Jörg Neumann stated in the developer Q&A that they are committed to making the weather system “awesome”. So, what does that mean to you/me/us? It’s a wishlist, right. So I guess that means we don’t need to hold back.
The current state of affairs (weather settings dialog) looks somewhat simplistic. It suggests that you’re directly configuring the result of the weather (wind, cloud coverage etc.).
In the case of live weather I suspect it’s the same basic mechanism but the parameters are set regionally by real world data.
These are both valid use cases that are probably worth keeping. But I think to achieve real awesomeness there should be a move towards weather simulation.
From the point of view of resources, scalability and multiplayer the weather-simulation should probably be centralized (in the cloud - how appropriate).
What I would like to see is correct/plausible weather physics that converge with the visuals.
condensation/clouds/precipitation occurs in the correct form in the correct places. Cumuli clouds appear when an air mass is shoved upwards past its dewpoint. Be it on top of a ridge or in the middle of some plains (thermal updrafts).
consideration of sun energy (atmosphere is calm in the morning, potentially boiling in the afternoon)
consideration of seasons (thunderstorms in summer, fog in autumn, inversions in winter etc.)
Multiplayer: Asobo gave us “always on” multiplayer. There are many cool potential applications for this - some of them relying on shared weather. Imagine a simulated gliding competition. Or some multiplayer missions - firefighting, search and rescue etc. But even in just normal free flight it’s a bit strange when everyone has his own wind direction and therefore different active runways.
There could be several multiplayer domains with different times. They could just be replays of the live weather simulation in regular intervals. This would allow people that can only fly in the evenings to fly in daylight using the simulated weather.
ATC could then be shared in those domains as well, but that’s a different story.
Feeding back player induced disturbances into the weather simulation would be the cherry on top:
To be honest, your first three bullet points are far from “crazy” and I actually expected that to be in there. Weather is extremely important in aviation so usually these phenomena are well understood by pilots and they use that knowledge to plan a flight and anticipate what will happen.
Are thermals modeled? When I fly over a valey in an otherwise flat piece of land, I get some turbulence sometimes. That feels very realistic and I assumed if they model that they also model thermals and the associated cloud formations.
Especially for non-live weather scenario’s, these weather phenomena should really be modeled and I’d be surprised and a little sad if that’s not the case.
For me:
a more accurate Live Weather system would be my first desire. And besides that, some transparency on what weather the Live Weather is generating so that at least you could use that to plan a flight. An in-game weather map, perhaps? I’m not sure where the data is coming from and how I can see it.
If we go further, I’d hope the effects of frontal systems are modeled as well. That you know what to expect if you fly through a cold front, for example.
More basic, more interaction with the surroundings: smoke, steam, dust from cars, windturbines that face the wind instead of always North, not sure if buildings at airfields generate turbulence but they should, …
I don’t usually play multiplayer in sims, but isn’t that a solved problem in the other sims?
I like the idea of a replay or delayed live weather feature. Currently I’m doing a world tour with live weather which restricts me to playing at odd hours to be able to explore in local day time. Playing with up to 24h lagging behind weather data would be perfect, as long as it stays synced with the time of day.
Live weather improvements are much appreciated. I have no idea how accurate it is, but currently there is an awful lot of lightning even with almost clear skies. The wind is active now, yet does the game model funneling wind through valleys?
I would also like to see tides implemented. It seems it is always high tide everywhere. Cherry on top, rivers swelling after rain and snow melt (Do lakes freeze?)
I have also noticed that, but that doesn’t bother me particularly. Glad that have implement this. They will fix it. At all I’m satisfied with the weather. I have other creative ideas. Meet as persons (3D) in the bar after the multiplayer flight or discuss the tour around the campfire instead of in 2D forums e.g.
There’s no need for the simulator to calculate the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere when vastly more comprehensive models have already done the job. All of these bullets are part of existing weather models, they just need to be injected into the simulator along with the appropriate wind vectors added, and sky conditions drawn.
As a weather geek, that Asobo is using numerical models to create the simulator weather is as massive a technological jump as is going from FSX’s generic tiled scenery to Flight Simulator’s Bing Maps ortho imagery. It’s like having a real picture of atmosphere’s volume that you can fly through.
If we’re dreaming of awesomeness, the simulator injects the HRRR weather model when you’re flying over the US. The simulator is already injecting portions of a global numerical forecast model, but using the HRRR would be like going from Flight SImulator’s Bing Maps ortho imagery to a photogrammetry city. The HRRR would give you:
3km resolution. The weather could be different at opposite ends of the runway.
“Current” weather from forecasts only an hour old, making it competitive with METAR observations, yet containing vastly more information and spatial resolution than a METAR ever could.
Models convection, meaning you’d see individual thunderstorm cells and fluffy cumulus as your updrafts lift parcels as in your first bullet.
Real visibility that includes aerosols like smoke, haze, mist, clouds, etc.
Solar radiation, seasonal climatology, and temperature inversions are a given.
Live Weather is supposed to be doing parts of this already. It’s just not implemented, limited in scope due to the 30km global model they’re using, too advanced for the original intents of this simulator, or bugged.
Imagine if you had this kind of data plugged directly into the simulator. It’s possible if Asobo finishes the weather engine and opens it up to injection of high res model data from third party souces:
I had also a similar idea (why not using existing data) but have you think about “licence costs” MS have to pay for it? Do you think that user are willing to pay on top at least $10/month? We can’t expect that all inclusive for $60.
The HRRR model output is public domain. It’s free for the taking!
What will wind up costing users money is paying a third party dev to translate the model output into a format Flight Simulator can digest. And then probably hosting that formatted data on servers for performance reasons. Unless some saint wants to take on this project as a freeware dev and can directly pull data from an existing online source.
It sounds like Asobo is already beefing up their weather sources, incorporating METAR data on top of the Meteoblue numerical forecast model they’re already using. That data is likely hosted on Microsoft’s cloud (rather than Meteoblue’s servers). If they were to start adding other high resolution models, that would likewise go into the same cloud. This is a fantasy that will probably never happen though. It’s just out of the scope of what they’re doing and they’re already way in over their heads trying to get this simulator functional.
If this is going to be a third party add-on, then the party need to host the data on their own servers. They could charge by the month for access.
If we’re going the freebie route, there are a ton of online sites that already crank out and give away model data. It might be possible to just use one of those directly, in much the same way freeware METAR injectors grab METARs from free online sources.
I think most people are fed up with 3rd Party Weather addons from third parties. MS has commissioned Meteoblue to do this and will not let others in. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer open source and am a linux user. But this idea (open source), I think, does not scale.
I am still of the opinion that MS made the right choice with Meteoblu. Let’s just wait a few more months.
Anyway, it’s always good to express creative ideas. I love it! The problem to fix is mostly the business case behind.
I totally agree. A Meteoblue partnership allows Asobo to focus on other parts of the simulator and just use Meteoblue’s packaged output directly in the sim. And their global model should be good enough for most users and situations.
I’d totally pay for a HRRR model add-on though. Just like I’d pay for a photogrammetry scenery add-on of my own city (if I didn’t already have it). Hell, I’d pay a decent monthly fee for it, but again I’m a giant weather nerd.
A Meteoblue partnership may indeed mean we’ll never see such add-ons too though. Their agreement might specify that Meteoblue is the exclusive provider of weather data, just like Bing is the exclusive provider of streaming ortho and photogrammetry scenery.
I wouldn’t mind paying a subscription fee if that means all add-ons and detailed live weather come from the cloud and get streamed in on demand with the detailed data. I’m very hesitant to install stuff locally with all the reports of problems with the community folder, plus I don’t want to fill up my SSD while trying to keep track of a bloated content manager.
Most of all, I like to explore, hardly every fly at the same place more than once or twice. Buying content for every place I go to would quickly bankrupt me!
As a long term Vatsimmer the absolute priority is for the airfield wx to match that used by the controllers i.e. METAR based. If that comes from MS or a 3rd party no matter, they NEED to match. Injecting the metars from the Vatsim source would be ok, en route wind is another matter entirely!
(Do lakes freeze?)
