METAR keeps disrupting the weather/ bugged weather/Cumulus/CB clouds only/no medium to high cloud coverage

Yep I’m really hoping this too. Though I’m be nervous about it. Maybe it won’t be too long until the beta release.

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The things i want with the new cloud layer/logic system is.

  1. more variety. Like it was pre su 7 with different forms of clouds all the time. Didn’t feel generic at all.

  2. really thick cloudlayers as we had. Could go through an overcast layer from ground to almost cruise level. Felt so nice braking through that really thick layer. Now i can mostly see 2 layers only. One broken lower layer and one higher overcast layer. Between those it’s nothing.

  3. Less broken clouds. More formed togeher

  4. No transitions, pre su7 it was none. Adding transitions is the worst thing. Never seen a hard transition in weather IRL.

  5. No Metar bubbles, especially around airports that doesn’t report METAR IRL. Those feels like fiction to me.

  6. Much more natural/organic METAR fog layer if those really is important or maybe make them optional. Because they also feels like this to me.

  1. Much more density in clouds especially the lower clouds. That we never experienced since release. We almost always see the sun through the clouds. Lower clouds should be more density in than higher clouds both types has much too less density though. That could impact fps but let us choose the density we want. I would preffer lower fps if i had higher density in clouds but some would maybe preffer higher fps.
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I hope Devs will read your post and take in account all those points.
Regarding:

It looks like it will be the opposite:

  • Cloud Layer Improvements (Bugs LT #2, #17) | SU 10
    • We are fine-tuning the cloud layer system to be more precise and incremental. The layer will be much thinner at the sea level and thicker as we go to higher altitudes. The updated system will help better depict a realistic cloud coverage at low altitude.
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Yeah, that part i don’t understand actually. If they mean how high the layer can go then isn’t Meteoblue deciding how thick/ high the layer should be in the sim anymore? What decide the thickness? Asobo? Seems like it. A METAR has not thicknes stated, needs to come from Meteoblue. If they mean the density then it should be the opposite. Higher density at low altitudes.

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But isn’t one of the big problems that we get all these towering clouds at low altitude for no reason? Surely these need to be less dense?

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I think we are mixing density and thickness that are 2 different concepts.

When the description of the SU10 improvement says: “The layer will be much thinner at the sea level and thicker as we go to higher altitudes”, I don’t agree it is always the case. It depends of the type of cloud and altitude.

« Cirro » clouds that are above 20,000 feet are thin clouds so the more you go higher the more clouds are thick is not always true. Thickness = difference in feet between the bottom and the top of a cloud.

Density means for me how clouds are loaded in water so they or they don’t let go through the light or it can also be how many clouds are represented in a defined volume.

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Agree with towering clouds but that doesn’t mean they are dense. They are thick but low in density when those should be really dense. As it is now they need to add thick layer to make the low density clouds visible. Really thin layers of low cloud should make the sun not shine through clouds too. I’m not the best explaining this, hope you get what i mean :slight_smile:

Maybe someone else can explain it better.

This video shows that it’s not needed to be towering clouds to block the sun but in the sim it needs to be to somewhat hide the sun. That means we have real low density in the clouds. And low density means they need to set thick layers to be visible. Pre su 7 we had more density in clouds but still too low. I think they needed to compensate that lower density with thicker clouds everywehere. I really hope they can make clouds have more density then they don’t need to display those towering clouds everywhere anymore. Only where they should appear.

Edit: I think they know that and also changes density in them though. I really hope so.

As you can see on this custom weather i have the density set to highest and the cloud layer is 33000ft thick. Can still see the sun.

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Yes, it can be an issue with clouds density or a logic with light, it can happen with the sun and also with lights from ground visible at night even if cloudy. I opened a ticket to zendesk 1 month ago (in “Solved” status now) but I still don’t see any of the related bugs in that forum flagged as feedback or bug logged.

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And the sun through the clouds - @ASOBO - please make a plan with that . Thank you.

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I don’t want to complain again but I just miss the “old” MSFS weather.
I noticed it today in particular - there are a lot of storms raging in Austria (especially in the east) - but in the SIM there is hardly anything to see.
It wasn’t always accurate in the past, but at least when the forecast was correct it looked impressive.
And since I have carried out a few flights with the FENIX A320 since the release, I have to say that, despite sporadic positive experiences, “unfortunately this is not going to work”
Let’s just take this new “fog” as an example - it exists or not - it has nothing to do with the “METAR desired or required” visibility. So it’s either there or not - visibility in this fog is always the same.
Then back to the storms - these “cells” always look the same - a pair of cumulus clouds thrown together and stretching upwards - and above them a thin layer of this “stratus-like” layer that even makes my 3090RTX “sweat”. Always the same.
Neither dangerous looking or dangerous for the flight.

Where are these clouds and cloud fronts where you were still “afraid” to fly in:



and so on - I don’t want to go through my whole collection again - I’ve already posted it too often.

Then the next one - unfortunately I can’t find the video - in the past when you flew longer transitions at the approach and saw upcoming cloud fronts in the distance - you could watch the weather changing during the flight and this huge cloud front approaching the airport to be greeted by a rain shower on the way to the gate. everything “transition free”.
Can’t watch that now - why ? Well, because even if MeteoBlue forecasts a cloud front - but according to METAR only “Few” clouds are reported at the airport - this is dissolved and interrupted by METAR - although in reality it has already been raining there for a long time - but METAR has not yet updated itself. Only after reloading the airport does the weather change - so you can say that it is “static” and you have that feeling, compared to before.
To be honest, I don’t think that Update 10 will change anything, but I’m happy to be convinced.
Even this REX video shows that it went without a transition - is that actually still possible with REX since UPDATE 7?

And what I don’t understand anymore - when introducing the EPISODE weather with MeteoBlue I understood it - because of the heap of features and incredible possibilities it was clear to me that they don’t want to give the weather API to the 3third party developers - but now after you can come up with exactly 3 features, static fog, mostly only 2 cloud layers, more or less only one cloud type, neither turbulence, or up or downdrafts, no wind shears, the weather is still not often accurate (will of course never always be, it´s a SIM), metar bubbles, etc. …what do you really have to “hide” ??
Of course, the engine makes the weather look far better than in other SIMs, but it has been better before. (I don’t need to be told about the reason for this “rework” of the engine, I am an online pilot myself and use real word weather tools, but this could have been solved in a completely different way without destroying the overall look).
Of course I don’t want to just complain and say, yes, there are still many good moments, but as I said, I miss the old look.
For me, even a monthly subscription would be conceivable to get higher resolution weather.
It is still visually the most beautiful SIM ever - but the weather should really be “overhauled” - and there have already been enough good tips here (many weather threads), I hope this will be taken into account.

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It’s tragic, it makes me genuinely depressed seeing the state of the sim now. The weather was awesome, the clouds were awesome, the LOD distances were awesome, performance was awesome, being able to do a flight longer than an hour without your fps halving was awesome.

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Oh lord, just imagining having the weather simulated by ICON or COSMO-DE. That would be awesome, and it could even forecast at least a little bit convicing foggy weather. Not mentioning storms etc.

I think we don’t even need things like convective turbulence, because the sim can’t even simulate cumulonimbus clouds properly :frowning:

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I really thought (and hoped) the likes of the PMDG and FENIX would re-ignite my love for MSFS knowing we would finally have something complex to get stuck into. But I soon realised any addon is only as good as the environment it’s simulated in. A weather environment with no storms, no wind gusts (SU10 I know, we will see) and just in general no immersion like we had at release of MSFS just makes this sim dead to me, no matter how good the scenery looks. What’s the point on weather API in an environment that doesn’t simulate storms? What returns do people expect to get on the weather radar other than heavy rain? What’s the point?

The recent XP12 Q&As were the first thing to excite me within flight simulation in months. I know there isn’t the eye candy, but hearing their developers talk with such passion and a real willingness to simulate things accurately and correctly is just the opposite end of the scale compared to the MSFS devs.

SU10 really will be make or break for me, and sadly I have very little confidence in the developers.

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I hesitate to say it but I’ve been getting some much more - what I consider to be - realistic and authentic cloud formations recently around the UK. Feels like they have tweaked something server side as I’m getting high layers again now and far less towering cumulus. Even getting some believable overcasts again.

Haven’t seen stuff like this since SU7.

Long may it continue.

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Why removal of those clouds around the airport? METAR is useless in this sim in my opinion. Only makes us confused and makes the weather look strange. Why the need of that METAR window when it doesn’t match what we see anyway? The point with METAR in a flight simulator is that it should match the METAR right? Or please explain why this new METAR rendering is needed?

Edit: When i restarted the flight i got this. :thinking: This is so inconcistent. Well hope they fix the issues with METAR soon as they said they wanted to do when we asked them if we could have a toggle to switch METAR-weather on and off. I still want to turn off METAR and it’s 2 sim updates after the release of that thing in su7 soon it will be 3 when su10 is released. I know weather is complex but then why release something that is not ready to be released?

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I found this interesting post in the Wishlist forum: (More cloud formations!), I voted for it. It should not be in the wishlist section but more in this section since in theory all clouds types were supported at launch. Unfortunately as of today I am only seeing maybe 2 types of clouds at most and this thread should be flagged at least as “Feedback-logged”. Issue is clear and replicable.

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Back from a low and slow tour of the Inner Hebrides where I tried a few live weather options. My conclusion in terms of best options, starting from worst:

  • Rex live weather. Looks really good but I really suffered really serious stuttering whenever I approached cloudy conditions. For me this alone tenders Rex live pointless.

  • In game live weather. It has improved a bit, but I flew in a constant state of unease, waiting for the entire weather palette to switch from one second to the next. Cloudbanks blinking in and out of existence in an instance. It happened every second flight. Apart from this I think it helped that the Hebrides weren’t close to METAR points (at least I don’t think they are). When I arrived back in Dublin instead I was greeted by the ever present otherworldly volcanic sci-fi nightmare ‘clouds’. They are so so so bad. I hadn’t seen them since I left Dublin a few weeks back.

  • DIY live weather. Just check Meteoblu online and build the weather yourself before flying. This is an acceptable option for me as most of my flights are quite short so in real life there wouldn’t be toooo much variation between departure and destination.

So it’ll be mostly be DIY live weather for me going forward and just continue to live in hope that someday we’ll return to something like pre Metar pre SU7 weather.

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Well, i can’t see them switching back to pre su7 weather now. That makes me also see none potential in this weather system. They will now focus 8 years try to make METAR and Meteoblue blend well :man_shrugging: We will not see more data added from Meteoblue that will create even more disturbances. We will always see disturbances in that kind of system with thousands of different weather sources instead of one.

How many weather sources do we have IRL? Yes, one! The sun creates weather for us IRL. And to me it felt like one weather source at release with no disturbances at all besides it didn’t match METAR. But the real weather doesn’t need to match METAR either. It’s the METAR that needs to match the weather at the moment it’s reported.

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It’s unbelievable that after all this time, the in-sim metar doesn’t match the in-sim ATIS, which doesn’t match the weather depicted on screen, which doesn’t match the weather shown on the world map (top right corner). It’s just a jumbled random mess! And to top it all the clouds look like something from a cartoon rather than the realistic looking layers we used to have pre-SU7. I am totally disillusioned with this. Personally I don’t care about spaceships, top gun etc. I just want to fly in a realistic looking sky where the ATIS matches what I can see on screen. Creating custom weather is ok, but it is the same at the departure and destination, and that’s not really a solution.

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This sums it up :+1: Make a report of what we will see in the sim and it will always match the weather we see. And use this report everywhere. Worldmap, atis and METAR and also send it outside of the sim with simconnect to be able to use it in different planning tools. Too late for that now i think. I hope not.

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