Downtown Anchorage.
Live cam
REX Weather Force
MSFS Default
IMO, MSFS seemed more accurate in depiction here.
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I had good luck with real weather, when I didnât get the now fixed â3 knotsâ bug, ever since alpha.
And as another user posted, itâs better to have slight inaccuracies but smooth transitions, than 100% accuracy to the METARs but harsh transitions as it reads from one to the next.
Since I started this thread, I might as well admit that I was wrong about Weather Force. It does give us current METAR weather, but MSFS default gives us more nuance and variety. Weather Force makes clouds repetitive (especially at high-altitude), and makes the radar look like a joke. It may be great for low and slow flying, or when tootling around an airport, but for cross-country or high-altitude flights, MSFS beats REX hands-down.
REX has benefits though: Dynamic frontal systems and such, and real-time weather is great. But aside from that, MSFS is superior by far in terms of how weather is rendered in the sim. I just wish theyâd get current METARS set up as well.
This isnât the first time that REX has underwhelmed me, so Iâm really not surprised. Hopefully there will be some patches and improvements to make it work better, but for now, it will be for a backup rather than my primary engine.
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Absolutely. I bit the bullet with REX because it was only 20 bucks. Theyâve underwhelmed me before, so I wasnât expecting much. Itâs pretty terrible. MSFS default is by far more-superior. There are a couple of perks with REX, but MSFS just renders weather better. If only they could do real-time, then Iâd be content until Active Sky comes out- they know what theyâre doing.
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Yeah Weather Force depicts local METARs globally, so the same weather everywhere. MSFS is so much better. I just wish they had real-time METARs. Iâm not impressed with Weather Force, but it was only 20 bucks. Maybe after a few updates it will be useful.
REX has underwhelmed me before, but for the price, I figured why not. Itâs terrible. Global rendering of local weather. It would be nice to have current METARs in MSFS, but MSFS default weather is by far superior to this garbage.
How is the wind acting when you depart with GA planes. From what ive seen on youtube takeoffs seemed more realistic than with default weather?
I mean whats weird for me is that when you start rotating, the wind pushes your nose to the side instantly like if there were no wind at all at rwy altitude. No wind pushing me when rolling.
Do you experience the same with default live weather?
REX renders local METARs globally, so thatâs all you see until you get to the next station. Weather Force also doesnât depict fog properly. MSFS does both, and itâs far superior to Weather Force.
However, this has itâs place. And there are a couple of features like dynamic frontal systems and such that can be fun. But MSFS has the best engine. Just need metarsâŠ
Hmm interesting product. How are the upper winds in terms of accuracy?
Been a long time customer of REX since their first product with FSX many years ago. Some of their concepts were good in the past, such as cloud depictions and textures, but as far as my experience goes, they have never gotten any weather engine right in all these years of using their products.
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That is probably harder than it sounds. I hate to speculate that it is model or current obs, but it probably is one or the other. If you try to mix them, you get in the situation where you have to disregard certain pieces of data where there is conflict.
Think about the ideal âliveâ weather scenario:
Radar where available - Gives you exact location and intensity of precipitation, wind shear, probably cloud structure too. But is limited to certain parts of the world.
Observations in the form of surface obs and satellite - Airports, other official sites, personal weather stations, air quality stations, etc. Temp/hum/wind/rainfall (but rainfall in this context is only useful in terms of rain rate.). Satellite for visible/water vapor/multispectral IR/SST/dust/list goes on.
Model - Atmospheric wind, cloud cover and precip where not filled in by satellite/radar/surface obs.
Youâd have to have a pretty complex preferencing system to favor one over another, with lots of specific exceptions. The model is global, so places where the observations or radar disagreed would need to be throw out.
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I will definitely wait for Active Sky before buying a weather engine. For the time it will take to be released, Microsoft should have make several improvements on default live weather and then, we should know if the default is good enough or if we should buy a 3rd party addon for better realism
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Great video!
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Thats strange because i am watching a live stream on twitch and the weather is no different to what the sim can do when it is functioning. Watched another live stream earlier and the streamer was not impressed with the REX program. Think i will keep the wallet closed on this one when live weather is working great in sim it is good enough.
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I bought it, I tried it, I went back to default. Current METARS are great, but not if thatâs all you see to the horizon. There isnât a lot of variety in the clouds either. No fog? Yup.
Setting up dynamic fronts is fun though, and I think if youâre doing low and slow flying, this is a great way to get real-time conditions. However, for cross country flying at high altitudes, MSFS is much, much better at depicting conditions, even if they donât exactly match what METARs report.
Hopefully some day soon, Asobo will depict METARs by default, or maybe Active Sky will show up too. Perhaps Weather Force will improve after a few patches, but for now, MSFS default engine is much-more immersive.
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Not from what Iâve seen!
can only go with what I HAVE SEEN. for me nope not all that.;
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And donât even start on complexity to merge all this seamlessly.
Great to see this thread is waking up to how hard weather simulation is 
So far I have been enjoying the weather tho its not accurate everywhere but its is pretty consistent and continuous which I really disliked about every weather plug-in I used in X-Plane in the past.
Also found vatsim to be ok to fly, especially since a lot of planes are currently mfs based anyways.
(I get a lot of icing in Europe right now tho )
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I wrote a separate theorhetical post today about just severing the weather system off and closing the loop. Instead of live weather it would just be weather. I donât think the reality piece is as important as the accurate simulation piece. For VATSIM, the controller just needs to have the same information as the pilot - it doesnât matter if it is real or not.
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I agree. It just makes cross platform vatsim near impossible if weather cannot agree between them.
But maybe its time for a cloud based weather sim for all sims to use (hey ms put azure to good use?)
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Haha maybe. Iâm not sure Microsoft is ready to onboard that magnitude of parallel computing task for a video game. More likely we get all the people in this community to install Condor and while weâre not flying, weâre generating the models.
Iâm really curious how much of the original meteoblue model is left in the game. I have a suspicion that the game looks more like a layer cake rather than a fluid dynamics model. This was somewhat confirmed by what the meteoblue CTO said talking about what they are supplying to Asobo. But the actual implementation remains a mysteryâŠ
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