It can depend on some different factors such as the ceilometer capabilities. A lot of airports here on the UK, their ceilometer only defects up to that 5,000ft mark. You’ll typically find military airports detect higher.
Airports in the US typically report cloud much higher than what we see in UK and Europe.
Look, I’m reading/quoting this from the LiDO Gen Part which forms part of my airline’s Ops Manual, and given I have to legally hang my hat on this every time I go to work then I’m inclined to believe it.
NSC means No Significant cloud (nothing below 5,000ft etc but a report of CAVOK is not appropriate) and NCD means No Cloud Detected.
Anyway, let’s not get into a back and forth about this. Fact is the Live Weather in this sim isn’t working right.
I believe its better in that aspect alone than what we had in the unpatched SU7. The transitions were often striking. On may occasions I would be at cruise, and I would see a layer of ground fog appear when I was ~10-15nm out from my destination. Another more heinous example I mentioned before was watch two cloud layers touching that then separated rapidly in front of me, like tearing cotton wool, with the lower one sinking in to the ground. I’ve not had that so far with the patch.
Fair enough. All I’m saying is for many airports here in the UK, including EGCC which I was referencing because I was based out of there, their Ceilometer only records clouds up to 5,000ft and when the AUTO metar makes a report, if the cloud is above that base it reports it as NCD.
But as you say the overall statement we are making is the same which is the live weather since SU7 is not correct.
So is the sim perhaps interpreting “NCD” as “Well, there’s probably some cloud up there so…let’s call it broken”?
I’m going to try to find some overcast airports in the US, hopefully find one that also reports NCD, and see what it looks like.
Yes the transitions did improve since SU7 and through the beta. Sometimes the weather changes I’ve observed I’m not sure if I would put into the transition category, it’s almost like the weather switches between meteoblue and metar, or that it has a hard time knowing what to depict if the two day different things. I think there’s a lot of stuff going on with the weather and sometimes it’s really difficult to pinpoint what we are seeing and why we see it that way.
I could be wrong but I’ve never seen ‘NCD’ in the USA, I don’t think they use that over there.
Here is an example of an airport reporting CAVOK as I also mentioned can happen, when in reality if you look at satellite and cloud cover on webcam it’s higher overcast:
I think we are all aware there is room for improvement, no one more so tha Asobo but hang on, live weather is immensly complex and will take years to perfect not least big improvements are also needed from external sources (which btw is happening now). And even then there will always be discrepancies because weather is about as predictable as a box of frogs.
Yes I know that, it’s immensely complex. However SU7 was slated to bring live weather improvements to accuracy and largely what we’re seeing it has not done this, we are actually seeing the opposite. That’s not about comparing to what’s outside your window but comparing to what we had before SU7, it seems we’ve taken a step backwards now with live weather depiction. It seems the introduction of METAR has brought with it a lot of problems, as you say that’s because it’s no easy thing to do. I just don’t think this should be forced upon us though in the state it’s in when it’s clearly not ready for a public release.
Here is a good example in the US around Reno, can see the higher cloud cover around that area on the satellite there. You’ll see Reno reports that higher cloud whereas the airport not far from it reports CLR.
Hmm. So I switched Windy to report cloud base, read in feet. As expected, Green is 5000, and up:
LFRM is reporting CAVOK:
LFRM 101630Z AUTO 00000KT CAVOK 08/07 Q1023 TEMPO 4000 -DZRA BKN009 OVC015
It looks very similar to London in fact:
Nearest webcam I found was for Alencon, a little to the North:
Yeah, interestingly it feels now that many airports look very similar despite of what they actually should be showing, I’ve seen other people report that since SU7. I think that’s due to the generic look the weather has to it now and the circle around the airports it creates, weather within that metar circle gets transformed into quite generic looking cloud mashed together to try and form some sort of coverage which is often not correct.
As you can see the same as London, the higher cloud layers seem to be completely missing once again.
Gatwick now, No significant cloud says the METAR, looks pretty significant to me?
Yet again the new system,
i) looks ugly and not realistic
ii) is not accurate
Therefore doesn’t work and shouldn’t be in the sim.
Yep it’s totally incorrect there at Gatwick.
A report of NSC means no clouds of operational significance (that means cloud below 5,000ft or the highest 25nm min sector altitude) and no cumulonimbus or towering cumulus.
Your screenshot very clearly shows that is not the case here, the weather depiction is just not correct at all in regards to clouds heights, their types and coverage.
You can have beautiful clouds and skies, then as soon as you get close to an airport METAR area, absolutely hideous. How you can go from this to this, I just don’t know.
Then…
It’s like two different worlds.
CAVOK (no clouds below 5000ft), oh apart from the absolutely massive hideous ones that look awful and are clearly incorrect.
The new live weather system is a mess, ugly and inaccurate, it needs removing from the sim and testing properly until it works.
London is looking better this morning, though visibility is wrong. The cloud base should be higher than this as no way can I see 10Nm.
Here’s the view from the Shard, looking East. You can just make out Tower Bridge at the lower left:
Here’s what Windy.com has:
View from nearer the Thames, still looking east:
Here is manually adjusted Overcast weather with cloud base set to exactly 700ft:
The live view from the Shard indicates the cloud base is much lower in fact, as you cannot see anything later than 2 hours ago.
Yes looks a bit better, probably by chance though.
At least no horrible towering clouds.
Your second photo seems like the classic failed overcast though, where you can see the sky and the towering clouds but they have a sort of then layer of haze below the.
Yes, if I looked in one direction in particular, NE, there was a gap in the clouds. I’ve had a play around with the manual weather to attempt to depict what the webcams are showing, and 700ft is not enough to obscure the view from the top of the Shard, even if you crank the cloud density to maximum. 200ft starts to approach what the webcam shows.
As you suggest, some weather is just not depicted accurately.
