Cork/Ireland
As always when there is an organised weather front the game cannot produce a low level of stratus clouds but instead the usual convective clouds to the ground.
7 Likes
MICROSOFT TEAM: It’s not about looking out the window where we are and expecting to see the exact conditions in the same area in the game. It’s just about getting back to a BELIEVABLE cloud depiction. I’ve actually been experiencing VERY ACCURATE “conditions” i.e. fronts, rain, temp, wind, etc. but the clouds are not varied or correct for the conditions.
Cumulus are EVERYWHERE now. That’s all we get now. Cumulus craziness. No flat clouds, no more stratus, no true overcast (holes all over and can ALWAYS see either the ground or sky if “inside” of a cloud (try it! Go to exterior view and look all around and you will never see just ALL cloud like you are actually inside of a cloud!), no variation whatsoever. I actually do not think clouds are volumetric anymore?
Not sure what they have done but it has been UGLY and non-convincing since like, SU3. No more god rays, no more thin and OPAQUE upper level clouds, just all of these ugly PUFFS everywhere.
Can we revert to the clouds to how they used to be?
29 Likes
Yes, this is exactly what the problem is. It seems that the preset weather is still capable of generating all types of clouds, but live weather cannot. Many of the screenshots I’ve seen showing ugly live weather seem to feature cumulus clouds awkwardly distorted to simulate stratus, cirrus, etc., rather than the proper cloud variations that preset weather is still capable of producing.
The clouds we want are still in the game, but the live weather engine lost its ability to produce them at some point. I suspect the dev team is seeing the former when they look into our complaints, but we really need them to investigate the latter.
8 Likes
Is anybody seeing a sort of spikes on top of the low cloud band on the horizon? At first I thought that this was due to some propeller rotation effect, but I see it also further to the left and right.
If this is the wrong topic for this, please advice where I should put it.
Exactly my experience for the last months. Parameters absolutely fine, just the cloud drawing looking massively off. Your post summarises it perfectly, hope the dev team will take this seriously,
Your absolutely right. It’s funny, I have pictures of flying around British Columbia around when the sim came out. Flying live weather, and there were these beautiful low hanging thin but dense layers of overcast below the tops of mountains. It was so cool popping up above them and seeing that sea of cloud and mountain tops under you.
The problem is, with METAR and the current weather engine, this will never be shown. If its reporting overcast, its disguised as a bunch of jammed together big bulky towering cumulus clouds with no tops and bottoms reported and low visibility at the airport. Its simply not dynamic enough
For example one area that often has low, thin hanging overcast in the valleys is Queenstown, NZ Reference picture 1.
you sink below it, and you have good visibility below.
Unfortunately this would never be shown in the current Live Weather because its too dynamic.
However, like your post stated, I could pretty accurately recreate this scene within the sim using the custom preset weather and fiddling with the parameters.
So the possibility IS there. We just need a bit of randomness (Like real weather) combined with the meteoblue data to give it that dynamic feel. imho the stripped down nature of METAR is just too mathematical, too boring in a sense. You need to have that bit of randomness we used to have.
Live weather used to have that “Anything could happen” possibility. Like real weather. Now, when I fly, I know it will be a handful of scenarios I see over and over again and frankly, it won’t be interesting at all.
9 Likes
Agree so much with this. Weather is random. Not in a fixed state. Forecasts predicts that randomness to have a bit less randomness to it. Like a limit of how random it can be. That randomness can turn out to be accurate it also can turn out to be wrong. But it is in a limited amount of wrong and it always keeps that randoness/dynamic feel to it. Without random real weather we would never need any kind of METAR report.
2 Likes
I’d stay away from WeatherForce. It might correctly inject weather but every time it updates for the first time I get stutters that continue non-stop throughout my flight. REX support has been unable to rectify this issue, regardless what my settings are.
1 Like
To me the distinction is the difference between “accuracy” and “plausibility”. If it isn’t exactly accurate to “outside the window” at any particular point in time (given the models are predictive) it should always be plausible imo. The seeming folly of blending METAR’s is breaking continuous plausibility by introducing contradictory data, even to actual (i.e. accurate) weather at a particular location.
What I see in many of these threads is the underlying complaint that “plausibility” has plummeted relative to accuracy and the devs don’t seem to understand that. Personally, I can easily accept “continuously plausible” but not so accurate results (like pre SU7) vs. “implausible” and not so accurate results (i.e. what we often see demonstrated in these threads).
The devs seem to be prioritizing this silly notion of ensuring accuracy to METAR whilst not requiring continuous plausibility during those attempts. Hence, the community lamenting the weather situation is not understood by them properly. If this priority is actually the case for the devs, the path to success “weather wise” will be a very slow and painful one to endure as customers.
7 Likes
I am pleased to see this topic now has “bug logged” against it.
have it ? 
… I see feedback-logged …
1 Like
Ah man, you’re right. I got over excited!!
2 Likes
What does feedback-logged mean? Was it a design decision or limitation of the sim to be unable to render proper overcast now? Gusts missing in live weather is the same, only feedback-logged.
2 Likes
Trying to keep this thread alive.
Why are people just sitting back and accepting this? I just can’t understand it!
The sim was perfectly capable of rendering an overcast like this before they messed everything up in SU7.
I find this so disappointing.
Real:
Sim:
16 Likes
Because there’s not much we can do, sadly. There’s big disappointment. What has been shown in the release videos, is no longer present, and frankly, the reason is beyond my understanding. My excitement in playing this potentially beautiful simulator, is vanishing day after day. Not easy to accept this “new” weather system, when has been experienced how wonderful (not perfect, of course) was the previous one.
11 Likes
This is what the community wanted. We voted and this was the consensus.
It still can produce it but it’s not concistent.
Some hours later, mostly the same weather. I think it’s the servers/data that is transfered/rendered incorrectly. It’s like they use 2 completely different renderings now. One good and one bad. One dynamic and one static/generic. Never seen it rendered as good as pre su 7 though. With those thin stretching stratus clouds that made the sky look amazing sometimes. Pre SU 7 the sky looked varied all the time i loaded it up. Most often i got common weather that also looked varied, then sometimes i got those rare skies that made me just standing still and enjoy the view. Now i mostly just quits the sim because it’s no variation at all 
Even clear skies could look amazing with those higher clouds.
I can’t see the benefit of this new system we asked for I’m really sorry. Why the need to completely change the weather system to implement something simple as a METAR-report 
The difference in details of METAR and Meteoblue data is like night and day.
Feels like i flying in FSX weather again. MSFS weather at release was something new & fresh. And now many wanted the FSX-metar weather back with transitions in weather, generic looking sky, Metar-circles of fog to name a few problems with it. I can’t see they fixing it to be like pre su7 in a near future. They are developing a new weather system in the meantime we use the alpha version of it. And we never know if they will manage it to be anything like we had pre su 7 again.
We are forced to accept it and wait some years for them to maybe fix it, we have no other choice.
4 Likes
I have, quite frankly, given up hitting my head against a brick wall with this - such a shame as weather depiction used to be pretty ■■■■ good!
3 Likes
I have decided hold back until (if ever) it’s back to being as beautiful as before. At the moment it’s unplayable for me…I have no intention to invest into it, my time or more importantly my money! Now I understand why back in November they censored some photos i posted of the weather, they told me it was because they were from the alpha version…but I couldn’t understand why since they were photos of the game, now I think it’s because that weather doesn’t exist anymore since su7!
2 Likes