An “awesome” weather system simply must at least include all the features that we have been used to for years in HIFI Active Sky for other sims.
In particular
historic weather
options to set caps to the live / historic weather, for example maximum wind or minimum visibility
a page to look up the exact weather in the sim for any airport.
Now that they seem to be very reluctant to invite 3PD for weather I expect them to integrate all these long common features themselves soon. Everything else would be a massive step backwards compared to what we have in other sims with Active Sky.
A cool thing about using weather models is that the last few runs of the model are usually preserved and the model itself goes into the future a couple weeks.
So potentially you could move the time slider on Flight Simulator’s flight planner/weather settings, and it would pull the “historical” weather from the previous few days. Or you could advance it and fly in the future upcoming weather.
This would be great for situations where say you only get to play Flight Simulator at night, but you want to fly during the day, and still want weather representative from that time. You could either roll it back to a previous day, or advance it to the next morning, or another day of the week in which the weather is more favorable to fly.
Right now I think you can change the time while you’re using Live Weather, but the weather itself remains fixed to whatever it’s using for “live” weather.
Meteoblue should indeed be providing this. The variables it’s downloading into the sim should be displayed when you select “Live Weather”, but a link to a Meteoblue webpage with the data would be nice too. Not having this makes the game feel rough and incomplete.
Imagine being on final on VATSIM and Tower cautions you of wake turbulence due to heavy landing traffic. As you’re closer to short final, you actually experience this wake turbulence caused by the previous landing aircraft and now you have to fight harder to keep the aircraft stabilized until touchdown.
I don’t know what resolution their current live-weather data has, but I somehow think the 3km grid you mention would not be enough for the fluffy little cumulus. They would have to be 6km apart.
With FS2020 shaping up to be a great VFR simulator, I’d like this to be much more fine grained.
I wonder, if they could do some kind of weather LOD:
Global level (say 3km grid), fed by live weather provider or historic data (or simulation)
Local level, (10-20m cubes), simulated - only where there are players, provides for formation of clouds, updrafts etc.
Micro-/Player induced level (1-2m cubes), simulated - only where there are players, multiplayer wing vortices (and vortex rings for helicopters)
The model flight simulator is using is on a 30 km grid.
I wasn’t suggesting the simulator’s would pick up individual cumulus puff balls. What a high resolution convection allowing model would know is if there is convection in the 3 km grid, and then the simulator could fill the grid cell with a generic cumulus field. Getting a higher resolution than that is going to be unrealistic for flight simulator, and it’s not necessary. The simulator can just draw the fine weather details using the big weather picture from the model, kind of like autogen on the ortho imagery for the scenery. But that 3 km resolution would allow for individual storm cells to show up in the simulator, and that would be pretty awesome.
I like to avoid CB with my C172 like it is highly recommended for our sefety…
I like to be obligated to avoid TS and to create my flight planor to divert based on live conditions weather… etc The engine weather is the corner stone!
Hopefully votes will raise up to be heard! Smart and constructive thread!
Getting a higher resolution than that is going to be unrealistic for flight simulator, and it’s not necessary.
Well, I thought under the premise of a “wishlist” I wouldn’t have to concern myself with thinking about commercial viability
Where I really disagree though is, that generic cumulus fields are part of an “awesome” weather system. Sure, it’s perfectly fine for those that measure altitude in flight levels and look down on the cumulus. Flying below the clouds it would be at least “nice” to have the clouds align with the updrafts (and the updrafts with surface features). For those that are wishing for gliders it’s a downright necessity.
I get you. I was just saying that the limits on the live weather data resolution go down to several kilometers. Below that, it’s up to the simulator to fill in the gaps with generated weather. It can certainly draw individual cumulus updrafts that are much smaller, but they won’t correspond to actual clouds in real life. The high res model could tell you that there is a cumulus field within this 3km grid cell, and then the simulator could populate it with cumulus updrafts of the proper height, depth, and updraft strength. That should work for glider flying right?
Exactly what I thought. The fine resolution would be simulated, initialized with the real world data, then somehow overlaid or mixed in. It obviously wouldn’t have to correspond to real weather cloud by cloud, BUT: it should be multiplayerable - i.e. we all have the same air-movement and we all see (at least roughly) the same clouds. Think online glider-competition!
…and then there is the additional ultra fine level for wake turbulences etc. This might also cover ground effect?
I too would like to see tides implemented. I very often fly from Swansea Airport (EGFH) on the Gower Coast, South Wales which is very near where I live. It looks so strange to see all the nearby estuaries full of water, and the salt Marsh flooded. Most of the time real flights from here are over sand banks and miles and miles of open beach. For real world immersion tides would be the greatest asset for me. How do send requests to Asobo?
It’s under Support at the top of the page, then click on submit a request, which brings you to this link
Select Feedback and feature requests and type away.
It’s the same with rivers. When water polygons are available they’re always for max water volume covering up all the detail underneath. It’s quite strange to see fully bloated rivers in the desert. Luckily most don’t have water polygons so you see the actual shapes the water leaves behind.
You can also start a new thread in the wishlist here and hope for votes (strictly speaking tides are only marginally related to weather - so yes, separate thread)
Vote for volumetric water and bathymetry in the terrain mesh if you want to see tides. There’s no real depth to the water right now. Although I imagine they could “fake” the tides by extending the water masking distance.
As far as the weather ingame I haven’t had to many complaints. But then I think they are still testing things!
Saw some multiple rainbows tonight that didn’t impress me, and the flat layer of cloud has always annoyed me. Instead of a flat line I think they need a curved layer!
