“New Typical Weather addon – interested in community opinions”

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I’m interested in hearing people’s views on the newly released Parallel 42 – Typical Weather addon.

As someone who’s used multiple weather engines over the years, I’m curious whether Typical Weather represents a meaningful step forward, or simply an alternative approach alongside existing options — I’m still very much on the fence.

I understand the concept is to provide seasonal / regional “plausible” weather rather than real-world METAR-driven conditions, which I can see appealing to some users (stability, consistency, long-haul flying, training scenarios, etc.).

However, as someone who mainly flies with Live Weather / Active Sky, I’m struggling to see how it fits for simmers who value real-world operations — for example runway usage, ATIS matching current METARs, and realism at major hubs like EGLL where real-world flow matters.

I’m not criticising the product — I’m genuinely just trying to understand who it’s really aimed at, and whether it offers something meaningful alongside Live Weather rather than replacing it. Opinions would be much appreciated as no reviews yet.

I’ve also heard that weather transitions are deliberately kept fairly smooth, with fewer aggressive or rapid changes compared to Live Weather — if that’s true, I’d be interested to know how that feels in practice.

I’d be very interested to hear from anyone who has tried it:

How does it feel in practice?

Does ATIS / runway logic feel believable?

Do you see it as a complement to Live Weather, or a separate use case entirely?

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I have to admit I was somewhat befuddled when I first read about it, but it actually seems more appealing the more I think about it.

First of all, I can’t see how it would fit in with the live, real-world scenarios that you mentioned, and I doubt users who use the sim primarily under those conditions will have much interest in it, nor should they. I just don’t see how that would work.

This is probably more for those situations where you want to do a hypothetical flight or simply joyride. I do this type of flying quite a bit. Often times, I think it will be nice to depart from a certain airport. With live weather, I then find out its IFR conditions, but I don’t want to fly IFR, so I choose some preset or “historical weather” in Active Sky (which is also hit or miss). The presets get old. I think this addon would fit in with that type of flying quite well. It would keep things interesting but temperate, and with less work than having to pick out a preset.

I’m no meteorologist, but I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb by asserting that if weather is depicted to represent the “average” conditions for a given time of year in a given place, the result is most likely going to be temperate. That and the plausibility aspect seem to be the aims of this addon. It may actually be a good fit for a lot of users.

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I think where I’m still slightly stuck is around unpredictability, particularly when it comes to things like storms. Weather in the real world is often temperate, yes, but it’s also inherently unpredictable — convective weather, pop-up storms, sudden deteriorations, etc., are a big part of what makes flying feel dynamic and alive.

TBH..I don’t know I should probably add that I fly IFR most of the time, usually with Active Sky, and while I value real-world weather a lot, I’ll admit that transitions can sometimes feel a bit unrealistic — sudden shifts in wind, pressure, or cloud structure that don’t always feel very “atmospheric” from an IFR point of view.

My question (and maybe this is just down to how it’s implemented) is whether a “typical” or average-based approach risks smoothing that out too much. I completely get the plausibility angle, but I’d be curious to know how often users are seeing genuinely unsettled or stormy conditions, rather than mostly benign weather.

I’m definitely intrigued by the concept — I’m just trying to understand whether it still captures that element of weather surprise, or whether that’s something you consciously trade off for stability and ease of use. Or is there no answer just stay with the what we all know!

Given that I already fly with Active Sky most of the time, and MSFS has its own live weather system, I’m starting to question whether additional third-party weather tools actually add meaningful value — particularly as I understand that the developer behind Active Sky was also involved in the design of Typical Weather. I’m curious how people see the distinction in practice…just waiting for a youtube review.

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My guess is it will be good for VFR touring and bush flying. Maybe for doing short local VFR flights and practice approaches under IFR. But without a source of truth from which you can get fairly accurate observations and forecasts over a wide area and time, the flight planning required for realistic cross-country work for either VFR or IFR will be tough.

I kind of agree, but it’s actually fairly predictable on a larger scale. It’s the specifics in the mesoscale and under (like the storms you’re talking about) that it’s not. “Storms may initiate somewhere in this general area around this time,” that kind of thing. But where and when exactly is not easy to predict more than an hour or two out, and sometimes not even then. Sometimes you have to wait for it to pop and then go into an active, dynamic mode, where it becomes a bit easier to see where and when it’s going to impact an area. And then as time goes on the storms change modes and take on a different set of predictability.

The other thing is behavior - future behavior, forecasting, etc, is predicated on the history of the weather. That’s why a static average doesn’t work in many regions. Sure, maybe in an area that’s experiencing a stagnant ridge of high pressure, but the low that sweeps through tomorrow continues down the road and spawns new interactions, etc.

The point is for longer flights (both duration and distance) we have to understand what’s creating the weather that’s coming or that we’re going to fly into.

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This addon looks really appealing for the type of flying I do. However, I have a question about how winds are handled, particularly for longer flights.

When planning fuel for cross-country or longer routes, I typically need to account for enroute winds. I see that Typical Weather offers both static and dynamic weather modes, does the static option keep winds consistent throughout the flight so I can plan around them? Or in either mode, are the wind speeds generally mild enough that fuel planning isn’t significantly affected?

Any insight from those already using it would be appreciated!

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I just heard about this addon and I’d love to buy it if its not too expensive. I often fly with presets but I’m always wishing they would be dynamic and this sounds like it would fit that bill. I went to look for it in the marketplace on my X Box and it was nowhere to be found so I ticked the ‘all platforms’ checkbox and it still was nowhere to be found… so I came here to search for it.

Is it only available for PC? anyone have any screenshots?

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It’s available direct from //42 right now (PC), and should be on Marketplace soon with PC + XBox support.

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Thanks very much. Thats awesome. I look forward to trying it.

I wish Asobo would let devs adjust the atmospheric colors and also the code that creates the live weather clouds. Things just don’t seem realistic to me.