Dear Asobo, Microsoft…
In order to get FS2020 to a professional level you need to open the FS to 3rd party in all directions.
Don’t get me wrong, you mastered a milestone in Flight Simulation and FS2020 will probably not be replaced by anything alike for the next 2-3 decades. Therefore its even more important to open up your product for developers in order to make it suitable for every user`s individual needs. From all the gamers to the real pilots and all other professionals.
Many thanks,
Sincerely your aviation enthusiasts.
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I’ll let them know, and I’ll also edit the topic title. Thanks!
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I can’t believe they haven’t done this yet. The current weather model is a complete joke and it gets worse every time they try to “improve” it.
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Dear MSFS team,
I was wondering if you will update the SDK to allow third-party developers (such as HiFi, Rex or RDPreset) to add an accurate weather engine (such as Active Sky); add cloud types; and allow users to change atmospheric colors with a third-party add-on (such as RDShade).
Meteoblue hasn’t an accurate weather engine.
Stop your contract with them and please let 3rd party developers make it. Hifi as made ActiveSky on many sim for 20 years. They can do better things than Meteblue.
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As much as it would be a “savior” to have someone like a weather equivalent “Working Title” group come in and rescue the weather, Asobo has made it pretty clear they do not intend to open up the weather system ever…
I’m actually quite surprised this topic didn’t get locked. 
Ill just let this here speak: 
instead of your smiley…
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That was due to the proprietary data agreement with MeteoBlue. This is no longer a factor as the request here has been revised to one of a WRITE ONLY nature.
That is: There is no reason for them not to open it up, and with it being the single largest request item across the community, it is only sensible that the thread stays open until this fundamental requirement has been satisfied.
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They could also attract p3d users who don’t dare to buy MSFS2020 yet because of its closure of the weather SDK to 3rd party developers.
And they can make a lot of cash (since it seems that it’s the only thing Microsoft and Asobo care about).
I don’t see how you can call yourself “Flight Simulator” without the major options of a Simulator and use Meteoblue as a weather engine.
Also, Rex is essential for cloud textures and cloud colors, since MSFS2020 has purple dawn skies and clouds that look like mashed potatoes or volcanic clouds and from where you can see the sun through.
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Agreed. I think that many people still hanging to XP and P3D would probably switch over to MSFS since the flight model only gets better and better and we’re in store for some nice weather updates including turbulence UI in the future etc.
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Maybe it’s not just about accessing Meteoblue’s proprietary data.
Maybe the agreement is actually about making Meteoblue the sole provider of Live Weather data.
Then this request is still dead in the water just as it always was. It’s like asking Asobo to allow write only access for the scenery textures so we can stream in Google imagery instead of Bing. The answer will always be no.
The issue with using Google imagery is actually of theft and a resultant risk of class action lawsuit. I think the reluctance w.r.t weather system is more related to platform’s performance and stability. Anyway, suffice to say that we’re stuck with this half baked weather system as long as we decide to stick with MSFS.
That is a bit unlikely. If it were the case, then Asobo themselves wouldn’t be using METARs as a second source of wx data.
Meteoblue could also be supplying the METAR data:
That’s a big part of it for sure. But no doubt Microsoft wants to use and promote their own Bing Maps products within a flagship title like this. Just as this title will only ever run on Windows and XBox. Microsoft is all about its own interests and products, and that’s the main reason you can’t use Google Maps.
My thoughts were that Microsoft could have commissioned Meteoblue to create custom Live Weather products and as a part of the contractual agreement, Meteoblue was guaranteed rights as the official data supplier. Meteoblue may be leasing this data or charging per usage, so they’re going to want a commitment that the users will actually use Meteoblue’s products. As in, they don’t want users switching data providers because then they’re going to lose money.
But I also agree Asobo probably doesn’t want us looking under the hood and seeing the giant mess of wires that is the Live Weather engine. There’s probably a lot of valid reasons why they’re not opening the weather system.
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MeteoBlue is unreliable and much less accurate than many mobile live weather apps.
Break that deal with MeteBlue and do what the community has always wanted: third-party weather engines like Active Sky.
And above all, let third-party devs create addons such as Rex Sky Force 3D to add textures such as cirrus clouds and realistic dawn skies which change according to several geographical and meteorological factors, since Asobo do not know how to do it and that they boast of having the best dawn skies and the best clouds when this is totally untrue. And for those who don’t believe me and think that MSFS2020 has the best, I invite you to take a little look at the clouds in reality that are not blurry, grainy, pixelated or volcanic clouds; and watching sunrises and sunsets that certainly don’t have a faded purple color like that of MSFS2020.
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Clouds in MSFS 2020 are definitely scaled up quite a lot but there’s a good reason for this. We simply don’t have the computing power in mass market equipment to handle such level of high resolution textures and still get good performance. I think the best attempt of 1:1 scale has been made by X-enviro in XP11 but with that I never get more that 30fps on my 3060ti. Having said all of that, my biggest gripe with MSFS weather is about haze and visibility depiction that is only present around airports reporting low visibility as per METAR and with some arbitrarily fixed ceiling. Conditions outside the airport vicinity are always CAVOK which is highly unrealistic.
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The clouds on msfs2020 give us poor performance in addition to the fact that they are poorly represented even in ultra.
Even if you fly with a very dense layer of clouds, you can see the sun through it. What a shame!
The volumetric clouds of DCS remain the best in my opinion (except for the fact that there is no live weather).
Can’t compare this weather system with those older 3rd party addons. Those used textures instead of volumetric clouds.
I know volumetric clouds has limitations and stuff but those limitations will get less if they focus on the rendering of those volumetric clouds.
I know Seb said to make those volumetric clouds look more realistic they need a different rendering of those clouds that not affect fps that much. Turn those volumetric clouds into static textures to me would downgrade the weather system.
Better they change rendering then to be able to upgrade those clouds to look more realistic in the future.
If they opened this weather system up for 3rd parties they would need to work with same volumetric clouds that Asobo does. Can’t change textures of volumetric clouds because they are not static pictures.
Maybe those 3rd party devs could improv it if they opened the sim to be able implement own rendering systems of clouds. I really don’t think they will do that. We need to use the same engine as Asobo. As we need to do with all of the other flight simulators.
The issue is with Live Weather clouds. If you use base presets or a free addon presets like Floyds Epic Clouds » Microsoft Flight Simulator you can see that the sim is able to generate really nice clouds. Prior SU7 we had nice clouds with Live Weather and since then they changed something in the Live Weather engine that messed up clouds rendering.
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