This morning was great weather over the UK to test the live weather around the UK with SU7. Here in Manchester for example much of the morning it has reported ‘NCD’ no cloud detected, because the overcast that is covering the north of England today is mostly higher level so that it isn’t picked up by METAR. This was where MSFS used to shine, because where a typical Metar-only weather engine in other sims would draw this as clear sky, MSFS had the edge of meteoblue and typically every time I had seen this sort of weather before SU7, it was always depicted beautifully and very accurate.
Of course SU7 is now a different story. I tested this morning and as expected it just doesn’t seem capable of drawing that higher overcast anymore. All we ever get is wispy scattered cloud in these areas. Again, just to clarify, I am NOT comparing the clouds to what I see out my window. I am comparing to all of the information available to me from METAR, Satellite and Meteoblue, and how MSFS used to depict this type of weather to how it does Now.
I can say for certain despite an inclusion of METAR into SU7, it has simply not improved accuracy of depiction and in most cases I’ve seen it’s actually done the opposite. It seems to disrupt the natural flow of cloud and also seems to disrupt even the data from meteoblue. The overall result is an often buggy and in accurate depiction of weather which rarely matches up as it should, I’d say around a 25% match rate compared to about a 90% match rate I saw pre-SU7, excluding the low vis situations.
I think Asobo either need to really improve this or get rid of METAR all together and build it’s own METAR from the meteoblue weather that we can call up in sim.
Maybe it could be a good idea to open a post about creating a in game METAR? Perhaps it could help to send a more direct message to the developers?
My experience this morning was bad as usual, I tried Dublin which is always convective now and Hokkaido, again Dublin was awful, convective hash coloured clouds at around 1000ft and wispy higher clouds. Hokkaido broken cumulus as far as eyes can see..
Not sure, I think it would probably get merged into this one.
SU8 is meant to be bug fixes only but whether that will extend to these issues with the weather I’m not sure. Unless this is just a placeholder for now until further implementation and refinement, bit like what we saw with the tree draw distance that suffered a drawback first before they eventually improved it.
The METAR itself seems to serve no other purpose than to show you what you should be seeing.
Of course at the minute what you should be seeing, and what you are seeing are two completely different things.
Same again for me today. METAR is Overcast cloud. Sim shows dark bottomed Scattered TCU, much more like you would see in April. Nothing like the weather today.
Asobo, please patch this or simply revert back to before SU7.
SU8 is 22 Feb and pencilled in for bug fixes but we don’t even know if it will address this. Even if it does we shouldn’t be left with this mess until then. They had a perfect opportunity to sort this with the beta after SU7 and they ignored all of these issues we raised multiple times - a totally pointless beta.
Yes. METAR removes the believable part of the weather. Now it’s not even believable or accurate. The weather in the sim is now as simple as METAR describes the weather. Before it looked much more advanced and dynamic. And they didn’t advertise this undynamic weather system they have now.
I can ensure you, it was definitely not my intention to insult or hurt the feelings of anyone. And as a matter of fact, no, i did not go through ALL the threads on that topic on the fora, as they are waaay too many of them. Some not updated anymore, some off topic, and yes, my comment was based on this thread. Nobody never takes 1 topic, and simply reads all the comments/threads on that topic, before commenting.
It’s fora. People “talk”/write to eachother, “Live”. Common sense ?! Thank you. And my sincere apologies if you got heart in my previous comment.
Since the last patch, I got even more ground Clouds… METAR is Cavok and I have Few ugly transparent clouds on ground… and still incorrect Cloud ceilings… 3000ft reported, real base at 800ft!
Is this the same for you guys?
This Simulator is getting more and more unusable… its just a big landscape Eye Candy Software, nothing more.
The only cloud present here based on satellite data, meteoblue data and webcam should be high cloud and certainly no cloud under 5,000ft, hence the CAVOK report
And my sincere apologies if you got heart in my previous comment. 
