speed and direction at cruising altitude with the upper wind prediction charts from aviationweather.gov, and they are usually quite close. Temperatures aloft are often too warm though in MSFS, and that can have an effect on aircraft performance and fuel burn.
But, I completely agree that without METAR-based winds at the destination, it makes realistic flight planning very difficult. It not only affects the choice of landing runway, but can even affect which STAR is filed, as some STARS are designed to feed incoming traffic only to specific runways. At Houston, (KIAH), if you are arriving from the northeast, and they are landing to the west, you would file the DOOBI TWO arrival. If they are landing to the east, you would file the SKNRD FOUR arrival. The first part of both STARS are the same, but the second part is different.
Kind of difficult to do if you have no idea what surface winds are going to be when you get there.
I fully agree, even though I also saw bigger differences for the winds aloft in the past. Yesterday, however, they were spot-on over North America. The temperature was completely off, maybe also due to the incorrectly applied corrections that also hit high-elevation airports?!
On those occasions when the winds aloft are way off, it is probably due to the bug that occasionally arises, where the entire injected Live Weather model appears to be from 12 or 24 hours previous rather than for the current day and time. The position of jet stream speed maximums can move several hundred miles in 24 hours.
Whenever I first load into the sim, I always compare the cloud depictions on the world globe to a current satellite photo. That gives a very good indication even before loading at an airport if the current weather is truly “current” or from an earlier model run.
Yes, temps aloft are always a problem over high terrain. It’s probably a very easy fix too. It might require only commenting out a couple of lines of code that is incorrectly applying some kind of terrain-based compensation to the temperatures that MeteoBlue is supplying.
I suspect that some code from the preset weather themes is mixed into the code for the Live Weather import. With a preset, adjusting temperature based on terrain elevation would be appropriate, but not when the temperature is already being supplied by an external source (MeteoBlue). That might be a classic sign of “copy and pasting” code from one class or method into another to save time. Something beginning developers are always warned not to do…
I’ve noticed the last two updates that the weather is about 24 hours behind on just about everything on my sim. I do love the dynamic nature of the weather, I would just love the ATIS to be correct, even if it isn’t what is “live weather”. It’s hard to plan flights when the sim shows one thing, but ATIS is always the same in terms of clouds and temps on ATIS. Wind direction seems to be fairly accurate which leads me to believe that some of the live data is getting to my sim, just not all. Every flight I have to refresh both my traffic and weather by cycling it off and on before it works. Even then it isn’t guaranteed to work. I think I would prefer them to have some sort of flight planner built in to where we can see what the forecast will be at airports even if it isn’t real world weather. Let it be its own world and go from there. That way, at least we can plan accordingly and have a little better experience. I know they are working hard to get issues resolved and will get it fixed soon.
I used to have alot of the issues as explained above, my favorite was an electrical storm that lasted 3 days when it wasnt even cloudy here. So I started messing with the weather.
I noticed that if I selected the predefined weather, then chose live weather from there, the time issue was fixed, and now the weather changes fairly regularly to reflect what I see outside my window. Close enough for me and alot better then it was.
