There is a request in the Wishlist for that: Cirrus clouds
I would say that all cloud types need to be improved in Liveweather and many types are missing. I hope Devs have that on their list. Repeating what I and many already said, prior SU7 we were astonished by the level of realism achieved with clouds, there was almost nothing to complain about, just adding the missing ones. But since SU7, regression happened without any explanation. The ones that remember how clouds were at FS2020 launch are complaining and are wondering if the sim will be back or not at the level it was.
8 Likes
Since it seams that once again the next Su12 wonât be focus on fixing the weather, when is Su13 expected? I feel like i live in a perpetual state of hope since su7. This weathe system get worse snd worse with every update and they think itâs not worth focusing on it 
14 Likes
Totally agree, only could see complains about the accuracy but implementing that actually destroyed the weather. I wonder if it really were worth it to have it more accurate? For me it were not worth it. I would rather pay to have it reverted. But since release of this sim i know that what i pay for may change into something completely different in the next sim update. If they added this new system as an optional feature i wouldnât be here complaining at all. But now we are forced to use this since su7. Hope they can add the old system as an optional feature as they do with the turbulence in next update. Itâs for sure possible to add options.
So sad accuracy is so important in flight simulators. The need for accuracy limits the developers of weather to actually create weather. How much they even try they can never get the realtime weather in the sim. Especially if it needs to be fixed as a METAR says.
3 Likes
I also want to add this:
Actually Asobo tried to implement weather as weather is âchaosâ in the sim at release. Now we actually have less simulated weather in the sim. And those telling us that we only want eyecandy i can tell them itâs not. We want a simulated âweatherâ.
They tried to explain the weather system for us before release with those initial conditions they created weather with.
And here is a guy explaining chaos theory (what weather actually is âchaosâ)
The weather we had were as close as real weather we could have. And the community wanted that downgraded.
well some wants accuracy of weather.
And some like me want the feel of weather that behaves like weather (unpredictable and varied).
But i have learned those rwo opinions canât work together.
3 Likes
Thank you for posting these videos! They explain wonderfully and in an easy to understand way why the forecast is sometimes incorrect, or actually, is never 100.000% correct.
Unfortunately this concept doesnât match well with the dominating tendency of seeing the world in black and white. So if the wind in the sim is off for a while, or it rains where it shouldnât, the whole system will likely be perceived as broken by a large portion of the simmers population.
1 Like
Iâm hoping that the current issue under investigation regarding no live weather at all, will encourage MS/Asobo to finally pay more attention to all the live weather issues introduced with SU7. The optimistic me hopes that in solving the current issue they may also intentionally or accidently resolve some of the SU7 issues.
The current issue of no live weather at all doesnât really bother me, as Iâve only used live weather maybe once a month since SU7 (each time just to confirm that it is still a messy downgrade)
What keeps the hope alive for me well over a year since SU7 is that sometimes the sim does render live weather like it used do pre SU7.
9 Likes
Actually i donât care if we are casual or real simmers. Who and what decides if we are that? If we are playing other non simulator games. If we planning using METAR or want a weather system that feels believable. If we want a believable weather engine does that really means we are casual? Then all of those years since i got my first flight simulator 30 years ago i have been casual? Because i want a believable weather that feels unpredictable and varied. If thats the case iâm really happy to be casual. Donât need the weather be 100% accurate to a simple METAR line of text. I know itâs a tool for pilots to predict the unpredictable weather. I do not tell anything about that. But the real weather is much more complex than that.
3 Likes
10:50Z - outside my window itâs a lovely sunny day on the coast of Lyme Bay in SE Devon, UK - in game itâs blanket fog at 0 ft ( and I did wait for the weather to load in ). Nearest airport is Exeter EGTE about 15 miles away, which going off the METAR does have ground level freezing fog, and a webcam of the coast directly south of it shows some sea fog in the area but viz is ok. In game I can hardly see anything 
Exeter airport in game does match the METAR, fwiw.
Edit: left the game paused to write this, at 10:55Z it went from âfoggy but vaguely visualâ at the 1500ft or so Iâm paused at to âcan hardly see my propellorâ. The plane doesnât have DME so I canât get precise distance but Iâm about 13nm east of EGTE, so that should be outside the airport weather area.
No problem. I also hope it shows why i think adding already known data into a simulated model destroys the feel of weather. Because real weather is never in a same state twice. Real weather or forecasts is not random either. Itâs just hard to get the initial condition meassured in 100% accuracy. That means a METAR is not accurate either because the METAR they used to inject the initial condition of those forecast models didnât turn out to be correct/accurate because as we all says. Forecasts are not accurate. Neither METAR or forecasts are accurate. Because if they were we would have perfect accurate weather forecasts all the time.
1 Like
Iâve thought a lot about this âbugâ. And for me it is the worst one.
My conclusion is that we get these towering cumulus that are out of place when there are 2 or more cloud layers close together. For instance âFew at 2300â and âbroken at 3000â. The sim is unable to produce 2 thin cloud layers as it doesnât know the thickness of each layer, and what ends up happening is these cloud layers merge together producing these horrible cauliflower towering CBS, instead of two thin layers of broken or scattered clouds.
When there is a single cloud layer reported in the metar, or 2 clouds layers that are a few thousand feet apart, the sim produces realistic and believable results.
I would like to know what the devsâ thoughts are on this theory, but I guess it is impossible to find out.
another thing that many players seems unaware is the total absence of high overcast, that thin layers of clouds that is the precursor of a weather front.
We have lost local convection with clouds interacting with mountains!
Thunderstorms are super rare!
World map does not match with in game weather.
We have lost all the other clouds formations, the most nominated being stratus cloudsâŠand other cloudsâŠ
We have lost a uniform overcast, whether from cirrus or alto stratus, or stratus clouds.
Clouds formation are made up of smaller blubs of clouds that appear often grani or broken up.
No more diverse skies thought the world and different latitude, but always the same everywhere.
Walls of rain that starts abruptly most of the timeâŠeven from smaller cumulus.
Clouds appearing or disappearing in a matter of seconds!!
Clouds stopping loading in after some time in game!
Those are some of the main issues since su7âŠreally how all of this is still not a priority?? and all of this mess because of METAR?!
13 Likes
I wonder how many of us users expected a completely different weather engine before su7 were released when they announced the METAR integration? Were the complete change of system what the community really wanted? Generally i think most of the users were happy with the old system except the accuracy or am i completely wrong about that? If the Metar integration needed a complete overhaul like we had, were this post su7 weather engine really worth it? Because the only difference in accuracy i can see is the bad looking METAR bubbles that could have been injected with an option. Those bubbles doesnât require any kind of blending mechanics.
8 Likes
The only logical explanation is that theyâve hugely simplified the weather simulation to increase the FPS. Many people complained about performance (they always have and will never stop) so this solution made more potential market place customers happy than unhappy.
6 Likes
Without any explanation provided about SU7 regression it is the best logical explanation.
5 Likes
But those that complains about performance were mostly those with older hardware. Are they never planning to upgrade their systems? When they do i bet they expect some improvments of the graphics. Those running on older hardware expect to run the sim on ultra instantly. If itâs not running at 60FPS at ultra setting they complain and get the graphics downgraded for all of the users. Thats how it works.
Well, iâm not sure what caused them to change the weather system this much. They said it were to get it more accurate. But i also think they changed much to be able to control the performance more.
I wonder how long we now need to wait to get it at least as it were before su7?
9 Likes
I agree about the 60 layers. If there were indeed 60 layers of active weather for both clouds and winds, not that clouds go all the way up to the top except in extreme cases, weâd be seeing quite the variety of clouds. 60 layers of wind makes a whole lot more sense. In METAR reports where there are even 4 or 5 levels of clouds thereâs quite the picture. I donât doubt the data is there, I doubt that itâs being used. Right now thereâs some thin high level blanket of high alto cirrus. Iâm sure if I loaded up thereâd only be a pretty much clear sky with some clouds showing where the grouping is the thickest.
1 Like
Iâm not sure about those layers but the wearher feels much less varied and fluid since the METAR integration. It feels same everytime i fly actually.
Pre su7 i were excited to see how the sky would look like everytime i was flying. Now i know how it looks like before i start it up. Thats the thing i really miss.
I know the pre su7 had some minor issues but not as much as post su7. At release the weather felt like weather for the first time in a flight simulator without hard transitions and stuff.
I think it were like that because meteorologist were helping them with weather before it got released. Now they listening on those flight sim pilots that knows best how weather in a flight simulator should behave. Fixed as METAR says.
Well a METAR is limited to a small amount of described cloud layers. I bet they needed to reduce those layers to make it fit those METARs that donât report that many layers. And create volumetric clouds from a fixed cloudbase for 30 minutes will make those volumetric cloud feels generic and fixed.
I think they can go back to textures as clouds now instead. The volumetric clouds has no purpose anymore anyway.
Whats the point when a flight simulator needs the weather to be fixed to a snapshot of the weather?
Volumetric clouds is only eye-candy it seems. And eye-candy does not belong in a flight simulator or does it?
8 Likes
Actually, itâs not that the METAR is limited. Itâs that the purpose of the METAR is to give weather information for the terminal area of an airport which can range anywhere from typically 10,000 or below and sometimes 18,000 and below. Above FL180 it doesnât matter except for higher elevation airports which is why you donât usually see anything listed above FL240/250. Herein lies the issue. METAR would work fine for FL180 and below. ButâŠI think itâs overriding the upper weather levels and so thatâs why we get the same blandness over and over because the depiction is âstuckâ for lower altitudes and is not either including or depicting higher altitudes.
Again, I would love to do an experiment where you only had METARS and only had MB and do a comparison and see what the differences are. I also have a suspicion that the people talking about weather stops injecting after X time are getting that because since the engine relies so heavily on METARS that if you do any extended flights outside of a METAR area itâll âdisconnectâ and the only way to fix that is through restarting the sim/flight. Summary: METARS need to go. They can be traced to every single issue thatâs a big issue in weather. And for correct temps/visibility? Nah, give me accurate cloud cover any day. I donât get immersion through temps/visibility. I get it through the clouds and the different types of clouds and weather patterns.
My weather has been pretty great - METAR and everything in between! Way more accurate than it was when the sim first came out.
I donât know what all the fuss is about. At some point, the engine is going to be reconciled with reality, so they might as well do it more often. Everything else regarding the behavior is wild guesses because thereâs no data or evidence. In fact, I seem to recall pre su7 being pretty terrible in terms of accuracy, and I said it often.
These days the only time it becomes apparent is when youâre fairly high in altitude and see the âringâ of fog around an airport that is otherwise clear. Well, that does nothing but tell me the MB injection is inaccurate. Or the subtractive method - in which the data from the METAR reduces the precipitation and echoes in a ring around the airport because the MB injection overplays it.
The temps, visibility, precip, and cloud layers are inextricably intertwined. We need all of it.
tl;dr, fix the MB injection.
The MB injection works just fine, see my previous blurb about initial loading and then a redraw. What it comes down to is having two cooks in one kitchen. Problem being that the kitchen was designed for the cook who isnât cooking. Itâs very clear in multiple instances and examples that the METARS are either taking precedence or completely overriding or blocking the MB side of things. Because of this conflict of âcooksâ weâre getting so many abnormalities with the weather itself both in depiction, accuracy, and lack of high altitude representation. Bottom line, either use METARS (extremely antiquated and outdated method of weather for MSFS) or use MB (this was what the simâs engine was created and coded around using) but choose one. This mixing and blending with one obviously being more of a priority than the other is why we have the issues we have.
Iâm not sure what your FS usage background is, but I can without a doubt assure you that it isnât MB that is overriding or overplaying anything. If you can catch and see what the weather looks like before the METARS are downloaded and kick in (itâs quick), youâll see what Iâm talking about. Try flying in areas with no METAR stations and yet has weather and youâll see a different depiction than what weâve gotten used to seeing. Now, METARS/MB aside there has been some issues with the cloud density where everything few or scattered just ends up being almost translucent little cloud puffs, thatâs just a variable tweak to change that.
I unfortunately never got the privilege to fly in pre SU7 before METARS were introduced. But I have seen similar depictions on that level of quality and theyâre always at the initial load of the flight before the METARS kick in and the weather gets âredrawnâ.
3 Likes