Please explain the weather

I must say I’m very concerned by this attitude. A system of voting was implemented to collect our feedback. If a given thread gets enough votes to be in the top 25, an effort should be made to understand as a whole what people are concerned about in that entire thread, not just the OP. Threads and votes should not be summarily determined to be “not useful” or it defeats the entire purpose of the feedback system and basically renders it a theater where some group of people at MS/Asobo can decide which things are “useful” or not.

One metric that might be tracked is the continued accumulation of votes of these items over time, especially the two weeks inbetween each patch.

If people are still upvoting the weather item, my expectation as a customer is that an effort will be made to collect feedback on and improve the weather.

If people are still upvoting the CTD item, then my expectation as a customer is that an effort would be made to understand why people are still seeing CTDs. Maybe adding additional telemetry/logging options to the sim that people can turn on if they are seeing multiple CTDs.

I’m expecting that our problems will the proactively addressed. The responses in this thread from official Community reps seem between combative and dismissive, which makes me VERY concerned about the long term future of this product if this is the direction things are going to take on these forums.

The “consolidated weather” thread has numerous examples of specific issues with the weather that people have pointed out.

There are 3 major issues I see with the weather:

  • Weather not consistent in the sim in different reporting locations. The World Map, ATIS, and observed weather (wind/outside temperature when flying) for a given location in the game should all match up. This is currently not the case in many locations, and it poses major issues for instance when landing for runway selection.

  • Weather doesn’t match the real world. The weather is frequently not matching the real world. This is an issue because it needs to match up for purposes of flight planning and flying on VATSIM, etc which use real world weather. Since VATSIM is an official MSFS partner, this seems particularly problematic. (Note: It is true that METARs reports are not the be all and end all of what is ‘real’. There may be multiple observed ‘out the window’ conditions that match a single METAR report)

  • No detailed access to weather info for flight planning via 3rd party tools The sim doesn’t make weather information available over say SimConnect so that third party utilities like LittleNavMap can query the sim for purposes of flight planning. If the weather matched the real world, we could use real world flight panning services, but it currently does not. Access to the in-sim weather by 3rd party tools would allow us to plan flights, but wouldn’t help the VATSIM folks who still need real world weather.

These are the 3 items I’d like to see more information on.

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It’s true that they are a game studio, but so was ACES Studio. Many Asobo devs also took flight training (Sebastian and some others at Asobo have the PPL now https://twitter.com/swloch/status/1264997854139031553?s=20 https://twitter.com/swloch/status/1272772070880002053?s=20
https://twitter.com/swloch/status/1266675249896136704?s=20) to have a deeper understanding of aviation.

Producer Mr Jorg said numerous times MSFS 2020 is a sim for simmers, and will be accessible to gamers. But it’s first and foremost going to be a sim and not a game. Asobo’s David Dedeine said in simple, plain English to AVSIM during a live interview that a flight simulator starts to die when it starts to become a game.

Going back to the topic at hand (in-sim weather), a student of meteorology who is currently working for the US Army once told me that if a £4000 PC and £60 flight simulator could accurately predict and portray in real time real live weather on your monitor, then many super-computers and multi-million dollar radar hardware would have gone INOP and hundreds of thousands of professional meteorologists in the world would have lost their jobs by now.

You think Active Sky and REX have been simulating in-sim live weather accurately for Prepard3d and XP11 all this time? Sure, if you think so. But it doesn’t work like that in real life. If it did, we would be living in a different world.

Whether the points/issues you have raised is valid or not, it’s high time that Asobo / Microsoft open up the in-sim weather system and technology to the third parties such as REX and Active Sky (the latter is also know as Hifi Simulations) so that people can pick and choose.

Person X thinks Meteoblue is not realistic? Buy ActiveSky and ■■■■. Person Y who thinks Meteoblue does the job well can also ■■■■ and not buy ActiveSky or a strictly metar-based app.

Fortunately, in one of the recent feedback/wishlist snapshots, I’ve noticed that MS/Asobo are now investigating opening up the weather system to third parties. That was a great move, and I want to thank Microsoft / Asobo and the community mod/admin team for that.

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You might have a point here as there are double votes for sure. But I think it is worth to point out that there’s an issue with the development snapshots AND the live weather in the sim. In this day and age a computer company might be able to figure out a way to count unique votes in given threads automatically.
But the core issue of a possible discrepancy seems to be acknowledged by forum officials, so let’s wait and see.

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I don’t understand how real weather not working isn’t the number one concern. ATIS never has been right.

A very-well written post, it’s great to see people caring this much! :+1:t2: You were exclusively talking about the temperature, don’t forget that the pressure is also off, especially for higher-elevation airports.

You got me triggered with this one, I must admit. :grin: From my point of view, this contribution is beyond ridiculous (no offense!!), and here’s why:

Noone here believes that MSFS is a forecast machine that’s creating forecast models from raw data, for which you indeed need multi-million dollar machines and an incredible amount of calculation power.

Instead, MSFS is only fed by the output of real-world data and, thus, by the calculations made by companies like Meteoblue.

The job of MSFS’ weather engine is to translate this data into matching weather conditions when you launch the sim (variables and graphics) and to extrapolate this based on Meteoblue’s model (that’s still just data they delivered) until there’s another injection of real-world data (from measurements).

Still a somewhat simplistic view, but no, nobody believes that MSFS is able to forecast the weather around the planet. Absolutely not.

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You may live 8 miles from a METAR station, but Controlled airports ALL have weather observations that also are Updated with a SPECI if the weather changes enough. They also have up to the minute AWOS reporting. MSFS figured this out in 2000 already by using an AVIATION weather service through Jeppesen.

I hate when the Devs come on a board and pretend to be Customers.

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Also WE Don’t NEED it to predict the weather, Only match the Observation products and official forecasting products. I don’t care if my computer screen looks exactly like it does outside my house, I care that the weather at my airport matches the dang NWS reported current weather products (Which they give away FOR FREE by the way) And I care that the sim Internally agrees with itself.

Right now this is some DCS level rubbish.

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So which is it, one merged thread or one for each specific issue?

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Doesn’t matter, there is no chance whatsoever of any weather-related discussion on this forum having any significant effect on MSFS development. They always dissolve into the same train-wreck arguments, with any sensible discussions about specific issues getting drowned out by people more interested in boosting their own egos than in offering anything cnostructive.

If you want Asabo to do anything, submit a specific bug report, on a specific clearly-defined issue, providing verifiable evidence to back it up. Developers don’t read these threads, never mind contribute to them.

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I think the pressure being “off” is simply a disparity between MeteoBlue’s prediction and reality. I have noted that when the weather in a specific location is relatively stagnant (i.e. under the influence of a slow moving high pressure ridge), that the MB prediction of pressure is often quite close. Where it can fall down is when a rapidly-moving low pressure system is approaching the area. If the MB model is an hour or two slow or fast in its prediction of where the low is going to be positioned at a given time, that can lead to pressure being much lower or higher than real time METAR. The same with cloud cover or precipitation.

The temperature issue at high altitude airports definitely appears to be a case where the sim is mis-applying some sort of unnecessary correction for terrain elevation. Every weather model - whether MB’s own NEMS model, or public models like the NOAA’s GFS will contain multiple variables for different types of temperature at a given location. If Asobo accidentally chose the variable for “potential temperature” instead of actual temperature, that would almost perfectly explain why the temperature at high-elevation airports is always too high. Potential temperature literally applies the standard ISA lapse rate in reverse, which appears to be what is happening.

But, if potential temperature was being used by mistake, that would cause temperatures at high cruising altitudes to be much much MUCH too high. (Like +65C at 35,000 feet), which does not happen in Live Weather.

But even at high cruise altitudes, the air temperature is warmer than it should be - and the elevation of the underlying terrain does have an effect, (and it definitely should not at high altitudes). I did a recent flight in the A320 with Live Weather from KORD to KLAX at FL380. Over the plains, the temperature aloft was -48C which was pretty close to the GFS predicted temperature. As soon as the aircraft started flying over the Rocky Mountains, the SAT temperature at 38,000 feet went up 12 degrees to -36C

can we kindly ask to have the press/density and OAT at high altitude airports resolved please. Two good examples are Telluride and Aspen. Setting live weather gives the issue and using a theme doesn’t.
Thank you for taking the time to reply to this in detail. Have a good weekend.

Nope, that’s not correct. I checked the pressure many times against current data and from the past couple of days. It’s never been close in airports like KTEX (but also others) and the data (including forecast) on the Meteoblue website is in fact correct.

How can I be given 3 totally different winds for my location…

The 19kts from the southwest are a reality, the other two are complete fantasy.

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The believers here will tell you that it’s a feature, not a problem…

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Just drink the kool-aid and the weather is perfect!
us-and-poisonous-kool-aid

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So during my flight, I should have had around 40kt winds at 2500 feet, but enjoyed 17 kt winds out of the correct direction during my entire flight. On the ground, after landing I had 5kt winds when I should be having 16kt winds with gusts to 34. Also should have encountered rain showers en route but of course nothing of the sort. The altimeter was 30.10 when in reality all METARs show around 29.88.

It is just so frustrating. I have no idea why earlier in the day when I checked before flying the weather was almost spot on.

Well, since Meteoblue is claiming that they deliver the correct data to MS/Asobo, I guess the injection fails or their engine isn’t correctly digesting this huge amount of data. Or maybe the corrections they apply don’t work or are applied incorrectly (as it seems to happen for high-elevation airports).

In the end, it’s just speculation since nobody here knows anything about their engine etc.

Just noticed the little arrow with the “19” next to it in your screenshot–I’ve never seen that on my map… :smiley:

Maybe that one shows the “raw” Meteoblue data (again, only speculating)? But it’s good to have these discrepancies documented in screenshots, maybe it’s enough for @Jummivana and @Taleboules2146 to get it addressed somehow.

The bigger picture would also include winds aloft etc. to be correct, but I’m not sure what I should be expecting from their “live” weather engine anymore…

Even though this wasn’t a question for me, let me ask you back the following:

Which other sim you’re referring to has–ever–advertised to have “live weather” in a way MS/Asobo did in their partnership series and in their numerous interviews…?

I’ll always come back to this one point on my agenda: They raised the bar–or the expectations, respectively.

Now let’s have some popcorn together mate, shall we? :popcorn: :popcorn:

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