yes, I agree. Part of the simming right of passage is doing stupid stuff that just wouldn’t happen in real life. It should be there for those that want to go a little crazy. But you would have to accept that it likely wouldn’t be very realistic — just like the action itself.
It wouldn’t be realistic to fly inside that but the condition it self would be realistic and we would need to feel the need to avoid those type of conditions.
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For this we could have realism sliders in the settings.
When i set it to “realisitc / hard” i expect it to be as realistic as possible.
No problem at all when there is an “arcade / easy” setting that lools realistic but does not come with all the inconvenices of a bad weather.
If this can be done, all kinds of virtual pilots can be satisfied.
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That’s the way to do it. Just like all of the assists are there to replace reasonably accurate flying with arcade style controls.
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Great explanation. Some possible enhancements to Live Weather specifically for thunderstorms would be the use of real-time NEXRAD weather radar data, or real-time lightning data.
Of course, NEXRAD is not available everywhere. It has good coverage in the US, southern Canada and northern Mexico, the UK and Europe, Japan, Taiwan and Australia but is lacking for much of the rest of the world.
Real-time lightning data from commercial providers like NLDN is extremely expensive, but the crowd-sourced and operated “free” Blitzortung network does a pretty good job in terms of positional accuracy.
The problem with either approach is similar to the problems that came with the introduction of semi real-time METAR-based clouds into the predictive MeteoBlue weather model, which can cause visual conflicts in cloud depiction when the cloud coverage differs between the predictive model and r/t observations.
Live Weather seems to do a pretty good job when thunderstorms are associated with a strong cold front, as model predictions can be quite accurate in the timing and location of these - as well as predicting the formation of nighttime MCS complexes which are quite common in summertime in the US upper Midwest and Great Lakes.
No model does well with predicting pop-up airmass thunderstorms. Even the NOAA HRRR model cannot accurately say “a cell is going to form at “x” location at “y” time, much less a global model like MeteoBlue’s NEMS 30.
They still need to create a thunderstorm forming dynamically over time and fit the global weather. I feel flight simulators weather/atmosphere needs to advance in development not move backwards and set weather in a constant form and fixed in place. That happened when they introduced METAR-weather in my opinion and made the weather even more boring/generic, maybe a bit more accurate.
“Land” is probably no longer an option.
I here what you are saying, but that doesn’t look like a thunderstorm at all. It looks like a summertime cumulus cloud that’s about 2,000 feet thick with one bolt of lightning. It needs massive work.
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I tried to express a balanced position here:
The polarization in the debate occured because there was no real understanding of why live weather degraded, just correlation assumed to be causation.
I think the debate had pretty much run it’s course even before MSFS2024 was announced. [Edit, I mean the debate still goes on - see below, but there is nothing new being said]
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As I recall, in the early days of MSFS there was a chorus of complaints about thunderstorms occurring more often than not, even under clear skies, whenever there was the slightest chance of a thunderstorm occurring in the entire region. I myself stopped flying in the Caribbean because of it. The MSFS thunderstorm sensitivity meter was eventually dialled down as a result and long may it remain so.
The thunderstorms weren’t the issue, as there weren’t specifically thunderstorms. It was the lightning, and thunder everywhere, even though you might be in clear skies.
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I think we should remember that what makes weather ‘not boring’ is different to different people. For one its thunderstorms and associated severe weather (which are important) but, for me, equally important in making weather that is not boring is an accurate as possible depiction of realistic cloudscapes with all the variety of types, shapes and colors (along with global haze).
Thats what I like so much about alto cumulus – they dress up all cloudscapes and make things less ‘boring’.
Plus in MSFS you fly through any cloud with a C152 without any issues, just some slide shaking.
I think one issue is the closed nature of live-weather in this sim. I remember older sims i could use some addon that added different textures to be able to make it a more varied experience. I thought the volumetric clouds would make it feel more varied but to me it feels like textures that looks same every single flight.
I think it’s hard to know what type of clouds that should be selected. Specify a specific cloudtype to be used is hard to get correct all over the world at the same time.
Clouds are shaped because of different weather conditions. Nobody paints the real sky but Asobo needs to do that if they not can make the weather be formed by it self over time depending on the real atmospheric conditions and make it 100% accurate at the same time.
Pre su7 the weather formed more by it self and over time (were more unpredictable and freeformed) but that were not always accurate to real world conditions as we all know by now.
To get it to both look like weather and be accurate to real world conditions in real time at the same time i think we demand too much.
We had dynamically formed more varied weather pre su7 and that were bad because it were not accurate. Now we have more accurate weather but that were bad because it’s boring looking.
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absolutely not! As you say, clouds are formed irl by weather conditions. The higher the resolution of data, the more realistic the clouds formed by that data. I really think thats at the heart of the cloud/weather ‘degradation’ that occurred but it is now getting better and I hope that FS24’s architecture may allow them to increase the resolution of the atmospheric data to produce more types (weather driven) and better renditions of them (shader/graphics driven). What we seem to have now is low resolution data that they are mixing using multiple sources and then simple graphics routines to create ‘clouds’… so its “paint cloud here” and then a simple routine that creates the same basic cumulus cloud. My bet is that we will all be very pleasantly surprised by what they are working on. I hope.
Saw some formations in the Amstredam area today, i think they are doing something on the server side.
I remember the preview videos before MSFS 2020 got released when they mentioned all cloud types are supported in the weather engine and here we are hoping to get that in MSFS 2024 
I also know that the more accurate it is the less dynamic it gets. They need to messure 60 layers of the whole atmosphere in high resolution in realtime globally and then inject that data into the sim in real time.
That thing they only does 2 times per day right now every 12 hour. Around 00:00Z and 12:00Z then those super computers needs to process that data before they can send it. The radar, sattelite data doesn’t know what cloudtype it is. It doesn’t messure the conditions to be able to form weather.
It’s many sources that’s not in sync and that creates issues to be able to form weather that is in real time. There is no source that collects all of the global and locally atmospheric data in realtime at the same time. Either we have plausible dynamic weather or accurate fixed generic weather. The more accurate it gets the more like a preset it will feel.
If it were that easy to replicate and predict the real weather 100% we would not have forecasts of future weather or observations of weather that already occured.
I had to laugh when you pointed out they already promised bunches of layers and all cloud types… you’ve got a point – but lets hope they do better. But as for multiple sources that are out of sync, what do you suppose the purpose of the 20 square kilometer CFD system was about? I had thought they would generate clouds with that but then I couldn’t see how they would hook it into all the rest of the weather system. Do you know any more about that?
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