Yeah, lets break physics because people won’t believe it is real. I see surveys in the US indicate more people are distrusting science (even though science gives us almost everything we use in life these days, like computers!) and anything that contributes to that I find appalling.
The idea is to educate in a simulator, not cater for what a dev thinks is peoples preconceived ideas.
I second that turbulence at altitude is definitely much improved from the “on rails” experience at launch, in fact one of my flights got downed by it on a EDDF to LRBS hop over western Romania with my CJ4 overstressing from it at ~FL350. In fact, the sim vs real life feels “almost there” at this point, at least on the Cub and Skyhawk side of things (duplicated a couple of real flights in the sim… after fighting the weather engine’s “quirks” to get things right).
In fact, I’m wondering if the OP didn’t land on another of the weather engine’s quirks where it only partially parses and implements the data (namely cloud coverage/temperature, but not the winds)
I think that’s what’s happened here. In one of the Q&A sessions, the lead MS guy said something along those lines. People had been complaining about the realism. If I recall correctly, he didn’t actually go as far as saying they’d dialed it back, but that was what he implied.
Right! How many people died because they thought “this can’t be real” “weather can’t really do this” ? That’s what the simulator is for to experience the unlikely and unintuitive nature of flying to better prepare you.
My scariest time flying was when I was trying to outrun a heavy rain storm. I could see a wall of grey swallowing up the ground coming right for me. I was 8 miles from the airport which was 180degress opposite from the storm. I thought if I fly 60mph and the storm moves at 40 mph I’ll make it easily. Well storms don’t work like that sometimes. Apparently the pressure change can move pretty fast and the storm caught me as I rolled out on the runway. Just made it back. Whew.
Totally agree. A realistic windsystem is essential.
My hope is that they confirmed gliders, which does not work without up- and downwinds and influence from clouds.
That’s an interesting point. So you are saying it’s possible to have thunderstorms clouds without the associated weather?
I won’t go back to P3D but man… any A2A plane with ActiveSky and EZdok camera for real shaking and movements… I got more sensation of achievement each flight that I ever got in MSFS…
Thank you this is a great example. That’s one of the reasons I almost always feel like my plane is being « on rails. » This makes flying extremely simple and not challenging in my opinion.
It’s at least plausible, given how broken the weather system is in other places- ie how a lot of people have experienced on occasion ATIS telling them of weather which differs significantly from the actual observed weather or how live weather outright refuses to work if you try a second flight after returning to the main menu. I’ve personally seen one or more of temperature/visibility/clouds/winds differ… hell, I’ve even had ATIS claiming one runway was in service, yet being told to taxi to the other side,lol. Honestly, if they are working with something at least partly based on FSX, I wouldn’t be surprised if they still have the data split in “weather” and “winds aloft”, which could explain why an element is missing/acting up, while the rest is still OK - in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the data is further split in along the lines of the visual filters in the worldmap with separate wind, cloud coverage, precipitation, etc. packages. I do wonder how the system does treat invalid or partial data during weather downloads, if it were me, I’d go for a “best guess” based on the baked in weather types vs defaulting to… non-weather like it does now.
That’s plausible. Then I would at least expect a simulation of turbulence and thermals inside and around clouds based on their types, size and the overall atmosphere parameters. This shouldn’t be overly complex to do I would believe. It doesn’t have to be complicated calculations.
Yes, that’s what I keep thinking: they are unable to apply real life weather, but at least they have a fantastic weather engine that simulates fake weather in a spectacular and realistic way (mostly eye candy so far, but realistically generated). I think they should focus on that and finally accept that they can’t match real world weather since they don’t want to use real world METAR data. They should generate their own METARs - as close as they can to real world but not « live » - and stick to that.
This is definitely my top disappointment with MSFS. Weather is such an important factor in real life aviation and yet we still don’t sims in which it can be dangerous and you need to pay attention to it…
Funny… to see 2 different types of Sim pilots.
There are simmers who yell that FS2020 is ‘unplayable’ because of wind and turbulence effects. ( translated as unstable planes)
And there are simmers who complain about the lack of that kind of realisme.
Well, that’s ok, it keeps this forum running 
It should be an option like realism mode or arcade. If one has issues with turbulence, it’s also possible to remove winds with custom weather…
Calling all r/w pilots for your opinions and votes from all here who feel the same - I’ve been PPL since 1987, and I can safely say that since that year, I’ve not had 98% of those flight hours in perfectly smooth air like the 500+ hours in MSFS 2020. This sim is seriously lacking in the bumps and “pockets” of air that toss around lighter aircraft such as the 172 (and of course heavier a/c but to less extent). Not just a little bump here and there, but pockets of air that create instability, quick loss or gain of speed and or altitude, bank or slip angle.
It seems to me that the turbulence effects have been toned down more since public release - is it just me? Even at release I cannot say it was even 75% realistic, but NOW in recent versions it’s like flying the google earth sim for kids… just dead space air - and once in a while we’ll get a bump or two, but that’s nothing like real life! I purposely have been flying in “MOD TURBULENT” areas recently as shown on SkyVector (SkyVector: Flight Planning / Aeronautical Charts) within the specified altitudes, and the results are as above - ho-hum a few little bumps here and there…
I’m not convinced this sim is revealing 100% of the air effects… Could we have realistic air effects and “real” turbulence. Just simply have an option for those who don’t want it to “tune” or turn off “realistic atmospheric effects”. In fact, default it to off so us real Pilots can turn it up to 100% real and experience what we would in the real world.
→ This goes especially for the ground effects as nearing the runway on landing… I grease every landing without any kind of ground effect, just not how it is in r/w! ←
Thoughts?
My experience since UK Update is just the opposite. Flying C172 or A320 in 2-4 wind has the plane bouncing all over the place. Not over mountains over flat land.
I meant to add yes 'm using real weather - curious what airport? I’d love to try this! Maybe it’s the areas I’m flying in?
I agree with you (video inside):
[BUG/FEATURE] FS2020 is breaking the VR golden rule: don’t move the camera, the user is
100% this unfortunately. I’m done with Flight simming until they fix this. After years of P3D that sometimes left me speechless because of the joy it brought me, I’ve lost all interest in sim because of MSFS and because I don’t want to spend hours again reinstalling and tweaking P3D. It’s just become boring. I hope when I come back in a year it will be fixed.
I take it this doesn’t relate to turbulence generated over mountainous areas? Only I was flying a DA62 in VR over mountains near LA and was being bumped around like mad. So much so, I actually thought I might start to feel a little motion sickness (which I have yet to ever encounter in all the years I have been running VR thus far).