Open up the weather system WRITE access to 3rd party devs

The weather refresh rate and/or accuracy of Live Weather leaves a lot to be desired.On other simulations, products such as Active Sky P3d seem to keep up to date weather and have settings to choose the weather refresh rate. If MSFS is not connecting to the same weather source as Active Sky, it should be. I’ve noted altimeter setting to be off enough to cause 50-200 feet of error.

MSFS does not use ‘live weather’ in it’s truest sense. It uses MeteoBlue, a weather forecasting model. These types of models usually produce hourly data, hence the reduced update rate. ActiveSky type applications can be set to check for METAR updates at very short intervals, 6-10 min if I remember correctly.

The MeteoBlue model is actually a very good simulation of large, macro scale weather, better than anything a PC simulator has had previously. It’s weakness however is accurate, localised weather reproduction, hence the large temp, wind & pressure variations that are seen when compared to current METAR’s.

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Thanks for that explanation, it makes sense based on what I’m seeing. I guess for the game players out there, they will like what they see. But for the serious flight sim enthusiast, those who use real world apps like ForeFlight and use the sim to practice real world procedures, the weather in MSFS falls short in what is needed.

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I don’t know who you are or why you think this is someone else’s account but I can assure you this is my account and it belongs to no one else. I have had this account since I signed up for the Alpha earlier this year.

Ok you have changed my mind. My original thought process was base on previous sims where weather engines were created to bring a more complete weather system to sims that were lacking in that department. In MSFS we have an excellent, robust and mostly complete weather environment that unfortunately lacks accuracy and other features that we who used previous products, love and would like to continue to use. So I’m with you. Let MS and Asobo focus on ensuring the weather environment remains complete and robust and give engine access to 3rd party devs so they give us all the other features we are accustom to having when we sim.

In this case I would rather they keep building/improving the current weather system so we don’t have to shell out $50 for a weather addon.

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Why can’t it be both? They can continue to improve things as they see fit, and other developers can create tools for those who want something different. It’s odd to see so many people asking them not to allow a feature. Does this community somehow feel compelled to purchase every piece of software that is made for their simulator? Why can’t addons that you don’t want to use exist too?

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That would be even better… but I’m afraid if they open it up, they will not develop/improve. Same with ATC.

They didn’t include any careermode either and we are now dependant on 3rd parties… sometimes it works out, or it doesnt and we have to pay monthly subscription for an addon.

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Honestly, I’d rather they just made a decision one way or another. Right now they’re being indecisive and wildly inaccurate.

Either they need to say “Yes, we’re going to make the most amazing live weather ever and it’s coming out working on patch # whatever.”

Or they need to just say “Yea we don’t want to do that here’s a full SDK, go nuts 3rd party”

Right now it’s just a lot of puttering around aimlessly in a circle like a toddler who hasn’t realized they’re already asleep.

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not really, i don’t want payware weather like xplane, this weather is ok and they will improve for free

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If Asobo/Microsoft is doing the good weather, it is work for them. If Asobo/Microsoft let the 3rd party devs do the work, it is still work for Asobo/Microsoft.
At the moment THERE IS NO INTERFACE TO THE WEATHER SUB-SYSTEM in the simulator.
I understand Asobo/Microsoft. They want to decide not now, but later.
But this is a bad situation. Asobo/Microsoft have since 8.oct.2020 the wish list topic “open up the weather system” under investigation. But priority is bug fixing and making FS2020 available for the new Xbox. Before 3Q21 they will not start doing serious work on less important stuff like a weather sub-system API (application programming interface).

wx-engine works fine for me, even if it only updates hourly and uses forecast model; don’t use ATC - fly on VATSIM, Career mode - join a VA, plenty of career modes there.

isn’t it obvious that the solutions is to provide a button that allows simmers who are used to a higher level of fidelity to do so. What I resent is that they assumed everybody should be happy with this…

Well - it looks like it is way over 2 weeks from your post and I still have clear skies in MSFS above my home while IRL it is overcast. Or stuff like winds - atm I’m flying to finland - at the place where I am at FL300 I should have nice jetstream into tail of 110kts of wind. In MSFS it is only 60kts.

Or stuff like - where I live on this time of the year there are literally no thunderstorms. And last week I had thunderstorms over Poland all day long from Cumulus clouds that had like 1000ft of height at most. No rain or so - just lightning strikes (I bet CBs are implified automatically as thunderstorm cells). Double checked it on lightning radars and there was no lighning for the whole day over all Europe that day.

And please dont understand me wrong - I dont want to pay for weather engine - but it looks like that MSFS weather is totally out of sync. And what’s even worse - it is not updating as flight goes so you are flying on a snapshot of weather from when you started.

Weather thingies still need to be addresed, but definitely MS team should be open to 3rd parties programs not only about weather, but also about so many aspect of flying science.

IMHO, like in todays life, there is so mutch information available, so many interesting things to get professional about, that you can only reach to a good level of knowledge on certain topics, every time more specific, you know everytime more about more deep and specific things and you get very skilled on that topic. At the same time you get further from general knowledge, further from other marvelous things around … That way, you just “cant” be skilled about everything, every aspect in life/science, so you can only reach modest level of knowledge, build a good platform to built on and just let it be…

Happy flying / i Mean, happy “reinstalling”, since ive been out for weeks since the Download loop bit me as well…

:slight_smile:

looks like we lost, boys

Don’t think of it as a loss. Think of it as the best default weather engine to date in a flight sim, better than any third party weather addon to date, that will be given a chance to evolve, without outside interference.

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looks like we lost indeed

I guess it’s now up to Asobo to start implementing the advanced features that so many people use 3rd party apps to provide.

Personally the big one for me is historical/archived weather. If this interests you I suggest adding a vote to this thread.

Well, while it is the best default weather engine to date, it is still far from HiFi’s AS in terms of accuracy. I hope it will improve in time, but my point is that HiFi is on the market for over a decade and known to deliver, while MeteoBlue’s first release is…screwed…

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