Thank you for contacting Microsoft Flight Simulator support today.
Both METAR reports and the meteoblue weather reports that we represent in the sim are scientific weather measures and/or forecasts that can sometimes lack precision. Most of the time they will match but sometimes, they will not.
This also happens in real life where METARS are updated regularly but can be inaccurate when the weather is changing rapidly. Currently, we represent the weather data as we receive it from the data sources, without any curation/consolidation which means that when there is a lack of precision, it will be seen in the sim.
We will look into the issue and add this to our backlog. An option in the weather menu where the METAR data and meteoblue data get merged so that they match would be a great improvement. We are already doing this for the wind on the ground.
I think what they say here about combining the METAR based data with METEOBLUE, would be the winning combination.
What do we think the of the chances of live weather being improved in the next Sim Update (next week I think)?
Again tonight planned a flight and the in sim weather totally different to meteoblue’s own data on their website. Just incredibly annoying to not be able to plan a flight and know what the cloud cover will be en route and at destination. I mean it’s not just a bit off Meteoblue predicted 600ft overcast, sim, like 5000ft broken? It’s just too far off.
Something is hugely broken. No better with windy, though of course on windy and metoblue, there are a multitude of different models and sources, but I’ve yet to find a closely matching one.
The problem here is that what you see in the sim often doesn’t even match the meteoblue data. So something is wrong, it is not about a prediction being correct or incorrect.
I wouldn’t mind if the weather wasn’t live so long as it matched a data source somewhere, being strictly live and accurate doesn’t bother me. I don’t always fly in my home town, heck I don’t even know what the weather is like 40km away so if it is not strictly accurate it’s not a huge issue for me.
But what is a huge issue is not being able to predict what that weather will be, but the sim’s live weather does not match any predictions at all, not even the company from where it is supposed to be getting it’s data.
Yeah I have had the same experience, where in many cases it doesn’t even match the Meteoblue data, so either the data they’re getting is somehow becoming corrupt or it’s not translating into the sim properly - I did point this out to them.
I’m hoping we will see some improvement in the next sim update, but to be honest I’m not holding out for too much.
I think the best way forward would be to have Meteoblue data but couple it with the live METAR, similar to the way they currently take wind, temp and pressure from the metar, but also take cloud data and add that to the data from meteoblue to build the weather picture.
Absolutely agree. I have found wind, pressure, and temp to be almost perfectly accurate with forecasts and with METAR data. It is just the cloud coverage, base and tops, and visibility that is often way off.
Maybe it be would even be possible to sort of reverse engineer weather maps taking data from the sim and turning into maps similar to those which are produced by websites such as windy.com and meteoblue themselves? This way accuracy go could go on being improved behind the scenes, but users would have a way of visualising the weather currently being generated in the sim. I would have thought it easier to represent data on 2D map with block colours than it is to inject it into a 3D living world, i.e. the sim! So if they can actually visually generate the data in the sim, you would have thought it possible to make maps of this.
Do you by any chance know which model from meteoblue is supposedly being used? On the maps page there are multitude from which to choose on the lower right corner.
I don’t like to keep banging on about this, but I know that I, and lots of others from flight sim communities of which I am a part, really enjoy planning their flight routes and altitudes accurately and as close to reality as possible including checking cloud cover and base and tops for example for VFR flights and at the moment it is just a lottery and takes a huge amount of simulation, satisfaction, and most importantly, fun, out of the experience.
It should be their NEMS Global. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really say what source it’s using what I can tell. Is it pulling METAR data? Model data? What run? What forecast hour? Live Weather is a mystery box.
Here’s my current World Map/Live Weather in Flight Simulator:
That tells me that Flight Simulator downloaded the 12z run of the Meteoblue NEMS, it’s using the initialization hour (12:00 UTC today), and it hasn’t updated it since. So the weather in the game is 12 hours old now. It would be nice if it said what model, run, and forecast hour it’s using so we can plan accordingly. Then if it’s grossly off, we’d at least know it, and maybe know why.
This is a nice post. I will experiment tomorrow (I am in UK so it’s late here) and see if I can find something similar in terms of a time when the sim world map with live weather matches the meteoblue nems global. Finding a distinctive system like that one should help.
Can you just clarify what you mean by the ‘initialisation hour’ please?
If these times are regular it will be a great help because then we could just always look at the meteoblue nems global from 12z and that should be what we see in the sim…? Maybe…??
Initialization hour is when the forecast was made, the time at which the model was run. Meteoblue’s model is updated twice a day at 12 UTC and 00 UTC. It takes about five and a half hours for Meteoblue to finish running the model and for the forecast to get published online. So you won’t actually see those forecasts until 1730 UTC and 530 UTC, assuming everything goes as planned.
I’m seeing the forecast for 12 UTC in Flight Simulator, which is the same time the model was run, or the 0-hour forecast. I should have been seeing the 12-hour forecast instead.
But what the Meteoblue website shows as “current” on their NEMS GLOBAL weather maps, should also be what we see as “Live” in Flight Simulator. It should be using the same data. There should not be a 12+ hour discrepancy like I’m currently experiencing. Apparently not all users are experiencing this 12+ hour delay either, per this thread:
If this bug is intermittent, or user specific, it would definitely account for why some people are claiming the weather is radically inaccurate, while others shrug and say it looks pretty good to them. Without any sort of timestamp on the forecast, we’d have no idea that Flight Simulator is incorrectly using old data.
Do we know for certain or not whether what we see on the world map in sim (in terms of cloud cover at least) is actually injected into the weather in the sim? I.e If I see cloud over an airport on the world map, it will have cloud over when I am loaded in?
Edit :I think you answered this by your mention of slewing on the other thread.
@SkipTalbot
It is eminently possible I am getting confused here. But I think we are both making the same point, and I think, like you, I just want to be able to plan a flight knowing what that weather is going to be, both at departure and destination and en-route. Whether that be strictly live, or from a forecast, regardless of whether this forecast actually then occurred in real life, matters not, the weather that is in the sim just needs to be accessible somehow from a plan planning perspective, using meteoblues own website or otherwise.
The Live weather is completely inaccurate for me again this morning. Although I think I’ve figured out what data Meteblue is showing in the sim in terms of cloud cover, and that seems to be based on ‘Aviation weather’ and then ‘Cloud cover total’
Based on this above is exactly what I am seeing in my sim at the moment, which would rightly show Manchester as clear with some surrounding clouds, albeit overcast here!
I again think this comes down to Meteblue and their data being so innacurate
I don’t know if anyone can check to confirm this, but this definitely seems to be what I am seeing in the sim. The places it depicts here as having clouds, I have clouds in the sim, and where it doesn’t I don’t.
The issue is, it’s massively wrong compared to what we actually have.
The weather is a predicted weather program.
It looks at meteoblue, and then just like a weather forecaster on TV, makes a prediction as to what the weather will be during the next twelve hours.
That predicted weather is what is in the sim.
That weather is augmented on the ground by metars.
“Live” in the sense of “Living” or “Dynamic”. Not “Live” as in the sense of “Real Life”. They never promised that the weather would be the same as Real Life.
