Real Environment Xtreme Announcement | REX Weather Force Weather Engine

Weather working fine for me, having an absolute blast with new update.

I agree, the weather now mostly working - BUT : as a real pilot, you refer to METAR´s. A good flight planning refers to METAR´s. Takeoff and Landing calculation refers to METAR´s

and thats the point. The Sim-weather seem to look real but it is based on other information that the Metar - measurement´s and that is simply unuseable for those, who want to use the Sim as a SIM!

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To be clear. My statements were made pre-patch #2. I did not have time to test the new update yet. Seems I might also hold back flying until some of the issues with this patch have been resolved. But to answer your question, anywhere really.

As I said, the weather in the sim is “self-consistent” and works great at times. But it is by design always a little bit off from real weather, because it is a forecast model (which is what Meteoblue does) fed by real data. And sometimes it is off by quite a bit.

I could post you some of my log entries if you wanted to check the airports I flew to. But basically I started out at Sedona, flew up the west coast to the Pacific Northwest, flew over to Alaska into the Bering Straight all up into Cold Bay. The sim portrayed the cloud cover very differently to what was given in real world data, forcing me to divert sometimes, as VMC in the real world, were IMC in the game. Ceilings of a few thousand feet became <1 SM visibility all the way to the ground.

I will test the new update soon enough and check if it has been improved.

ok, so if is fixed and works well, how come I have this: (and I will include just 3 examples):

KLGB real metar: KLGB 170753Z AUTO 00000KT 9SM CLR 20/13 A2991
MSFS KLGB 0800Z ATIS: 01605KT 3SM FEW010 FEW042 FEW124 24/10 A29.87 and of course by looking out the window visibility is not 3.

KMMV real metar: KMMV 170753Z AUTO 00000KT 3/4SM BR VV012 16/14 A3001
MSFS KMMV 0800Z ATIS: 20805KT FEW014 FEW 040 FEW 118 20/10 A29.92 and again visibility out the window unlimited, a nice day to fly VFR??

SEQM real metar: SEQM 170800Z 21003KT 6000 BCFG OVC005 11/10 Q1027 NOSIG RMK A3034
MSFS SEQM atis does not even work, but looking out the window skies are clear, vis unlimited, temperature OAT indicating 04C and if I set the QNH to 30.34 I got an indicated altitude of 8320 vs the actual altitude of 7910. So I can not fly because the altitude limit of +/- 75 feet is exceed by a lot.

So, is the real live weather working or not???

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Ah okey. I think its mostly related to us and asia, because the majority of people reporting these have been flying in these countries.

Maybe its fixed now with patch#2. Also could you test if the problem still occurs in europe for you?

Yeah, what exactly is rex doing differently id like to see that too. Live weather works perfect for me.

For anyone that wants the very best cloud textures, haze and fog representation then REX Skyforce/Environment Force is and has always been hands down the best by a long stretch. Their weather engine and Weather Force - Meh! Never used it. So REX was always a set and forget for me (and I can see a few others in this thread). REX is not the solution to the current shortfall in MSFS live weather.

Trying to get real-time global weather modelling to always match the latest METAR everywhere could result in some very odd behaviour. Just imagine, you approaching a runway, with a 15 kt crosswind from your left. Which is what the last METAR reported, 59 minutes ago. 10 seconds before touchdown, the new METAR data arrives. The wind is now 20 kt from your right…

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Perhaps a workaround would be to stick with one METAR while in the vicinity of an airport? Assuming you are either taking off, landing, or flying in the pattern. Not sure how you could ever update it in that case, unless the sim knew there were no human pilots in the vicinity first.

and this is unacceptable. people that are saying this still unproven new msfs method is superior are not considering that when the sim weather deviates so much from the actual real weather, you cannot do proper flight planning.

nobody minds slight variance between whats in the metars and whats actually in the sim. this exists even with active sky. however, when the field is vmc in real life it should be vmc in the sim. period.

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at the bottom of the page it says:

*Even though the REX weather engine is pushing the proper temperatures and winds aloft data through to the simulator, due to core issues of Microsoft Flight Simulator, temperatures and winds aloft are not properly rendered yet. Microsoft & Asobo are aware of this issue. (September 13, 2020)

looks like we have to wait for the right weather fix anyway…

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Meh, I’ve seeing issues with live weather yet. Not matching cloud coverage even with the ones shows on the layer of the scenery selection globe.

its almost as if some of you guys have never used active sky in p3d.

these problems have all been solved long ago.

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Exactly, I wonder why is it that I have never experienced any issues with Live weather in X-plane or in P3d with active sky??

Now yes I agree that the way weather “looks” and “feels” is much better, can not even compare, but that is lost when you can not match or at least approximate real weather live conditions as per METARs with what the sim is showing. We need that for planning and performance, otherwise the good looking weather is useless.

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Now there is an interesting test. For users who have both, fire up both sims at the same location, and time, and take a screencap. Wind is not shown on the G1000 at ground level, so maybe just move a camera to the vicinity of a windsock in both sims?

challenge accepted: here are the results…
Tested using the airplane at SEQM (elev 7910 Ft)

actual METAR: SEQM 171100Z 12006KT 9999 BCFG SCT005 SCT300 08/07 Q1027 NOSIG RMK A3033

in MSFS no ATIS but OAT indicates 34C!!! and when altimeter set to Q1027 (A30.33) reads 8240 Ft. difference is 330 Ft, is outside limits can not fly. also with that unrealistic temp performance will suffer.

in P3D with active sky: again no ATIS but OAT indicates 8C which is correct and when altimeter set to Q1027 (A30.33) it reads 8240 Ft. difference is 10 Ft, within limits so it checks.

in Xplane with default wx set to live wx: ATIS F 1100Z wind calm, vis 10, few005, 8/7, A30.33 checks
and OAT indicates 7C and when altimeter set to Q1027 (A30.33) it reads 7930, difference is 20 Ft, again within limits, so it checks as well.

Results: can fly with accurate performance and planning with both Xplane or P3D with active sky, but NOT with MSFS. temp of 34 is complete unrealistic for that airport and QNH is 29.92 when it should be 30.33…

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It shouldn’t be like this, a METAR-based airport live weather SHOULD NOT be only available by another payware, we are supposed to have it when we paid for the game.

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Yes that how mister pro is doing it

Good advice but some are actually trying to learn a thing or two about real flying and procedures instead of pressing Bs

And this can’t be otherwise and is the main flaw with this kind of add-on.

In effect, the various steps involved from real to sim are:

  1. Monitoring real weather, as it is seen outside by the naked eye and by the measuring instruments.

This is based on a non-regular grid of sampling points with variations in precision (small variations but any missing data at some time/location could be affecting the outcome tremendously, especially when thinking about measures as you go higher in altitude).

  1. Converting these measures into simplified text.

This is a lossy conversion like converting a screenshot to JPEG. You’ll loose information because the METAR is codifying everything in octa (only so few different coverage compared to the reality), and other values could be just rounded (loosing the fractional part). Also some of the source data which could be meaningful for any mathematical model of the weather might be missing in the METAR because it is not designed for this, instead, it is designed to draw a picture of the weather conditions meaningful to a pilot.

  1. Converting the text back into something meaningful and representative.

There can’t be any magic there: if there is no source data in the METAR, you won’t get the data in the simulator. In order to compensate this, add-ons are usually trying to interpolate the data cleverly so it is positively impacting what the simulator will display. This can be straight data interpolation to fill the gaps as well as data creation to bend the simulation weather flaws.

  1. Converting what the add-ons representative model is into actual clouds and conditions displayed in the simulator.

This is totally opaque and internal to the simulator. Add-ons are trying their best to bend/adapt the simulator weather engine based on many hours of trying different data input and comparing the output but nevertheless, this is limited.

The promise with FS2020 instead is to have both the data aggregator/provider and the simulator weather engine to be developed together in order to limit or even eliminate any loss of data along the way. In this case the validity of the weather model in the simulator will solely depend on the accuracy and density of the source data from the provider, and the depth and complexity of the weather engine in the simulator necessary to cope with this data.

The main issue for me is not so much that weather is off from real life but when flying IFR and planning there are not really any in game tools to give you proper wind data enroute (unless I missed it) and so when say programming FMS for weather the only source is the external tools based on real weather and right now the two are different.

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