Weather degradation

I’m holding onto hope that the SU XIII “surprise” will include or centrally focus on updates for the live weather and weather system in general. If they don’t break the radio silence on this issue by now (two years after Sim Update 7 when it went for the worse), I have no faith that they ever will until (at the very most hopeful) the next iteration of the sim (2024). Considering that the “Live Weather” bug has had the top spot on the Bugs list since then, and that the “Weather” bug report category is filled with relevant topics on weather issues in the sim, I genuinely hope they do not overlook this any longer and use either SU XIII or the “surprise” to finally and adequately address this.

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I agree and i gave uo hope that the early-days-bugs ever will be fixed… the only bugs that were mostly (better: sometimes) fixed are new bugs introduced with an SU during beta (but only a few); they never fixed one of the big day1 bugs… they care about windsocks [sic], but they dont care a lot about what was advertised as a core feature prior to release and is not fully working for a long time or got broken some month ago
e.g. Weather … where is all the lighting over europe … every single day im on the hunt for thunder and lightning.this summer… i would be happy if i only saw 1 lightning somewhere.
There are enough storms with lightning and thunder over Europe every day, but MSFS with its core feature “Weather System” just doesn’t do anything. The same applies to MS, Asobo and the Dev’s: No feedback, no statement just “logged”.

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I think 2020 is maxed out as in no more available resources to address the weather issues. At FS Expo they talked about how 2024 was on a new platform that wouldn’t be main thread limited any longer and the many cores of the cpu would be used efficiently opening up greater possibilities and resources to do things to the sim 2020 doesn’t allow. I think live weather falls into that category which is why the obvious issues haven’t been fixed or improved. Just a guess, but I don’t think 2020 will see any weather improvements at all.

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Maxed out is straight malarkey. We all know and have seen just what the weather can be. It was that way before SU7. It’s well known weather was downgraded because of Xbox/general performance problems BECAUSE of the amount of data/depiction being used. Then after that it was changed to incorporate METARS as it’s main depiction method. So no, things aren’t maxed out. It’s still reduced and hasn’t switched back nor seems like it will in any future unless it happens in 2024. There’s PLENTY of room to increase weather and use all the data that MB gives them. They just haven’t done that.

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Ok…fair enough Then I guess they just don’t want to do it, and the fact that weather has been at the top of the list of priorities for years, and nothing has happened means they aren’t going to do anything else. Also, why haven’t they given any updates on the status of future development of live weather? I can’t remember a time in the last year or more that live weather has even been discussed, it is just bug logged. Hopefully I am wrong, and I hope 2024 is a major step forward in live weatehr immersion.

That would be a real surprise for me. But i would never expect a weather focused update. It’s the least prioritized feature in the sim it seems. I thought the weather system were one of their main selling feature before MSFS got released but i were wrong. The lack of weather updates before and after su7 and the rushed su7 weather update made me sure of that.

Please surprise us Asobo.

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It’s not that they don’t want to or can’t. It’s more to do with they’re full steam ahead with 2024. Any significant weather changes will be in 2024. 2020 hasn’t seen anything weather majorly changed since 2022.

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Unlike the real world, where the weather is changing majorly at an alarming rate.

coming from that MS/Asobo NEVER released a real and complete changelog for their patches, it somewhat feels like they made changes to live weather, or did i just catched a lucky moment?




non of this ugly stuff


It’s still there. The clouds are still way too transparent. Although the amount of ash looking clouds has reduced there’s still a lot that bleeds through to show that things are still pretty much the same. Nothing major is going to change until something happens with the METAR aspect.

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lucky moment i still get the horrible clouds

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So here’s something I wanted to show. There’s an offset within MSFS between what the METAR is saying versus what is being depicted. Roughly 15 minutes or so. Here’s ORD:


The METAR clearly shows high level clouds at FL180 and FL250.


This is what it looks like right over the field.


All of that high altitude weather is East of the field.

I’ve seen this multiple times where the weather that is correct per the METAR isn’t really directly over the airport but is offset by at least 5-20 NM. This gives aid to the idea that the accuracy of the weather has been decreasing over time.

Currently in downtown Chicago:

Current satellite:

The in-sim clouds aren’t tied directly to the METAR, haven’t been for a while. Nevertheless, what you posted isn’t far from the METAR for the last two hours:

KORD 281951Z 23008KT 10SM FEW025 FEW150 BKN250 33/24 A2991 RMK AO2 SLP122 T03280239`

KORD 281851Z 23008G18KT 10SM FEW180 FEW250 32/23 A2992 RMK AO2 SLP126 T03220233

So I’m not sure what picture you’re trying to paint with the evidence you’re presenting.

That despite what the METAR is saying isn’t what’s going to be directly over the airport which is what people assume or expect to see. Wasn’t that kind of the whole point of why it was implemented in the first place? The regular MB weather, which would have been infinitely more accurate, wasn’t matching what the METAR strings were saying so everyone (people who can’t be named) wanted it added thinking it would make things match more.

What I’m showing is that it hasn’t changed anything or even made it worse. There’s no way no to even try to show the difference since it’s a locked feature.

But with what you’re posting you’d expect high level clouds somewhere around the airport. But in my photos it’s all blown East of the airport and the rest of the sky is completely clear. Looking at your other photo of the satellite, where clouds are over the airport are completely blue skies in the sim. So again, there’s an offset to it.

  1. The sim clouds aren’t being driven by METAR anymore
  2. The ASOS sensor and/or human observer looks at the entire sky. FEW180 FEW250 is not out of line with your pictures at all, as it represents 1 or 2/8 sky coverage, but, see #1 anyway
  3. The lag is what I’ve been talking about for a year. In some cases, like mostly VFR weather, it’s acceptable. This is not out of line with the real world - in nice weather the METAR updates hourly and the clouds do different things in between. No harm. However, with convection and hard IFR, if the margins of the weather can’t be discerned from realistic in-or-out-of-sim sources, the lag becomes unacceptable. In those cases, it’s imperative that it be driven by more up to the minute resources like radar and/or visible satellite so we can use those same resources to make decisions and/or skirt around those areas.

I don’t know why we’re still stuck on METAR.

Where’s your proof that clouds are being driven by something other than that? Because your image shows clouds over where ORD is at where mine shows a clear blue sky. They don’t match up. The clouds that would be representative of what your image shows in mine are way out to the East over lake Michigan. If the clouds in my photo had been right over the airport it would have supported what your image was showing as well. But they weren’t which is why there seems to be a delay. Blue skies directly over ORD doesn’t correlate with FEW80 and FEW250.

I hope the devs knows what the cause is. We as users can only speculate.

”METAR disturbs weather” thread is bug logged. That to me says the METAR is an issue.

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I have presented a lot of evidence. The biggest is that clouds exist in bands outside of the METAR reporting areas. Then, despite the time lag of an approaching squall line in the sim (METAR changing closer to real time), the approaching clouds are not affected by the disparity in the METAR.

Haha, sure. It disturbs some weather - we see it in the visibility reduction outside of (leading or trailing) precipitation.

Slew up to 100,000’, look down and tell me METAR is interacting with the clouds.

Why do you think the weather has got worse visually since release, especially after su7?