Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?
No
Have you disabled/removed all your mods and addons?
Yes
Brief description of the issue:
The sim fails to properly render a marine layer of fog. The current fog is just a blanket in an area, and does not reflect it coming in off the water. It seemed like it used to circa SU5-7 or somewhere back then, and now it no longer does.
Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:
Here’s an example of it IRL off of I-280 in the Bay Area:
Agree, thats missing since su7. And i also missing those fog layers that formed near ground level. I’m sure that were in there before they changed the weather model to the new that needed to be more accurate. But i find it less accurate actually.
Like this you mean from june 2021
Or this from around release 2020
Also a bit in this amazing video.
Another one timelapse.
Hope they bring that weather model back again. At least as an optional feature for us that may not need it to be 100% accurate all the time. I preffer a more varied and realistic atmosphere.
I feel we had a masterpiece of weather that may have need some smaller improvments, But not a complete overhaul like we got with su7
Cool that some users recorded those weather conditions. I took it for granted back then. Now i can’t believe we had that amazing simulation of weather.
Your first and last videos in particular are what I miss from back then. In the Bay Area here, as seen in my photo, the fog is very much that thick white like in your last video. And it creeps in over the mountains.
I distinctly recall racing home from work just to be able to play with Live Weather on because it would mirror it in the sim and there was no historic weather option so the only way to get it was Live. It was magical flying over towards KHAF at 2000’ AGL and seeing little patches of grassy hills poking through the fog.
I’d kill for this to be added back and would readily pay for a weather addon that did this even semi-realistically.
What I don’t get is why they can’t do it now. They have thermal updrafts and mountain currents, they have wind, humidity, temperature, dew point, etc. They should be able to model this just fine, no?
I think the sim weather we had at release were not made for many different sources of weather. Now they try to make the weather we had at release fit other sources.
Agree the fog they add now does not feel organic at all. To me the whole weather feels unnatural and fixed in place.
I think we can only hope to have a raw simulation of weather model back.
Hello @Haltingpoint and @Perrry (and anyone else who reports this bug), when you folks see this happening again, could you kindly go into developer mode, then Options > Display position and paste the coordinates where you are seeing this happen? Thank you!
I would be happy to help. The issue for me is that i don’t get that realistic fog anymore. It’s a type of fog that formed at mountains and often here in Sweden too. When it were foggy conditions here in Sweden where i live IRL those dynamic fogs appeard near ground in the sim. But it’s a long time since i’ve seen that fog. It’s hard to tell coordinates when we don’t have that type of fog anymore. We want that back.
I’m only speculating now, but maybe they remove that because that would interfare with METARs that not reporting low visibility? But i would be really happy if that type of fog were not removed. Makes the weather feel realistic compared to the static fog we have now. Or if they could make the new METAR fog feel as dynamic and real as that old fog we had.
Edit: something to note i could see soon after release of su7 they mentioned something about clouds near ground are changed into fog in release notes. Maybe those layers counts as clouds? I didn’t really understand that note though.
I can for sure show the unrealistic METAR fog that marks the airport if that is what you meant?
This image shows the METAR fog that is as a circle around airports that reports METAR. I bet that is not an issue because i think the system is meant to work like that.
Thanks for that! Yeah, at least in the US, this type of fog is called advection fog. We’re just trying to find places around the world where people believe this should be happening. A comment earlier like “the Bay Area” is pretty broad.
I agreed too that the marine layer is mostly missing since su7 but, this goes along with all the other clouds too…since at present we mostly have cumulus clouds of various sizes.
A question, why can’t Asobo try use the older 12 hour stream of data instead of this post processed data/blended we now have? I’m 99% sure that is the issue. I think most of the users liked that but some wanted it to be a bit more accurate. But i think nobody wanted that completely changed into something else.
Then add those METAR data clientside only on top of that as an optional feature. Feels like many of those that request to have it more accurate doesn’t need the fluidness of weather anyway? Then i can’t see the point of trying to do the impossible to make those 2 completely different sources fit.
Then you asked about coordinates of that issue with generic type of weather. Well to me it’s all over the world.
Pre su7 i had varied type of weather depending on where i were flying in the world. Now it looks and feels same all over the world. The location i would say is global, not a specific location.
Correct me if i’m wrong @SealedVolcano50. And if you can, please help and provide location
I can try provide both data from Meteoblue that shows lower layer fog together with screenshot from the sim.
Here is a good example. Should be a lower level fog/haze at this location
I’m not sure how much of help this is but i think it’s a bit funny when Asobo had meteorologists as partners and need help from us users. They actually had weather in the sim, accurate or not but it were fluid and varied as weather is. Some elements were missing or too much (lightnings). I think they should get back to the roots of this sim weather. At release it were amazing. Fluid and dynamic as advertised. It were not always accurate but thats to expect when using a forecast model. But it will behave more realistic. I think they should have developed a clientbased METAR system instead of destroy the Meteoblue only weather we had. Then we could have chosen what we wanted to use.
That fog is moving eastwards and will hit the mountains, then roll over them.
Here’s a good link for more reading. Also, the map they include is from the area where the photo I posted is located. If you look where Half Moon Bay is (KHAF) and see where the little bump of fog points NE towards highway 101, the photo would be approximately right at the edge of that fog bump as it is cresting the Santa Cruz mountains.
Part of the reason this is so important for the sim is that IRL, GA airports like KHAF are regular IFR practice spots because of the consistent IMC, frequently down to minimums. So pilots out of San Carlos (KSQL) or Palo Alto (KPAO) where the fog does not reach will often head over there for their IFR hours.
Yes, agree. But i would really like to be able to help. I feel, i can only say that the weather engine felt much more advanced globally pre su7. Maybe not always perfect accurate locally. I think it’s hard to get everything at the same time.
please @N316TS let us know if we can provide more help in this issue. I’m really happy you are asking for help I think if they can bring back those realistic looking fog layers i think they can restore the weather engine
I can’t answer for design decisions. That is not information I have.
The way that the bug reporting process works is that the QA team tries to reproduce the issue based on the information given. If they can reproduce the issue, they can use their tools and run a trace to find the root cause(s). So, if someone says that the problem is “all over the world”, that makes it difficult for someone who looks at dozens of different bug reports in a day. It helps to give specific places to go and say, “Look here”.
Thank you. It would be really helpful if you could copy and paste the coordinates. These coordinates are in the middle of Yukon territory, Canada. Marine layers happen near large bodies of water like oceans and seas. I appreciate that you are trying to tie the information back to Meteoblue, which is helpful, but that may be a different issue and the root cause here might be about how the wind modeled off of the water is doing something to the fog. I don’t know because I don’t have access to the code or the Meteoblue integration.
Let’s please stick to the bug and keep these kinds of comments to General Discussion. Moderators are volunteers. I am trying to help, so please let’s not take the conversation here. No one’s asking for anyone’s weather knowledge. I am asking for coordinates – near a large body of water – where you have seen this issue happen in MSFS and where you think a QA person would be able to go there and see this happen, so that a root cause can be identified.
Thank you. Have you been to KHAF in the sim and confirmed that this is happening there in live weather? Again, to what I said above, the QA team is looking for a place to reproduce this bug. Right now, the bug is feedback-logged, but it will not be fixed until it turns to bug-logged, and that happens when the team can reproduce the issue. I am trying to find a place or set of places where the team can spawn an aircraft in the sim and look at Meteoblue at the same time and see the problem happening.
Can you clarify how Meteoblue works in this context?
I want to give helpful information for purposes of logging as a bug but I’m struggling a bit. This is a phenomenon that occurs towards the end of the day (5-6pm PT) and it is seasonal. Like, you can see it right now because of the storms we’re getting in the Bay Area today and tomorrow but it will be confused most likely by the other clouds from the storm, which is not what this is.
It worked back in SU7 or thereabouts so I’m not sure how it might be QAd unless they can load previous versions and weather engines.
This isn’t just in one spot here. It occurs all up and down the west coast. If you need somewhere specific, that point near the Santa Cruz mountains between KHAF and the inner Bay is fine. To be clear it mostly is seen rolling over the mountains in the mid peninsula. From about Daly City and North into San Francisco is where the fog fully comes in and blankets the area.
What I want to get back is the fog creeping over the mountains off the ocean.
Yes, i feel it’s hard to report. I checked that area now and that doesn’t report fog right now at Meteoblue.
@N316TS
I checked another area near the coast italy that both reports FOG on METARs around the area and Meteoblue but i tried to find the fog outside METAR areas but that fog can’t appear near ground it seems.
Edit: i noticed the LIMV weather station and ¨the airport LIMV were not located at same place. Do not take the last as a good example. I will report more places in the future.
What i have noticed is that those layers from Meteoblue that should be near ground is not injected. Hope you can re-produce the issue. I miss both those fog that interacted with terrain and lower stratus clouds that we had. The density in clouds seems too low. Maybe that also cause issues especially if we have thin layers of clouds injected. If they are thin and low in density they can’t be shown.
I have checked a bit and noticed that dewpoint never is same as temp. And i know when temp and dewpoint is same it could be fog. Maybe they simulated that before? That when dewpoint and temp were same fog were formed? If thats true, maybe it’s a bug or maybe they changed the system to not be able to form fog because that would interfare with METAR that reports high visibility?
Well, the weather felt much more simulated overall back then. Hope Asobo get that feel back again I think the weather were amazing back then. Never thought that would be possible to achieve in a flight simulator. Too bad it were not accurate all the time. In my opinion it were accurate enought. I also know forecast models will get more & more accurate over time.
To add, looking at the temp and dew point spread is part of IRL flight planning. It would be great if it actually meant something where you could see “yep, likely fog” and it actually was.
The weather team is taking a look at this feedback item and is logged internally! If the team needs further info to help reproduce this issue, we will be sure to update this thread. Thanks for the information thus far!
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