The question is, does those switches of weather makes the weather more accurate? In my opinion those switches are worthless. Feels like the weather is supposed to work like this after METAR integration. Has been an issue since release of METAR integration that has got several fixes but still appears in the sim.
Every half hour we get some switches because METAR updates or how does it work? Sometimes it updates and sometimes not?
Zulu times for my switches today
14:38Z and 14:59Z if that helps pinpoint the issue.
That third one is the worst of all and sadly that is what we get most of the time. It is merging the 2 broken layers to create those towering cumulus. And even in the first one which looks okay-ish, itâs supposed to be overcast. Clearly it isnât.
What was weird was last night the METAR for Santa Monica was reporting scattered (confirmed visually), but a low stratus overcast layer was present over most of the LA metro in the sim. I think that was just old/mistimed MB data as that layer was pushing off to the east (east of downtown at least) by that point.
As to your issue, and something I wondered last night - is there perhaps another METAR nearby thatâs overlapping and overriding the weather your airport is calling for?
Agree, thats why i wonder why it needs to switch when it doesnât makes it more accurate anyway. I would be really happy if we could just turn off those switches or the option to have the old weather model that didnât need switches in between those 12 hour updates. It could flow for 12 hours without switches inbetween. That feature i liked the most about this flight simulator. Made the weather feel realistic. But maybe we are few that enjoyed that, i donât know really. I can just talk for my self. If the weather after su7 is the way to go for the most users then i think i need to accept this. But those switches makes me instantly shut down the sim.
I must say that i really like the improvements they have made with the air behaviour since su12 though. But those to me are useless as long as the visuals of weather doesnât behaves like weather anymore.
I still hope we that preffer a believable behaving weather gets the update weâve been waiting for soon.
Iâm not sure, i can check that later. The thing is, i wanted to check if airports had the rain bubbles and those seems better in su12. Not in a perfect circle anymore. I only made one test though and canât 100% confirm that yet. Then i wanted to stay at the same airport for some time and see if the weather was flowing without sudden changes. And those switches appeard. Then i shut down the sim in dissapointment because i thought that also were better in su12.
Well, i were used to the more fluid weather pre su7 and that sets my expectations for future updates. Then if my opinions are wrong to others thats fine for me. I just want to help getting the sim weather better in the future for all of us
I will post a screenshot of the nearby airports later if that helps improving the weather.
Well i was not allowed in another post to show that the clouds still have major issuesâŚso it doesnât feel fair to me that sort of behaviour ( because it was a post for people who find the weather amazing) and this one is one for issues that we find when flying!
I do think more datapoints are necessary, especially in congested areas. Iâve often wondered how the interpolation between adjacent/overlapping METAR and the MB works. Of course, that may have changed now.
Visual comparisons to RW conditions are essential, too, where available (hence my attempt to show that above). In my case, the local METARs did not override those storms, which were positioned unbelievably accurately, showing marked improvement (thus germane and on-topic to this discussion - nothing says a person canât report on change/improvement, in fact thatâs utterly necessary in QA).
Despite thatâŚ
[quote=âSealedVolcano50, post:1381, topic:487587â]
Well i was not allowed in another post to show that the clouds still have major issuesâŚso it doesnât feel fair to me [/quote]
âŚwe get retaliatory posts for something that had nothing to do with me, dismissing outright the myriad off-topic posts in this discussion. . Many of us have used this thread to lump about a dozen issues into one and few people have provided evidence that the issue mentioned in the topic name is the root cause. Maybe you should take it up with the mod who called you out instead of violating the rules by retaliating against me.
Nevertheless, I just proved that it is less evident that METAR is the issue in those specific cases, 60 miles apart, last night (as well as others I didnât post). That is absolutely germane to the discussion. @Perrry is on the right track as well, but in his case we may need a deeper dive with more adjacent data.
Or are we here to complain only and not contribute positive observations that may contradict the original premise? If thatâs the case, I have several ideas as to what a person could rename the thread, but none of them would meet the rules.
I think we blame METAR because all of the issues appeard when they integrated METAR. Maybe itâs the new 6 hour MB model that they inject since su7 that is the issue? Maybe they should try use the old 12 hour model together with the things they add from METAR instead? That would make the global weather more seamless and then add the METAR as a secondary source instead of trying to blending it. Blending means neither Asobo or we as users can pinpoint the issue 100%.
Maybe too late for that now i donât know really. But it would be good to be able to report issues in a propper way instead of guessing whats causing issues.
I checked the airport again and couldnât find an airport nearby that reports METAR. Use the VFR-map and press on nearby airports and check the metar under the runway info shown on the screenshot.
For SealedVolcano:
Iâll tell you the same thing I have said on here for the last 5 months since using the sim and have explained over and over:
As long as the weather is being affected or injected by the METAR system, youâre never going to get pre SU7 back again. Two cooks one kitchen scenario. So you can either choose to enjoy it for what it is now and offers (99% of users, although not happy) or you can continue to be stuck in the past and do nothing but complain (1%). There have been changes and other users from pre SU7 have said things are moving in the right direction. Charlie is right too, just because you walk outside and snap a photo of the sky and expect that in the sim doesnât mean it works like that. The data is similar and so youâll get an X percentage ballpark depiction but youâre not going to get 1:1.
Even with real world forecasting things are severely skewed. Actual forecasting is only 100% accurate within the closest hour to real time. Outside of that hour and every hour later the % drops dramatically. Last week they called for an âinsaneâ storm that was supposed to last for 4/5 days. We got like 1 day of decent rain and wind. Iâve seen predictions for rain to go for 5 hours and only rain for 30 minutes. Nothing is 100% even in the real world. So if youâre wanting whatâs above your head 100% of the time every time, take flight lessons. MSFS does what itâs supposed to. It could be better if METAR was removed but that probably wonât happen. So enjoy it for what it is or donât? Spewing the same argument for 5 months obviously isnât working.
The thing is, we donât know exactly whatâs happening because if a lac of transparency, we are told that METAR does not draws the clouds, at the same time we know that after su7 something has changed, and yet the developers j7st fly over all of that as if nothing happened. Now rhere is a bug logged, so they mayne know what it is, so why not tell us about it? If they want it to be the way it now then just say it and will give my game away, it not like i am going to invest any more money on it if i donât knowâŚi will not get from then anything until at least they tell us what the issues are and what do tgey think if the current state of the clouds. As for me when yesterday the game was very good in the weather in game was 100% like real life at that momentâŚand i am not one those people who pretends that the game should at all time be exactly as outside my window⌠to summarise, tell us what this bug is and how they shoukd expect the weather to behave when they fix it, and if the clouds will still look bad for me then i will move on. But just to say, xplane 12 with another few update might surpass MFS and that is pure METAR based engineâŚ
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MSFS creates the âvisibility bubbleâ regardless if the METAR reports it with or without precipitation. The correct behavior would be that the visibility in case of precipitation is only reduced where it actually rains/snows.
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MSFS is injecting scattered only from the METAR and youâve lost all of the upper cloud data.
What a shame, but a prime example of the limitations of METAR.
This isnât about the sim showing whatâs outside the window by the way. This is about showing the limitations of metar and that although the sim wonât ever fully look like whatâs outside the window, before METAR was introduced a lot of the time it actually DID. Certainly a lot more than it does now.
test - flight EBBR - LOWW - cumulus nonsense as always - after sporadic good results again âsomethingâ - undefined - should be a closed cloud cover from to - but the cauliflower clouds are stretched up again without any connection or as a cloud front - regardless of whether itâs a bug, intentional or server error - this finally needs to be fixed! (By the way, I was actually flown beforehand - it definitely didnât look like that)!
this is why I said a few days ago that the overcast issue cannot be fixed until the METAR bug is fixedâŚor whatever disruption the METAR is causing, because overcast skies are often made of many layer of clouds not just oneâŚso in fact in your example the METAR engine is only showing one layer of cumulus clouds while everything else and in between is missing!
The question is, how to make the real weather match METAR? The real weather is broken too it seems. Those pilots there are grounded and not able to fly i bet because the real weather doesnât match METAR?
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Sim weather is very close to real-time cameras and METAR reports. My methodology was to find numerous real-time weather cameras where there were nearby or overhead cloud banks. Some had METARs within a few miles, some had METARs 20-30 miles away. There was no appreciable difference in accuracy between METAR and not in most locations, which was surprising, considering what others have claimed. The most compelling was at Portland, OR, which was so close to spot-on I actually laughed.
In some of the shots precipitation was present as well as several layers of clouds - some stratocumulus, some stratus, some nimbostratus. In a few locations, where there discrepancies exist, it is difficult to discern the source of the differences, however, in the case of the biggest difference, the nearest METAR was 16nm away (in the other direction from the pic). Thus, it would be foolish of me to say that METARs are the source of the issue as there is no evidence to prove that it âkeeps disrupting the weather.â There may be other issues at play such as server issues or bad incoming data specific to certain geographic regions, of which I was not able to reproduce in the areas in which I surveyed, save for one. Conclusion - METAR is not the prime issue in this region.
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All comparisons are 100% passable except for two, as noted.
The METAR reports can often be quite sloppy, as demonstrated a few posts higher up, one reporting CAVOK with Sc clouds clearly less than 5 miles away, and the other one reporting SCT when overcast. Maybe if the observers knew their reports are taken literally in MSFS they would be more precise and not so strictly focused on their own airportâs safe operation.
LOL, METARS are reported from instruments at the airport. It has nothing to do about people or observers entering information. Sometimes like all instruments the calibration can become inaccurate and they need to be recalibrated. ATISâs are read by controllers who are just reading the data from those instruments. One thing I have noticed is that between what the METAR says versus what the sim is depicting is sometimes delayed by X minutes. Again, just because the METAR says the weather is XYZ doesnât mean that is what will be showing in the sim. Even what the METAR says is not 100% what the weather ACTUALLY is unless it updates every 5 minutes, which it doesnât. The standard update time is around every 50-60 minutes unless there is a significant change that requires a new update to be generated before, which is of course within a set amount of parameters which we have no idea what they are.
. Many of us have used this thread to lump about a dozen issues into one and few people have provided evidence that the issue mentioned in the topic name is the root cause. Maybe you should take it up with the mod who called you out instead of violating the rules by retaliating against me. 
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