Weather or not

Yeah sure, I guess global aviation standards got it pretty wrong then. No idea why all the pilots worldwide look into METARs while planning their flights. If I recall it correctly, there were even people risking their lives during wars setting up pointless weather stations at remote locations all around the globe.
If they only would have known what you now tell us.
Nobody needs METAR. It’s old data of no use. Good.

METARs are accurate within 5NM of the airport. and the TAF is for planning but ultimately when you are coming in to approach / land, it is the METAR you rely on. It is not just for the past hour as it will be modified if there is a significant change in the weather.

The Meteoblue weather method is completely fine, but I think within the 5 NM of an airport it should focus on the METAR vs. the Predicted weather, the rest of the area based weather is totally fine… BUT even here, I have noticed that what Meteoblue shows on the website doesn’t match what is in the Sim… and I’ve filed multiple Zendesk tickets around it.

I am a little biased but check out the Unreal METAR Add On. There is a thread on it on the forums. The add on is in its infancy (1.3) but seems to be working well and has a lot of potential and the developer updates it as much as he can.

You can see the thread on the forums or find the Add On here https://unrealweather.blogspot.com/

And I’ve been told by some experts who study and work in meteorology irl that if a $60 home desktop flight simulator or addon could predict and portray real world weather even half as well as the super-computers and weather hardware, then many meteorologists would have been out of work many years ago :rofl:

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I usually fly with my IPad linked with the Flightevents Client providing the interface which gives me my aircraft position, but then overlay the composite weather from the ForeFlight applications. I have yet to find where the weather depicted by ForeFlight is that much different from what I am experiencing from MSFS2020 Live weather.

I have purchased the Rex Weather Force and while it does provide a tad more accurate winds near the reporting station, I did suffer more abrupt changes in Barometric pressure and cloud conditions on longer flights than I did in Live weather - so, for me Live weather has been a better choice for the flying I do

REX has never produced a fully functional transitioning weather system for flight simulator. The use a weather injection system rather than a transition system like Active Sky did. OPUS does the same thing. Thus it injects new weather into the sim rather than transitioning to it though they claim they do.

Yes, you’re correct

Thank you all for your enlightening comments. I think I get the picture here. I am using Rex, but I loved Active sky in Fx. All i all I am happy with msfs 2020.

A number of people here have expressed very valid and legitimate opinions on the possible benefits but also the significant limitations and issues associated with using METAR data to arbitrarily drive the weather data in the sim.

Various threads on this forum have had in depth and intelligent discussions about this. As discussed elsewhere, in the real world, METARs are a very narrow, after the event, observation of localised conditions. They are not a complete or even necessarily accurate picture of the current weather conditions and they certainly don’t drive the real world weather.

There is really no need in this discussion for sarcasm or oblique personal insults.

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I was far from insulting anybody. And if after all these intelligent discussions you mention you still don’t understand how important METAR data is for real world aviation and how much METARs actually are an accurate picture of current wx conditions, it’s no insult either when I now conclude that you should stop discussing stuff you have no idea of.

Unfortunately the point seems to have been missed here. The relevant discussions to which I am referring relate to the pros and cons of various approaches of incorporating weather data into a particular flight simulator (game). This has absolutely nothing to do with the real world importance or use of METARs.

You are welcome to privately conclude whatever you like about my understanding or lack thereof.

Once again, in this forum there is no need for sarcasm, disrespect or personal criticism of others with whom you disagree.

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Indeed. While METAR is an essential aviation data resource IRL, they don’t actually feed the weather enroute. The weather kind of takes care of that itself.