Yes, this is 100 percent repeatable here. If you end a flight where live weather was working, and back out to the aircraft selection screen to change to either a different aircraft, different airport, or both, then when loading back into the new scenario, live weather will be gone.
The classic symptoms that live weather is no longer working are clear skies, pressure 29.92, temperature somewhere between 13 and 18C, and no wind (in one of the places where wind is known to work, like the UK).
I’ve flown several flights in the UK and Spain. The weather has worked and been accurate each time.
Can anyone honestly say they have ever seen a thunderstorm depicted in the sim with live weather?
Is it possible that the weather data from MeteoBlue is formatted in a way that suits each given region, including any variations from the ICAO standard, and the Asobo code just expects it to exactly conform to the ICAO standard?
Possibly, when the code finds a variation from the rule, which it would inevitably for a country that does vary, it rejects the metar altogether and reverts to the default.
I know it’s odd, as you’d expect testing to be done with data for at least each region, but if someone has assumed that it’s always standard???
I have not!
Where do you see the current weather from the flight planner?
And, if this shows weather other than clear skies, 29.92 and no wind does that mean that realtime weather is working?
Yes. Had a line of thunderstorms south of Boston on a recent flight. No wind of course, but they were definitely present when viewed out of the window, and also shown on the radar in the TBM.
There can be variations in the METAR format between different countries, but that should not matter in the sim, because I’m quite sure that surface weather comes from a unified forecast model, not from actual METAR observations.
It definitely should not matter for upper winds, because upper wind data (which always comes from a computer model, even in real-world aviation), is defined in a highly standardized format that is used worldwide.
It was a bit of a longshot, but i was trying to figure out why the live weather in the UK, for example, works and elsewhere in the world doesn’t.
I tried a flight in the Gulf of Mexico earlier and although the clouds looked about right, the wind was the default 3kts. A bit of an anticlimax, after the fun over the Peak District, in the UK, yesterday
North america doesnt work. Just south and some places at central
Has anyone seen fog in the sim yet ?
Actual fog and not just cumulus clouds sticking out of the ground? No.
Try switching around servers.
nope and you will notice there is no visibility control in the custom weather options
asobo tried to explain the omission in one of the q&a’s (it’s intentional) and left most ppl just going “wtf”
Well, it’s not really a simulation of real world weather if it cannot do fog now is it ?, i mean even FS9 & FSX made an attempt at depicting fog/low visibility, even if it wasn’t that great.
they said something like fog is just clouds on the ground (well they’re right i guess) and you should just put a cloud layer on the ground if you want fog. or something like that.
Well, yes, it kinda is that, but not. You sometimes just see fog in low lying areas and/or in or patches, and they certainly do not always look like clouds to me. Also - how do you set the density of this “cloud” layer. Sometimes fog vary in density, doesn’t it ?
exactly
hence so many ppl’s reaction of “whaaa???”
Ive had my fair share of issues with live weather, but I actually have flown into patchy radiation fog before. Usually in hilly areas early in the morning.
You can’t as far as I can tell. It seems like every facet of Flight Simulator contains a stroke of genius, and then vast expanses that are missing. It’s not that it’s not a simulator, but that it’s only yet partially implemented. That’s what’s disappointing to me, the disparity between what’s magical and what’s totally absent.
To get a thick fog you have to make a preset where a deep cloud layer extends down to the ground and then add heavy precip on top of that. It’s not a realistic representation of fog or easy to control if you want specific visibility conditions, but you can get a gnarly IMC experience out of it at least.
It seams that all the cloud “types” in the game are created by varying the coverage and thickness of a generic cumuliform cloud type. Density, and how turbulent or laminar that density is, composition (partially condensed hazy mist, ice particles, etc), and general behavior or formation process are not implemented. What that means is no consistent stratiform, no thick boundary layer haze, no wispy cirrus. “Fog” is simply blobs of cumuliform on the ground. And “cirrus” is a pancake shaped blob of cumuliform way up high.
The responses from the developers have me a little worried about the future development plans. As if they’re not particularly worried about these missing features. Stratiform and cirrus seam like nitpicks to them, out of the scope of a $60 game, and their primary focus appears to be on the visual aesthetics rather than modeling the mechanics.
Past attempts at flight simulators are what I would describe as very modestly well rounded. Fog was faked with computationally cheap shading. Stratiform was just a solid block, and other clouds were billboards or flat textures. But they were represented even if just in a basic, crude form. This new version, however, is incredibly lop sided with some parts taking huge strides in one direction, but other parts sitting idly and empty. It’s a jarring juxtaposition of “wow!” and “where is this feature?”.
The developers have stated that they didn’t want to half-■■■ or fake anything, so a lot remains on the todo list for future updates. That’s great, but I see a bit of a contradiction there in certain areas. A primary example is the implementation of the water and the A5, where what we wound up with was “fake” water created by averaging a 2D sea texture with a 2D land texture, a throwback to sims of decades past where modern games now deploy volumetric water with depth. And then a seaplane that doesn’t actually interact with this water, but sits on a 2D texture lifelessly except for a canned animation.
Railroaded by daddy Microsoft to deliver a mandatory feature list by a certain date, the developers probably had to eventually compromise on their ideals and were rushed into releasing a minimal implementation.