I still want to believe that many issues can be ascribed with live weather servers not working properly. The simulator expected mid-altitude and high-altitude clouds around Nice, France (first picture from the simulator), however, after some 60mins into the flight, the live weather basically crashed and started portraying clear weather from a particular line. (second picture, near French Alps, which on the map on the first picture should be covered in clouds).
I believe the issues are then
using MSL altitude instead of ASL altitude for cloud layer portrayal whilst reading METARs
issues with injection of Meteoblue data into the simulation, thus showing only METAR - based weather around METAR stations
probable crashes of live weather after some time whilst in the simulation, as it reverts to clear weather completely.
Maybe not the worst but maybe the same as the previous sims weather systems. METAR will make the weather more accurate but not more realistic. Meteoblue will make it more realistic but not always accurate. I like to have it more realistic thats for sure. We canât save the cookie and at the same time eat it up. A Sentence we use here in Sweden I think it fits in well here.
Not totally off, but definitely not more accurate than before: only one cloud layer at 1300 ft and SCT instead of FEW. QNH and winds were spot on, although the wind was artificial: exactly 5 KTS without any variation in speed and/or direction:
EDDH 211050Z 26005KT 9999 FEW013 FEW018TCU 09/06 Q1008 NOSIG
And flying to the west and looking back I think that could be called a âMETAR bubbleâ within the otherwise a bit generic weather, as there were no more TCUâs to bee seen in flight direction.
Itâs totally broken, itâs not even accurate with the metar, often says overcast on metar and clear skies in the sim. Then you go elsewhere and get horrible transitions. Fog everywhere which is not the same as haze. Thick clouds all the way to ground level. So we are in a no mans land where it is neither accurate nor realistic. The worst thing about this is that it took me 5 mins in the sim to see it was completely broken. Just what on earth are the testers doing, how can this be released when it takes users 5 mins to realise itâs completely broken? Itâs disgraceful. If I delivered this level of performance in my job, Iâd have been sacked well before now.
Yep, makes you think about quality control. Maybe the test process was as Seb described in the November Q&A: âI looked out of my window to Arcachon and there was fog. And there was also fog in the simâ . End of testing.
And he also said: âI saw things I didnât see beforeâ. Just like us .
Honestly, I still think (or hope?) something is wrong server side, otherwise I would urgently suggest to revert to the old weather model and back to the drawing board.
Thatâs my suspicion, or hope. Like I said, it was completely off yesterday, today it was much better, not unusual that live weather is pretty off for days and then starts working again, not only after FS updates. Apparently itâs pretty different for different people too, so that may be server side issues indeed.
Except, it isnât everywhere. And that was the whole point of my post, the weird urge to exaggerate every issue everyone has (<- see what I did there?) and spice it up with superlatives currently, instead of being factual, putting these facts together and heading to Zendesk to file a bug report.
We are all hitting these threads because we have more or less the same issues, and if we donât that has some information value too. All the noisy drama OTOH has no information value and it makes the threads annoying to read for everyone. As if we wouldnât know that itâs not great having to deal with this stuff.
Yeah this really is difficult, however they are not finished yet trying to blend that together they said. But generally, it will only reach so far and never fully meet the expectations of everyone looking out of the window. I should now, my local airfield is at the coast and the next METAR station is 50km away in the country, guess how often that METAR (or any other kind of weather repor for that mattert) has any resemblance with the actual (RW or not) weather at the airfield. So I guess Iâd vote for ârealisticâ too if Iâd have to.
Interesting, I was leaving EDDH roughly around that time too, but to the south and hit the cloud front south of the Elbe river just where I expected it, so I was at least sure it wasnât the same country-wide generic weather as yesterday. But it sure isnât quite what itâs supposed to be. I guess weâll know more in a few days.
I donât get your point. Vatsim uses the correct actual METARS. And other sims can simulate these correct actual METARS as well (like with Active Sky etc.). So itâs a bug coming from MSFS that MSFS has to sort out. Not Vatsim.
The thing i mean with METAR and active sky and such things that use METAR to inject weather is that it will only use static local reports and make that into global weather. Maybe they could use many nearby METARs and then make an avarage of those in the future. I donât know how to make it realistic and dynamic at the same time be good to use in VATSIM.
It would be cool if the sim itself could generate METAR based of the weather that happening in the sim instead. We could then use that in VATSIM instead of real METAR. Then the METAR will always match the weather in the sim and it could be dynamic at the same time.
And this is a new system meant to simulate the weather. We canât use real METAR if itâs simulated in the sim itself. It should be close to the weather we have.
Also do you think they simulate it correct? I think it has big problems. Itâs actually the same problems MSFS facing now when they integrated METAR in the sim. Thats why i thought this meteoblue sytem was much better.
HmâŚagain: i donât think. I KNOW that they simulate it correctly, except some very complex or special metar-reports. The metars at the departure or arrival airports are simulated acurately in P3D or XP. We get the pressure, winds, visibility and cloud coverage according to the newest metar. Outside of the airports area it will interpolate to the GFS-datas.
You are right that in proximity of the airport it can vary locally a lot within a few kilometers. But i donât think we need this level of accuracy, because that would be extremely complex.
No what we want are METARâs that correctly represent the conditions in the simulator. People have it backwards. They want the simulator weather to honor the METAR when it should be the other way around.
That is how you get a dynamic and realistic weather simulation and at the same time be usable for flight planning that uses METAR and TAF to get an idea of the weather.
The simulator weather can never 100% match the real weather, because no computer power on the planet CAN simulate the weather 100% corrrectly, with all the known and unknown variables.
As I mentioned in another post I think the best solution for online network and MSFS is to utilize 24 or 48 hour old real-world (it still is real-world) weather data so the MSFS weather engine can better anticipate what will happen next and thus be able to depict weather uninterrupted and fully dynamic.
If the entire VATSIM community is flying on 19/11/2021 weather on the 21/11/2021 what difference does that make. Everyone will be flying within the same weather conditions based on real-world weather. The only âinaccuracyâ here is timing, but seeing MD80âs and DC6âs on VATSIM I find it hard to believe that would be a problem for many. After all they value more the functionality and accuracy of the MD80, rather than current real-world flightplan that doesnât read MD80. All that matters is that the VATSIM flightplan reads MD80 and then you have a correct combination of MD80 on the VATSIM flightplan and the MD80 actually flying in the simulator. At this point it doesnât matter that the real world flightplan reads A320. Because the action on VATSIM and the simulator are taking place on VATSIM and the simulator and not the real world. The VATSIM ATC will also prefer to honor it as an MD80, because it needs to account for the aircraft specific performance.
I want a functioning weather simulation that best resembles what is happening outside in itâs functionality not itâs timeline.
I donât want to go back to a flawed system with many unwanted side-effect just for the sake of being synchronous with the real-world weather on the timeline. Timeline and functionality are not the same.
hmm, may I ask why you then don´t use tools like unreal weather mod (is completely free and easy to install) or REX MSFS2020 - does exactly what you need and not that bad.
Yes the visibility layer is a âproblemâ but it could have been solved over time without completely ruining the enjoyable weather experience of many users (simmers) because of a âfew people who want to fly on VATSIMâ.
Do you use the default weather engine for VATSIM in the other SIMS ? (I donât think so).
For something like that (even as a hardcore simmer like me) I have no understanding.
âOnly those who fly on VATSIM with METAR are real SIMMERSâ (shouldnât mean that you agree with this), how often have I heard that (read between the lines).
Why do something evolutionary (since FS2004) and finally progressive (I donât mean in terms of accuracy) but visual - change so much when there are already ways to do what you want to do (even with this tools or other ârealisticâ SIMS like P3D or XP11) !
I am also in favor of a very precise and above all, smoothly hybrid system (also with a visibility layer) - but certainly not in that state. (but haze and visiblity option is certainly something we âneedâ, it gives the SIM the rest of the touch)
But letâs wait and see, I think the girls and guys from Asobo and MS are certainly working hard to fix these bugs, for me and I speak only for myself, the SIM is no longer usable in this state (at the moment), besides really improved things like performance, night lighting, etc.,
Iâm up for everyone to be happy and MSFS should of course not only be for âXBOX playersâ (hate the expression, please forgive me, donât mean it) but this change should have been an explicit option (to choose it) -
and no offense at all !
That âMETAR bubbleâ may also be due to a little twist: I know that from XP - the METARs from EDDH and EDHI are often quite different - when e.g. EDDH reports " 220750Z 32003KT 9999 2500NW BCFG FEW030 00/M01 Q1024 NOSIG" like this morning, EDHI reports " 220750Z VRB01KT CAVOK 00/M00 Q1024" and in XP this would cause a harsh change of weather when getting closer to Finkenwerder. If you depart E or N, the EDDH METAR would prevail, if you depart W or S, EDHI would be the last METAR the simulator gets. If EDHI reports âCAVOKâ (and they often do) the effect would be exactly what you described.
Now this morning I checked the FS WX in EDDH and the weather wasnât entirely off, there were few clouds with bottoms between 0 and maybe 1500â but no patches of fog as reported (I also checked before sunrise with a similar METAR) and visibility wasnât reduced at all in all directions (so nothing like â2500NWâ).
Flying to EDHK from there was a surprise: The METAR said " 20850Z 29005KT CAVOK 03/01 Q1025" and this is what the webcam at the Holtenau lock was showing:
I checked the webcam because what FS showed wasnât âCAVOKâ, but it didnât really match the screenshot either, that was more like flat puffy SCT. However, it was much closer to reality than the METAR.
Things like the issue with multiple stations in short distance or the quality of METARs from smaller airports (this is not the first time I observe things like this) make me think that adding METAR-based weather wasnât a great idea.
In this example, both issues coincide quite badly. People want to include METAR reports because they think they are more accurate and current. But the reality seems to be that METARs may be more current and accurate at major airports, and smaller airports with equipment fallen in disrepair, only measuring actual wind data and putting placeholders in the report to make it a valid METAR are corrupting this advantage big time. A simulation-based dynamic weather may not be as current and not always 100% spot-on but overall much closer to reality, and it doesnât force Asobo to hack in hair-rising kludges to blend together things that donât belong together.
I think it fits in well here.
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