Good news- you got some bad info from whatever armchair expert told you that. WX radar worked nicely in P3D and X-plane, so it’s possible to get it to work. The question is whether or not this is something that’s on Asobo’s radar…no pun intended. If not, then we’ll probably have to wait for the SDK to be developed further or addon aircraft makers to come up with their own systems that reads MSFS weather.
I like this and WeatherForce- as a backup to the default when it goes bonkers. But, I didn’t see anything different on the radar with either option. Am I missing something?
Since weather is such an important integral part of MSFS, according to the developers, when are we going to see a nice working radar system ? What we have right now is a joke and very arcade looking that picks every cloud. The real radar system is much more different. I have 4 years of real airline flying, E175 and A320 and boy the radar system is good on these planes. Currently MSFS radar picking up every cloud and the result is a mess, it shows clouds rather then precipitation density that translates into TCU, CB clouds that can be hazardous for aviation.
I really don’t know how Asobo/MS built or designed the radar system but it seems that there is also too many colors. I used to see 4 colors on the radar… Green - Light precipitation, Yellow - Moderate, Red - Severe, Purple - Extreme (Hail in many cases).
Asobo/MS should redesign the radar system to pick only areas with actual precipitation rather then every cloud. Also When flying through I would expect some light to Severe turbulence depend on the type, vertical development and vertical updrafts. That way we can actually plan on avoid flying through hazardous weather, and add realism to the simulator.
I hope the development team is going to take it as a project and improve the radar experience.
Please share your opinion and vote to add it to the list.
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The radar seems largely the same as on earlier versions of FS. They would have to model true precipitation first so a radar can be modeled to pick up on that.
Not sure if this is the case currently
I’m confident that they can do it pretty easy consider the weather system they built. If we have clouds that grew base to top of 6000-8000 feet depends on dew spread in the areas that can be light rain, and 8000+ feet model it as moderate and so on. Vertical development of clouds “Usually” dictates the amount of condensation and precipitation. Considering the nice random cloud buildups in MSFS, it seems like an possible task.
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I think they are working on Xbox release and the continue pratice of making the Scenery Simulator better. Someday they will get around to things dealing with a Flight Simulator. Like the planes and their operations.
Or being able to see traffic via ADSB
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Hi @InboardBench419 ,
You can only vote in the Bugs & Issues and Wishlist sections. Someone had already created this as a bug, so I moved your entire thread there so people could vote for it.
Community Manager @OlieTsubasa443 had asked for screenshots from another user but they did not respond. Perhaps you could share some screenshots that illustrate that radar is showing clouds instead of precipitation?
sorry it took me so long to respond, here is a screenshot of the weather radar in the CJ4 using the “broken clouds” theme. In this theme, I dont see an precipitation coming out of these clouds, but see the red returns on the ND, this is not how it works in the real world. As I said, only precipitation is painted, it seems to me that the radar is displaying clouds, which is not how it should be…
Thank you!
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Thank you! Do you have one also showing the sky for that radar? It would be helpful to show that the clouds are cumulus and that it’s not raining where the radar says it is.
You are 
correct that the radar is showing returns on clouds, not rain. Or possibly both, but certainly not only rain. I don’t have any pics to back it up, but it’s easy enough to duplicate. Just go fly in a radar equipped plane on a cloudy (but not rainy) day, and anybody can reproduce the “bug” (if that’s what it is) 100% of the time.
In fact, I’ve used it to my advantage to know where I might be picking up ice, especially when I have both horizontal and vertical radar modes available.
But I can tell you’re an Airbus guy lol… That’s not an “ND”, it’s a PFD, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything called an “ND” anywhere but in an actual Airbus… Yeah, yeah, picking at nits, I know. I just found it humorous…
Nice pick of heavy to extreme precipitation. couldn’t take outside photo… the camera won’t focus from the jumpseat.
Here is some explanatory video of how the weather radar should actually work:
I have a strong feeling that now it takes the height of the cloud into account which is absolute nonsense.
They should fix the major issues with the weather before fixing any radar of it.
The ‘live weather’ does not match any data source, making it absolutely impossible to do any flight planning.
Well, sometimes it gets it wrong, but 9 times out of 10, if I’m flying out of an airport near my house, the weather at the airport matches what I see out my (real life) window. The only issues I’ve seen are with inaccurate snow depths (meaning it doesn’t show snow where it should) and once in awhile it totally loses it’s mind and gets everything wrong.
I made a hasty purchase of REX Weather because I wanted to see snow where there should be snow, but overall I wasn’t happy with what it did to my performance (and I’ve got a pretty beefy rig), so that goes down as one of those purchases I wish I hadn’t made. Yes, I want snow where there should be snow, but MS/Asobo has been improving that, and my bet is by next winter, they’ll have it right.
But other than that occasional time they just completely mess it up (and I’ve no idea why that happens), it’s never caused me any issues with flight planning or anything like that.
I wish I had some suggestions for you, but mine simply doesn’t seem to do what yours does. Heck, even when it does mess up the “realtime” local weather, it still seems to get things like winds aloft right, so even that’s not messing with my flight planning.
Hello! I just loaded the Broken clouds weather theme, best way to reproduce this is to load it and turn on the radar, 100% reproducible… Thank you!
Everybody knows that the current implementation of weather radar shows clouds and not rain. What is your point?