I’m almost wondering if they are importing lighting strike data from Blitzortung? You certainly would not want to have real-time strike data mixing with model weather, lest there be bolts appearing with no obvious TRWs to account for them.
Hmmm. I’m getting lightning in a lot of places not lit up on their map though, like far sw FL, and the northeast including New York:
Gettings lightnings in nagasaki witjout cunulis clouds. And 3kt winds
Yeah, I would hope the lightning is coming from their own internal calculations of where it might be likely based on instability or other parameters, and not from an external source.
There were actual lightning-producing cells in KILM earlier this afternoon, but not (in real time), when I landed. The model though, showed the cells as still being over the coast, instead of offshore, which is fine, as we know the model won’t always position fronts or short waves where they actually are in real time.
The curious thing was watching what would have been (at best) cumulus congestus cells grow into cumulonimbus after landing.
Nope, it’s smooth if you have it set that way.
The first initial load when you first start WF, it loads instant, all consecutive loads are smooth (again, if you have that set in your options).
I don’t know about you, but I have Fog everywhere where it should not be now after patch. For example in Vancouver, in real life it is a warm 25 degree day. Clear skies. In the sim, foggy patches all over. Wtf
Not for me - the “Live Weather” feature has never and still doesn’t work; displayed weather veresus reports don’t even come close, not by even a few hours. I am in the state of Georgia, USA. As a former US Navy weather observer and operational forecaster (i.e. hands on, not “theoretical”), I know the subtle differences. As the USA uses mainly automated weather sensors/reporting stations *never liked 'em, but I admit they have gotten better since introduced) that update at a minimum of 15 minute intervals.
Now, knowing the basics of how the NWS does things now versus in my day (left Service in mid 1992 and just starting the introduction of AWS/AWOS) - forecast data runs are done every six hours with the main runs being the 00Z and 12Z data runs. Upper wind soundings are done for 00 and 12Z and reports (when we did then by hand) had to be in by 03/15Z. So question becomes when are the balloons sent up and I will assume transmitted to a computer that compiles the info near immediately. So in my mind your upper level winds will always be at least a couple of hours behind and one must integrate the Metar reports to have near real-time weather like we’ve had all along.
I submit that what was touted as LIVE WEATHER in fact is and always meant to be using MB’s model data to move things along Dynamically, thus in theory providing near real-time conditions in snapshots for the people flying in those requested start/stop locations.
There were actual lightning-producing cells in KILM earlier this afternoon, but not (in real time), when I landed. The model though, showed the cells as still being over the coast, instead of offshore, which is fine, as we know the model won’t always position fronts or short waves where they actually are in real time.
Today (9.29.20) I had TSTMS with 60+mph wind gusts. Now, at 7:30pm EDT I loaded the sim to see if I could live weather to work. Not even close. ATIS reported clear weather whilst sim was attempting to depict drizzle. Everything was wrong. Supposed to be nearing 00Z my time (near 8pm EDT) and the sun in reality was already below the horizon, cloud thickness totally obscuring any remaining twilight, yet the sim showed the sun up where it was middle of last month at this particular time, orange-ish glow throught what it was attempting to pass off as drizzle. So - eveything in my sim related to weather simulation is plain and simply not working. And I have reported this via ZenDesk each week.
The curious thing was watching what would have been (at best) cumulus congestus cells grow into cumulonimbus after landing.
I have seen the latter pre-patch 3 - yesterday as a matter of fact.
But I have faith that given time, MS and Asobo will get their rears together 
and get this weather issue(s) solved.
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Can confirm, had exactly the same thing, scattered clouds, definitely not storm clouds, but lightning so bright (during day!) that my whole cockpit was lightened up.
Sure this is why it is smooth, we have the option to do so! you’re right
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Yeah lightning and thunder monsoon style during the brightest sunshine all along my previous flight. During every passing of the smallest cloud I was zapped by lightning like the end of the world but no rain.
there’s no way we wait another 3 or 4 weeks for this stupid feature to be fixed. I will cancel my subscription and come back when they will release a build that first, is not braking everything, and secondly when they will test updates prior to release them.
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I’m expecting the first legitimately stable build to be released in January, but that’s just my opinion.
When will a first usable build be released? Well, it depends on what you want to do. I’ve been flying the A320 around and it’s been usable this whole time for me.
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Pretty much everything anyone has observed so far in the sim about the weather and conditions the plane Feels is subjective and speculative only.
Until you can see in the sim, maybe in developer mode - though we have a Weather Widget/Window already right there in flight to set weather - what weather it’s actually injecting into the sim we really do Not know how detailed or accurate any situation actually is.
That is not the same as one tiny section of the Garmin showing wind speed and direction, which barely changes and completely ignores gusts… thus really isn’t showing you anything useful and in itself as it’s part of the cockpit might not be showing what the sim is actually doing at all.
So no, we don’t really have the information to even make a determination in the sim of how good the weather Works (not Looks) so far.
You’d think this being the first sim with real live weather they would want to provide complete native visibility of what it’s doing to the user, so there can be no debate.
Nope! That would make too much sense.
Of course nobody knows that I’m talking about. That Gigantic weather window that just goes blank when you select “Live”, that could tell you everything. Nobody sees why that’s a huge missed opportunity.
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Just reporting Live weather for Leeds Bradford in the UK was all wrong. IRL Sunny and clear, in the sim raining and low cloud!!!
Lol… I am getting zapped during live weather (visually and with sound) with lightning bolts in every bloody flight altough the sun is shining and there is no rain.
This is a bad joke.
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I’m wondering if they’re just using CAPE >0 to set the lightning frequency slider. When I was checking out visibility at KELM the other day, I noticed some sparse lightning too, even though my own sources like Radarscope, which uses NLDN I think, didn’t show any activity, nor did Blitzortung. But there were a few hundred J/Kg of SBCAPE in the area. Meanwhile, Florida was plotting 4,000 J/Kg and it was like the entire sky was shorting out. No lightning at Key West though, but the skies were totally clear. I’ve noticed if you manually set the weather sliders, you have to have some clouds present for the lightning frequency slider to be effective. So they might just be feeding in a stock parameter from the MB model, and letting it go regardless of what the rest of the weather in the sim is doing. Although a couple other users did report lightning with clear skies (perhaps there were one or two translucent clouds still nearby?). Either way they need to significantly reduce the frequency, in addition to restricting its presence to deep convection, say by 50% on the low end and maybe even 90% on the high end.
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Yes, I was getting lightning in-game on takeoff from KELM, and though it was raining pretty heavily here, there was no actual lighting occurring anywhere in New York State at the time. The only r/w lighting was in central Virginia southwards.
Kind of weird that they would give us a lightning slider but not a visibility slider, and then throw the realism card claiming it’s fakey fake to just explicitly adjust atmospheric visibility to a set level, when that’s exactly what they’re doing with the lightning effect. Both are byproducts of larger scale processes. Comes off more like an excuse to cover missing components of the weather engine.
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On my way from YVR to Kelowna… in the X Cub. There is no thunderstorms here today, however as I head east I am getting thunder an lightning. Without any real storm depiction… just overcast.