Another one of those days in the UK today where despite the world map correctly displaying overcast conditions, the reality is a broken mess of clouds again, Just take EGCC and EGNM as prime examples. Reality is broken lower cloud with higher level overcast but MSFS has other ideas:
There is no consistency. Sometimes it looks pretty good and other days like today it’s a mess. The problem we have now is that there are likely more users that have only seen the sim since SU7 came out than than there were before. So most users think this is normal/acceptable/how it always has been. It is soul destroying how few people are pursuing this issue.
I can’t see the point with the changes they made in su7. It’s neither looking better or more accurate. And whats the point having it more accurate when it doesn’t look/behave like weather does? Those that needs it to match METAR, don’t they care about hard transitions and stuff. Or that the airports are marked with fog that pops in suddenly?
A flight simulator should not have simulated and dynamic weather without hard transitions between “real” METAR? If it is more dynamic, varied and less accurate to METAR, it’s more of a game?
Then i want it to be more of game actually even that i have used flight simulators since i were a little kid.
Those things that made this sim weather unique is now gone.
At release = dynamic, fluid and much more varied looking.
Now = fixed around airports, static (fog) and much more generic looking.
Is it more of a sim now is my question? To me it were more a sim pre su7 because the weather felt simulated as well.
Not a solution but I encourage people that started using the sim at or after SU7 to use weather presets or the excelent free addon Floyds Epic Clouds » Microsoft Flight Simulator (new version launched yesterday) so they can realize how the sim is able to generate realistic clouds. After having tried those presets and going back to live weather it should be obvious that there is an issue with clouds depiction in live weather.
To be honest, to anyone who has eyes and has ever seen clouds in the real world, it should be obvious there is an issue with the cloud depiction in live weather!!!
Today at Birmingham EGBB instead of the gloomy grey overcast that is present in real life, we have tropical towering CBs akin to something you see in Florida in storm season and definitely not like anything I’ve ever seen in the UK in November. It is so wrong, yet there are so few of us complaining about it I don’t anything will ever be done. 190 votes on this. We are fighting a losing battle I am afraid.
If I was a gambler, I would put money on the fact that Asobo are aware of this issue, but don’t know what is causing it, or how to resolve it, which is why they are not prepared to even acknowledge it exists.
If the original team that created the weather engine is still in place they should know the root cause. Maybe that team is not there anymore or has been reassigned to other priorities. And having real pilots in their team, it must be obvious to them that clouds and live weather system suffered a big regression in SU7.
Asobo changed route and focused make it more accurate to METAR but at the same time tried to stay with Meteoblue because we as users wanted both at the same time.
Now we have both. Don’t matches neither of those sources 100%.
They listened to the users that complained at release. I hope they now also listening to us that don’t need Meteoblue to be disturbed by METAR.
How can it be that there’s such a difference? The METAR from 1250 UTC when @utd4life12 took his screenshots was
EGCC 171250Z 28013KT 9000 RA BKN007 OVC026 09/08 Q0983 ,
(or probably it was still the one from before - not much different with
EGCC 171220Z AUTO 29013KT 9999 -RA BKN009/// OVC019/// //////CB 09/08 Q0983 TEMPO RA ),
so it definitely should have looked like in my screenshots with this very similar METAR report:
EGCC 171620Z AUTO 29009KT 9999 -RA BKN004/// OVC036/// //////TCU 09/08 Q0984 TEMPO RA BKN005
Something is wrong, and for too long. It’s time this gets some priority.
Yes, when overcast has correct values to cover 100% of the sky (without blue holes) rendering is nice because we are only seeing the flat side from bottom or top if flying above, it’s like seeing a cloud in 2D. The issue is that when coverage is not 100% (to render different cloud types) and we can see the clouds in 3D (from below, to the side to the top), then the cloud shapes and transparency look (most of the time) unrealistics, I hope I explained myself …
Yeah makes sense. The clouds in those pictures were actually from airports reporting CAVOK or no cloud detected, so purely meteoblue im guessing which is why they looked good
Whatever they decide to do with weather. I’m really looking forward to a simupdate that really focus on weather. Not that focus on accuracy. I want them to focus on making the weather feel varied, believable, fluid, and forming of different conditions instead of force different conditions in place. I want to see weather that fits the environment and feels different depending on where i choose to fly. If they want to implement seasons that is a really important thing. Weather is the main thing that causes different seasons to start with.
Currently watching the Livestream Q and A and they said that SU12 will be March 2023. So for 4 months, we may just be stuck with things this way. So far they’ve been discussing largely focusing on aircraft developments. I came in 40 mins late. But will update or make a new post when I can go back and watch entirely and glean anything else related to weather.
I’ll add two things about weather that were talked about:
Somewhen in January we should recieve some more info about the weather data API.
According to Seb, they will implement a turbulence UI somewhen in the future. Simmers will be able to tweak turbulence to their liking (for example strong up/downdrafts in storms etc.)
The API would be correct as the ATR developer was talking about making improvements to the WXR which would need to have API access. Turbulence API, eh, if my plane bounces around too much just throw on the seatbelts. You didn’t catch anything about improving depiction, injection, or METAR states?