it’s not even just a glider issue. It just presents itself as a bigger issue with gliders. 2 pilots in GA flying VFR can’t always fly together either because the clouds will be different
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Yes ABSOLUTELY - we glider pilots really try to emphasise the issues we raise really affect EVERYONE in the sim, it’s just we tend to spot things early because we have a really tight community of pilots who fly multiplayer fast close to the ground with common tasks and weather.
For stuff that only affects us (like the MSFS glider variometer code doesn’t work or the 2024 stock towplanes are too weak to launch any of the gliders) we just develop workarounds as we know Asobo have too much stuff on their plate to fix those things.
This thread is definitely in the “it affects everybody” category. Given this is essentially a multiplayer-breaking bug you’d expect this to be flagged as bug-logged reasonably promptly, and hopefully fixed.
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Any news on fixes for multiplayer in 24 yet? I’m keen to spend on a bunch of marketplace GA add-ons for 24, but still waiting for GA group flights to be a shared experience.
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Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
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Yes
Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
• There is still random clouds being generated at the start of each session instead of creating standard cloud positions so all multiplayer aircraft can fly in the same weather
If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
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MSFS2024 as an e-sport platform is severely hampered by this. We could see large glider comps that could potentially attract a lot of new players that might be more interested in air sports. Please prioritize
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I agree this is a desirable feature. If it can be done for all participants using a common PRNG seed, that sounds like a satisfactory solution.
it’s six months from the original post. But the status is still only “feedback logged” leaving us to guess whether there’s any chance of it being fixed or not, or any idea of a timescale.
Given MSFS 2020 doesn’t have this issue, and pretty much all our 2500 members have paid for 2024 anyway, it should be guilt free to simply say “we’re never going to fix this” and we’ll understand to continue to invest in MSFS 2020 as long as MS continues to support that platform. Or some guidance could be given that a fix in 2024 is intended.
Sitting on the fence is leaving us progressing week by week keeping the hopes for 2024 alive while we’re hosting all our multiplayer events on MSFS 2020 - this doesn’t seem a fair situation to be in after six months.
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I support the author + VOTE. It would be great if weather and its changes were better synchronized between players.
This is very important in the following cases:
- Group glider flights (especially if thermals are supposed to be under clouds).
- Group flights in IMC or when crossing cloud layers multiple times during a flight (for example, in WWII aircraft).
- Shared cockpit flights. I have extensive experience flying as a crew in MSFS 2020, and it can happen that even when you’re in the same cockpit and both have the same time set, one crew member says everything is clear while the other insists they’re still in a cloud.
I suspect Microsoft prefers to generate the cloud data locally rather then to stream it from a server to everyone.
Preset weather doesn’t need to be streamed. These clouds are generated by an artificial noise map and move depending on the wind settings.
The issue is, that in 2024 there is no way to generate the same clouds (across players or sim sessions), whereas in 2020 this was possible. A very unfortunate regression, that has dramatic consequences for VFR flying.
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Great news from Seb Wloch in yesterday’s livestream: “this will be fixed”.
Not a firm timescale, but sounded like either SU3 or SU4.
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It looks OK now. Thanks
Sim Update 4 Beta Regression:
This bug has reappeared exactly as it was when we submitted the initial report and before Asobo’s subsequent bugfix in SU4 Beta.
We have done extensive multiplayer testing in the latest MSFS2024 SU4 Beta 1.6.31.0 but probably the regression occurred earlier.
The prior fix i.e. reset of the cloud map on hitting “Fly Now” is no longer working, so in multiplayer we’re back to the situation where each pilot sees the clouds in different places, depending on how long ago it was when they originally started their copy of MSFS.
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In case it’s related sim version 1.6.32.0, the in-flight weather menu doesn’t seem to know what the local time is in the sim, i.e. here it is reporting 11:03 when the Logger reports the “E:LOCAL TIME” simvar saying it’s 11:15. Of course this may be a completely independent/unrelated bug but we’re definitely having issues with the cloud sync on spawn in.
Could be related to this report: Custom time remains still when set in the weather menu
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In one of our group flight, a technique we used just to try and diagnose the problem was this one:
- Everyone started MSFS 2024 at the same time
- Everyone clicked the first “Start” button at the same time
- Everyone clicked the “Free Flight” option at the same time
- We all made sure to set the weather, date and time at about the same time
- We clicked the “start” button on the world map at the same time
- We all clicked the last ready to fly button once spawned in and collected a screenshot right away to compare our clouds.
This here is the result, which to me look about the same. So we know this technique above works but I don’t think it’s viable to do this everytime!
There MUST be a way to seed the SAME clouds based on local date (without the year), time and weather settings of course. It has to be repeatable EACH and EVERY time the user selects the same date, time and weather settings for a given location.
And while we’re at it, June 21 at 3 PM in 2025 should probably be the exact same as June 21 at 3 PM in 2026 or any other year. Otherwise, we need to start worrying about everyone entering the exact same year…
**MajorDad4262 assessment is pretty much spot on and verified by other groups. For some of the SU4 beta run, cloud syncing seemed to be working but the time between people joining the group and starting to fly was only within a 15 minute window, so the drift was never that great. Nevertheless, there WAS a noticeable drift between those who had been holding on the world map and those who turned up at the last minute before the task start time
For many of us in the gliding community, this is a game breaker. From a programming perspective, how hard can it be to reset or reseed the cloud map/clock when “Start Flight” is clicked. What seems to be happening now is the cloud map/clock is set when the sim has loaded and the clock keeps ticking all the time we are holding on the world map waiting for the group to assemble
Resetting on “Start flight” would fulfil our needs but a better solution would be to have a reset button available on the in-flight menu bar or at least in the weather section - for purely selfish reasons. The “Out of Body” experience when 50+ aircraft all spawn in on top of each other is an experience definitely to be avoided if possible**
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Maybe in the New Year it would be great to have a status update for this - we have a 3000-member community with 40+ pilot multiplayer VFR flying every week and have a huge dependency on the reliability of the weather between multiplayer flyers. Basically this comes down to:
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multiplayers being able to load the same pre-defined custom weather preset and reliably have the same weather conditions (winds, cloud layers, temperature)
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The timing of the weather conditions changing (i.e. mainly cloud positions) being the same for all multiplayers.
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Being able to include the used weather preset settings in a flight logger recording to easily detect issues across multiplayer and provide support where needed or to verify conditions where multiplayer tasks are competitive.
We are really, really expert in making this viable in MSFS, and ultimately it’s probably good we’re a large group constantly testing and working around these issues that ultimately will benefit all users. Counter-intuitively MSFS has minor but naive design decisions that make all of these things impossible and it’s unclear whether Asobo is even aware of that. So we expend hundreds or thousands of hours designing work-arounds. If in due couse there is a motivation to improve the weather aspect of multiplayer it might save a huge amount of time or avoid potential mis-steps if we had a quick dialog about it.
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