i despair, this videos make scream inside!!
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Yes, same. 
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I would like to know who in the development team was able to say to themselves āWow, we really improved the weather compared to beforeā
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Well, i think they knew it were worse. But they needed to make it more accurate and at the same time make the Meteoblue fit those low detailed METAR-reports as they told in the q&a right before su7 were released.
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i think you should open a new post directed to Asobo with those two videos, also for everyone to see and remeber with a side by side examples
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Well, i think we have told them since release of su7 that the post su7 weather were a downgrade. They should be aware already. Itās up to them to revert or whatever they want to do with it.
What we will get is an API. LOL
it might help people to realize/ remeber, getting more votes and open the flood gates 
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I know I will not get any answer from the devs but I am curious to know which technique they used at release to afirm ānative support of all cloud typesā. Does Meteoblue is sending like a value that indicates which cloud type to create and the weather engine has like pre-defined parameters to create specific cloud types ? or are they sending all necessary data (using all available value types from custom weather) to recreate cloud types, ?
I think the mess we have since SU7 is not because people requested more cloud types but more likely because they modified and maybe limited the Live weather engine to certain values (or less Meteoblue data are received) or messed up the predefined parameters or algorithm used to create the clouds.
Only Asobo knows for sure what the difference between pre su7 and post su7. We can only report what we observe. And i observe weather that doesnāt behave like weather after su7. When i have looked at pre-su7 time-lapses i have really seen weather formed over time. It could go from no clouds and then clouds is formed. Like fog for example could suddenly start to form near ground instead of those popins we have seen since su7 were released.
We have a different weather model now compared to what we had pre su7. Pre su7 we had a simulated weather model. Now we have a post processed model.
Yes, we will never get any answers to our questions, just suppositions here.
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Yes, that is an issue we have had since release. And if we report something or ask on the q&a itās like they not aware at all of the issues. Feels more like they want us to forget. But i canāt forget the awesome weather we had pre su7. I know we had wind, temp and pressure from METAR. But that didnāt destroy the visuals of weather. Only added some hard switches of wind, temp and pressure near airports.
Well, they already said that they will continue with this post su7 weather system. Thats what i know. And that makes me sad. Because that makes me know that we will never get that fluid weather system back again that we had. Only a bit less hard transitions maybe.
Edit: A thing that iāve noticed after su7 were released. When i change my pc system time i get same weather. When i changed the pc system time before su7 the weather in the sim changed. That means we have a completely different weather system after su7. It works completely different.
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To be fair, if the API allows for things like REX Weather Force to correctly inject weather data into the sim without being stuck with manipulating presets, (which causes deal-breaking, FSX-like global changes when you cross from a weather āzoneā to another) then the whole thing becomes someone elseās problem.
And I guarantee that this āsomeoneā will have myself and many others as customers, if they can realize an external Live-Weather app that makes full use of the Simās weather rendering capability in a consistent way. (i.e: Itād have to work seamlessly, without any āzone transitionsā - This is the one big reason Iāve eschewed REX-WF so far)
Whether this is done through an official API, or even if it is achieved by other means, this is clearly a case where there is much demand and no supply.
That is to say, many of us are willing to pay (as we have done in the past for previous sims) for a consistent high-quality live weather system. Sadly, this is something the game had almost as a built in feature before SU7, but then people wanted nature to match VatSim, and that led to the woefully unsatisfactory addition of the METAR Blending system, which not only fails to ensure weather matches reports, but also causes a massive degradation of quality when compared to unblended weather.
If no intention exists of allowing this detrimental tradeoff to be disabled by user preference, then at least there should be means for an external app to be used as a replacement.
It is therefore our highest hopes that such upcoming weather API offers enough access so that 3rd party devs can fully override the wx data being fed into the sim.
Iād make this request into a wishlist item, but thatād be redundant, as it is already there and currently holds upwards of a thousand votes: Open up the weather system WRITE access to 3rd party devs
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The first video is dated Mar 2021 so well before SU7. At a time when clouds looked their best in both live weather and presets. That quality still has not been restored.
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Well, even if they open the weather up for 3rd party devs i think we will never get weather that is simulated as Meteoblue data is. We will get METAR weather. Because that type of weather is the standard for flight simulators. Either we like it or not i have learned by now.
And then the ālive-weatherā that is same for everyone in the sim is gone. What many says canāt have options because itās called ālive-weatherā.
This METAR demand has made me dislike flight simulators. Flight simulators canāt improve technically because of the METAR demand.
What we have seen in su7 is a move backwards technically because we as users needed the weather to match METAR.
We didnāt like weather that is formed by initial conditions even if that is how weather really behaves.
Or maybe we were not ready for the change?
But they can had a solo playing option with the weather being the only online featureā¦the solutions are thereā¦then again the other one is to have the METAR generated by the live weather, something like, world map weather = weather in game = METAR generated by the current live weather at that airportā¦.they can if they want!
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For sure they can. That we now know when they add that UI for turbulence slider 
But i really is sceptical if a toggle for METAR would make it as we had it pre su7. I bet it only will disable the foglayer that is added on the client side. They need to have different weather servers for that thing. A different server that running the simulated weather model we had pre su7.
Before SU7 the complete weather forecast for every day was downloaded together. With all that data locally available the sim could smoothly advance and simulate a global weather system.
Now it updates much more frequently and streamed as tiles. Live weather basically turned into a sparse cloud map painted with repetitive clouds and static METAR bubbles blended in.
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Yes, that clip also confirms itās because of VATSIM users. Missed that clip. Thank you.
This is more of an atc simulator than a flight simulator then. Feels sad MSFS needed to adapt instead of VATSIM/ATC adapt to the weather we had in the sim like controllers needs to do in the real world.
Vatsim users want the weather to be as predictable as the terrain.
There is some observed evidence to suggest that if the METAR injection were simply disabled, then the fallback result really could be weather of pre-SU7 quality.
This has been noted in a few cases where the METAR injection service was temporarily unavailable, and the sim had seemingly reverted to a much more authentic looking environment such as existed before āblendingā became a thing.
The thread Weather like pre su7 before 8 AM UK time, photos and videos provided!2 contains footage and multiple reports of such cases.
So there is indeed reason to at least suspect that a simple off switch could possibly bring back the glory that was the single-source, unblended, weather experience that the sim is really capable of delivering.
It would be a very simple experiment for Asobo to try, or just put up the toggle so that we can try and see what results we get. If the data is being blended in the sim, then at some point, there must exist an undisturbed set of wx data from MB, which is then combined with other sources (to itās ultimate detriment, alas).
It isnāt at all clear whether this is done locally in the sim, or if it happens on the server side.
In any case, leaving this data undisturbed as it enter the simulation is really a matter of not doing things to it, unless they really took a very destructive approach to development and removed functionality instead of building on top of what was already there.
Perhaps now that there is a weather debug panel, we can try and dig down to puzzle out just what data comes into the sim and in what forms. Depending on what is and isnāt there, we might be able to learn whether or not a client-side bypass of wx blending is feasible and to what results.
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Here are my conclusions from the Q&A (wonāt please everyone):
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There was NOTHING that indicated any thoughts on their side to abandon their METAR centric approach. To my understanding the API they were talking about was WXR(adar)-related, as they conceded that more than a 2-D topdown bitmap is necessary - which is a good thing but wonāt contribute to weather depiction in the sim.
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They have quarterly consultations with Meteoblue. Jorg said that when they were talking about the inaccurate snow coverage.
To determine, which data for snow coverage are available from Meteoblue they showed higher resolution data from the Meteoblue website and concluded: āthe data are there, but they are not in the simā and will adress the issue in the next meeting.
So I assume that they are generally willing to exploit all data available from meteoblue. -
Seb wasnāt even aware thereās a problem with snow coverage, although several corresponding threads are around for a very long time.
My conclusion: Only those issues will get the attention of the developers that are
- reported by forum staff or
- get enough votes in the Q&A section once a corresponding question has been posted there.
The Q&A part only seems to be relatively easy, because imho it depends a lot on how the question is put. It has to draw the attention of people who arenāt deep into the subject and convince them to vote. Fact based would be the approach I would consider to have the best chances
The reporting part is theoretically easier: put yourself in the shoes of a forum staffer tasked to summarize the feedback and ask yourself what you would need for your report.
If I were the staffer, my summary of this thread from the last few days would be as follows:
āThe same few users still discussing the value of METARā
So my proposal would be to take advantage of the fact that some weather related threads like this one are already āfeedback loggedā and return to more factual reports in order to better facilitate the reporting and thus bringing it to the attention of the developers.
The emphasis should be where, when and how does METAR probabably influence Live weather negatively, probable causes and are there better data available from Meteoblue, e.g. for surrounding areas, to make blending less obvious.
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