I agree it had issues, But it didn’t need a complete overhaul that we got with su7. For the fog they could just have added that. No need to change the whole weather system to integrate that. They added winds, pressure and temp from METAR November 2020 without the need to completely change the weather globally. They should have done the same with the visuals of METAR. Not try to blend two completely different weather sources. If they did that they could have made the METAR feature optional. Now both METAR and Meteoblue data is intergrate/blended.
Well, i bet it’s too late to do that now. Better to move on as @anon44786522 says.
At the release of this sim i actually hoped for more things added from Meteoblue data that already fits globally. But instead the community wanted those METAR data that needs endless transition fixes. Thats the future of this weather system since su7. And that is not wrong. Only not what i expected of this sim when i watched the advertisement videos before this sim got released. They mentioned Meteoblue as weather source.
I just want to say that changing the game because of the wish of some people, without knowing the end result is unfair.
Also, for the people who claim to be pilots, how can the weather be more accurate if the only clouds you get are mostly cumulus? The weather itself behaves very differently when flying within different clouds type, or do you just love to see the rain in the game matching your window? Heck we don’t even have thunderstorms anymore!! What people should have asked is more real weather like challenges, or two versions of the game and one for people who just want to enjoy a relaxing flight with some realustick looking weather (yes even if sometimes not that accurate) still it eludes me how the current state of things is more precise?! since clouds types are missing along with different layers, thunderstorms ettc…
They’re not missing. Presets tells us that. They’re just not being used. And that discussion has been around for quite some time. Weather changes are coming down the pipe and in small increments. So just enjoy what we have now and think of all the new changes coming out every few weeks or months as being small little Christmases. IDK what else to tell people, it’s been logged, the complaints have been heard and acknowledged, and there’s NOTHING else to do but just wait and enjoy the sim until it happens. For those who can’t wait, IDK what else to tell you? MSFS isn’t the only flight simulator out there…
I hope to see varied weather again in the future that forms over time that makes the weather feel unique every single flight. Thats what i’m looking forward to and has looked forward to since su7 got released. I were also hoping they would get more data from Meteoblue integrated in live-weather. But as it is now i only hope to see a weather without METAR that disturbs the feeling of weather. If i wanted to use METAR weather i could have used the free 3rd party addon ”unreal weather”. Now we are all forced to use it because there is no option to turn that off.
We had options before su7 and now we have none. That dissapoints me the most. Those that asked for METAR actually had both systems already but needed both systems together and got that but we other got stolen of the thing that we already enjoyed. That makes me agree is unfair as @SealedVolcano50 said.
There is definitely a preponderance of cumulus, which I hope is tempered eventually, but the position, coverage, movement, timing is better than it was. That’s far more important to me.
Also, I’m seeing pretty good layers - had some great ones in my last flight - didn’t look like puffy clouds of doom, instead was a nice layered mix with gradually lowering visibility and ceilings coming into the back side of a system, just as the forecast was calling for.
I spent a lot of time flying around the world “pre-su7” as is repeated often here, and the weather was always fairly laughable. As in we’d laugh about it on my stream: “well that wasn’t realistic at all,” or my favorite, “we just got Asoboed” as the weather shifted regions and bad weather suddenly materialized. It wasn’t fluid unless you stayed in one area or went so fast that you couldn’t tell. It wasn’t any more or less realistic looking than it is now - it was just presented differently in some areas that people notice.
But it would cause anybody with a background in weather to go “what the heck was that?” So I take the complaints with a big grain of salt.
Yes, i must agree the weather is improving a bit. But circles of weather around airports that marks where the airport is located isn’t accurate to me. Why can’t they add the METAR weather conditions in the near vicinity of airports and then let that weather move with the wind and behave like weather. Or for example if METAR says fog why not let it build up fog over time. Does it really need to be fixed over airports for 30 minutes? Why can’t they make the METAR weather be a trigger for weather to be formed over time instead of be placed/painted. The METAR weather feels more like a POI marker than weather. Like an assistance that shows where airports is located. Same for winds, i think winds should also be dynamic and varied. The wind readings on a METAR should only be a guidance but the actual wind should be dynamic near that value METAR says. The value on a METAR should be the average wind over 10 minutes of time. Not fixed for 30 minutes. When they added the gusts it feels a bit more varied but we can feel when we get close to a METAR airport.
The METAR clouds are not “fixed” and static. They move with the prevailing wind, and change shape and coverage as they move. I spent an hour sitting at Nashville yesterday watching them move. Sometimes it was almost completely overcast, and sometimes broken. There was rain in the METAR, but the rain was not continuous - it would start and stop as thicker clouds moved overhead.
But i’ve seen many times on radar a circle of rain and looking down at those METAR clouds it’s like a circle with the airport in the center of those. Maybe the clouds move with wind but they are fixed in a circle.
I’ve noticed the same on the in-sim radar. However, I’m not 100% sure what the radar is representing in the visual of the sim. I did some correlation with METAR reports and the little bubbles indicated on radar: -RA, RA, and +RA seem to change the color, as you’d expect, but as @HalberQuacky pointed out, visually, things are moving within and it’s often a fairly seamless integration with the surrounding non-METAR data. Unless, that is, the surrounding area is depicted as majorly different for whatever reason, then we see those “bubbles” visually in the sim, indicating a discrepancy between MB and the METAR.
I’d, in general, agree with this. METAR generally does average winds for two minutes and if there’s a big shift in between, it should issue a SPECI. I don’t know if the sim scrubs for those.
I think a lot of this conversation is based on guessing what the real-world equipment does, how the data get to the sim, and how the sim interprets them. As far as the visual of the sim goes, I haven’t had a lot of major “head-shaking” issues in the last few updates, except for the overly chunky clouds in some instances.
I agree, it means MB is not accurate to METAR at that specific location. But adding the weather from a METAR as a circle just shows how much less data a METAR has. If they used the data from METAR and tried to make the weather reported on a METAR actually feels like weather then it wouldn’t have been an issue for me. Because i feel i already had that type of weather with those 3rd party tools before su7. No need to inject that into the MB experience in my opinion. Just to start the addon instead if we needed some more accuracy around airports.
I went into manual weather and created what SHOULD be Broken clouds @ 9,000 feet. This is more in line with what used to be in MSFS live weather before the METARS got added to the system.
In the first screenshot you can see in the distance that the clouds turn from the scattered popcorn over the airport to a more stabilized and realistic looking cloud type, but even those aren’t exactly “broken at 9,000 feet” either. Somewhere along the line the live weather higher cloud levels and got severely bugged. The clouds inside METAR areas really never were correct, the system seems to just plop in various amounts of “cumulus blobs” depending on if scattered, broken or overcast - it’s always “cumulus blobs”.
My hopes are “they’re working on it” and “will blow us away” like said back in June 30th 2021 Dev Q&A - what ever happened to this? My gut feeling is that the x-box could not handle the resolution Jorg speaks of so we ended up all suffering? https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/sdhEbrNsBF0
Honestly not what I was expecting to see. I’ve seen sharply defined METAR holes before, but this doesn’t look like one. But it does have that cotton ball cloud weather in that area.
To the North you can see completely different, more uniform cloud coverage.
That’s an assumption, and you know what they say about those…
I’m looking for data and valid comparisons, rather than “I think”, and other blind assumptions. And, lo:
That’s how it’s done. I’ve done the same a few times - measured in-game weather against real-world radar, in game radar, surrounding areas, live weather cams etc (California, with their extensive fire/weather camera network is a great place to do this, btw). Anyway, great work bringing evidence! In order to really bring it home, the last bit of evidence we need is a live-cam or hi-res visible satellite shot (understandably hard to do at night). Because that will resolve conjecture like this:
”Broken at 9,000” does not preclude cumulus-type clouds. However, chances are, if they were cumulus, they may be altocumulus or stratocumulus versus the cumulus congestus we see in the sim. What kind of cloud do you think it should have been?
That aside, observations don’t really differentiate cloud types except for CB and TCU (ok, maybe ACSL and other lenticular clouds at some locations). A satellite shot around the same time (I know, it’s night time) would be the final bit of evidence needed to prove that it’s wrong.
But we’re stuck decrying two variables here - METAR and cumulus, and I’ve not seen any evidence that the two are linked (other than the former produces the cloud base of the latter). Meaning theres no evidence the sim is drawing cumulus because of METARs, it simply seems to be that at some point they’ve chosen to draw fairly hefty volumetric clouds throughout the sim.
Regardless, I am not sure how they’re planning on generating different, correct cloud types. Cloud tops and types are rarely reported, outside of PIREPs. You can infer them from radar (precipitation tops) and visible or IR satellite data, but otherwise, you basically need a complete dataset of upper-air observations to understand what types of clouds you’re going to get at each layer. Unfortunately, those observations are even more widely spaced, both in geography and time, than other observations.
I don’t have an answer, I have questions as to the assumptions and conclusions I see drawn here, and the understanding that the road to accuracy is not going to be easy. I also have plenty of experience that it wasn’t great prior, either. It was also a mess. At least here, it’s closer to what’s really going on, cumulus observations (and assumptions) aside.
However, if you’re wanting whether to look correct, why not use a preset? “Live weather” imparts the presumption of matching the spatial/temporal accuracy of the real-world. I’m just not sure how it’s also, ever, going to be the correct cloud types and animate the shift between as the weather changes. Herculean task.
The accuracy limits the sim to have the weather change smoothly over time. If making a weather that feels like weather limits the weather to be accurate.
Example 1: if the weather didn’t need to match the real world weather at all it would never need hard transitions.
Example 2: If the weather needs to match weather that has already occured 100% it needs transition between those known states.
Simple fact.
I preffer the first example even if it’s not accurate. I bet you preffer the second right? I would rather observe a weather in the sim that look like weather when i observe it rather than have the observed weather instantly injected without care if it behave correct.
I think both of those examples is valid because some want weather that behaves and looks like weather when flying and some just wants it accurate but i think these examples can’t work together. Add example 1 into example 2 makes those like example 1 dissapointed it doesn’t behave like weather anymore and adding example 2 into example 1 will make those want it accurate complain.
What I seemed to see was a mixture of weather depending on how far away from it I was. When I was further away, all I saw was the popcorn clouds. As I used slew to move closer I saw a less defined fog like cloud bank appear, but you could still make out the popcorn like clouds below it or through it. It was like the MB weather was over the top of the METAR weather. Very odd.
With the 60 levels of cloud information in the Meteoblue model, from anywhere in the vicinity of the observation, they should be able to estimate the vertical extent, and subsequently the most likely cloud species that satisfies the observation of BKN090. I think this is the big missing component in the present implementation - not using the Meteoblue model for what it can provide, basically they are throwing the baby away with the water.
This conclusion makes several assumptions. Are they throwing away the Meteoblue data? If so, what about all the area between reporting stations? From where is that weather being generated?
It would need to have transitions, and they’d be as faked as anything else because you have to inject updated weather somewhere. Our current problem is at which time resolution to do that. Some folks are comfortable with it being several hours off and jumping back or forward when the revised forecast doesn’t meet the reality portrayed in the sim (based on the old forecast). Some are not comfortable with that.
That’s an assumption. I prefer it to be as accurate as possible and useable with forecast tools and real-time observations. Weather can’t look good if it’s not accurate because those who know, know. They see through the gaps in realism and no matter how well it’s presented, it looks bad.
I understand the data with which to do this correctly is limited. I don’t know why (almost) real-time radar data aren’t used more in areas in which they are available, especially with regard to thunderstorm development. FWIW, I agree here with everybody who wants more layers and realistic-looking clouds (and thunderstorms). 100%. And I don’t think you’re going to get it from METAR, never have I made that claim - I agree with you all there.
METAR is best for wind speed, cloud height, temperature, and barometric pressure at an aerodrome. I personally wouldn’t use it to generate cloud coverage or type as those are some of its major limitations, especially over a wider area. Even visibility is usually a function of precipitation (or fog/haze/mist/smoke) and I wouldn’t use it for that, either. Maybe the answer is to only inject METAR ceilings and visibility when the weather is MVFR or lower (or just let it deal with smaller “bubbles” less than 5SM vis and 3000’ ceilings. But that still doesn’t rectify the aforementioned forecast limitations. I don’t know what the answer is there.
But in the end, I’m actually okay with it being a little off, as that’s realistic enough. However, I’m not okay with it being several hours or a hundred or more miles off, which it has proved to be many times.
There are a lot of assumptions being made in the thread and it all boils down to one thing - not one of us here knows how it’s actually working behind the scenes. We’re still at the “collect observations and data to compare how incorrect it is to the naked eye or reported weather” stage. And “I feel like it should look like this” or “it looked great before su7” are personal anecdotes that don’t always match the reality observed by others.
Anybody miss the puffy clouds forming from the surface of flat land? Or suddenly swapping between regions of weather that were completely incongruent to anything that was forecast? Or wildly inaccurate altimeter setting or wind readings? I don’t.
Do I like to be able to use aviation weather tools to be able to plan a route and make in-flight decisions based on real-world observations? Absolutely. That’s the closest simulation to real-world you’ll get. Anything that can’t use those tools (or generate a complete set of their own) reliably is bogus for “simming,” because it’s outright missing a huge part of general aviation - planning and ADM based on forecast and observation.
“claim”
