xbox series x: I cannot chose anything but live weather, Won’t let me chose other to buttons to change it to custom or anything so I get what I get.
So what the consensus on thunderstorms now? I found them horrible before, occurring when they weren’t in the area. And the lightning was awful, constantly going off even on clear days. Just looked bad too… Did they change the effect or just how the RT data was injected into the sim?
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I’ve literally got thrown around in Florida today in the sim for flying through cumulus clouds…
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Cant say the effect has changed all that much. Set up a flight with 100% lightning and take a look.
Another update, PNW has beautiful big clouds, no turbulence, no updraft in them. I’ve read that before, these things tend to work on the right side of the pond but not on the left side - might be down to the reporting systems being different?
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Flew through some good CB fronts just yesterday Ft. Lauderdale Exec to Ocean Reef. Wherever NEXRAD showed Green or Higher, got precip effects.
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My OP was largely regarding the tangible presence of thunderstorms in live weather.
I think the update broke it, so often I’m just getting clear skies where there shouldn’t be any and have still not found one single thunderstorm in live weather.!
Clear skies the lengths of Cuba and Florida on planet MSFS, on real earth…
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Day 6 - Palma, Lecce, Bermuda, Azures. All showing thunderstorm icon in live weather, light and fluffy clouds which did look lovely, but aren’t what should be there.
Still no live thunderstorms but at least live weather is back-ish.
We went from having lightning everywhere it didn’t belong to not having it at all where it should be. Gotta love these “fixes”.
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Yeah I also noticed that there is not one single lightning strike or thunderstorm anymore since last update. Before everyone was complaining about the lightnings everywhere but this is also not a good solution now 
Hopefully we get a good balance with the next update, where also the current bug with clouds altitude (MSL vs. AGL) is fixed.
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I’ve noticed over the last few months that I haven’t seen any lightning, at all, in live weather. Obviously it was winter time in North America, but now we’re in the midst of spring and severe thunderstorms (as I type) and I don’t see a single flash.
Anyone else?
We used to have it constantly, even on clear days, now it’s completely gone.
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Away for good I hope… At least until they can find a reasonable algorithm for it 
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I was flying local this weekend in bad weather. Being I was in VR I thought the thunder I was hearing was in the sim.
Turns out the conditions were a perfect match but no lightning.
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Lighting never on time if you know lighting you probably have to make rianing and lighting
I would have preferred if they left it in the sim and improved it as they get to it. It is a visual effect that doesn’t affect flying so why remove it? Anyways.
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Because it was all lightning all the time. It was actually pretty good when it was first released, but then something happened to their algorithm, and, essentially, if there were clouds, there was lightning. At least for me. Very distracting because the associated thunder crashes were loud.
I’m sure it will be back when they figure out a better way for it to appear. I’m assuming there are databases they can access that show lightning. They probably just have to figure out a filter to differentiate between heat lightning and lightning storms.
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Lightning is still there. Just an hour ago I was flying over La Macarena in Columbia into a small storm (live weather). Directly in front of me lightning came down, followed by the typical thunder rumble. A few more flashes came down around me but I these I could only see indirectly.
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I haven’t seen a bolt of lightning or heard a crack of thunder in months, using live weather. Granted it’s been winter where I live but I flew through a big thunderstorm in Texas the other day and all I got was clouds and rain. That was disappointing.
I suggest a compromise for the people that are bothered by lightning flashes. Give us an option to reduce the flashes but keep the thunder.
It sounds like it’s still there. I’m happy there is less of it and not too much.
Just because locally there was a thunderstorm for you in real life, does not necessarily mean that the weather in the sim will exactly match it.
It’s “Live” weather, not real life weather. The weather is created by MeteoBlue’s weather prediction engine and served to you as you fly. The weather you fly through in “Live” weather, is actually likely several hours old, predicted by MeteoBlue, processed by MSFS’s servers to get it into the correct format for MSFS, then served, mediated somewhat in that it’s predicted weather. The fact it’s close to actual weather is actually quite amazing.
There is also the factor that the weather is also merged, on the fly (pun intended), with METAR weather. METAR weather reports don’t normally contain lightning data, although it sometimes can be in the notes format I think. So, the live METAR data, which I have no idea what the delay is between METAR creation and service to you, isn’t going to help with lightning either.
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I know most of that, but thanks. Still disappointing to me nonetheless.
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