Weather transition is not smooth after SU7

If you fly in the opposite direction, does the haze disappear again?

Yes it does

that’s right, thanks for the explanation !
I have once (at that time) despite my not so great programming knowledge to “create” a program that makes it possible to make the then at a certain height suddenly disappearing visibility layer in FSX “smooth” - there I have really learned a lot about “interpolation”, “haze layer” (which can be not only horizontal but also vertical, this has nothing to do with fog), fog layer etc…

But this is how I would proceed (for now in the MSFS and if it is so important):
Yes, the problem with forecast data is the lack of low lewel clouds and fog - BUT - exactly the values and only the values including wind data I would take from METAR (and not vice versa).
Wind data I would slowly “smoothen” to the values of the reported values e.g. below 3000 feet (or whatever) within a radius of one METAR station (is possible - FSUIPC has shown us this before, (20, 30 nm, depending on how far away the other METAR stations are or how much data is available).
Clouds and the other forecast data I would leave as they are, i.e. THE ENGINE AS IT WAS and then if possible access higher resolution data or use satellite-based evaluation (Jörg has already talked about this).
And now for the haze layer - that’s one thing - anyone who has flown more often knows that it is almost always “hazy” (this has nothing to do with the visibility on the ground). Once more, once less, in some regions more or less - but to get it so smooth and in the horizontal and vertical levels is almost impossible (if of course the other values are also taken into account).
I think this “aerosol” value should have taken over - also not a bad approach (as this value is also given in forecast data)
and as long as this can’t be done automatically - render a constant layer of haze (like XP11 does, but unfortunately a bit too much, but can be adjusted via DataRefs)

  • with a slider 0%-100% or additional on / off and that’s it (for now).

And I am not interested in reproducing the “real weather” 100%, although I would like to - that is not possible anyway, with METAR, forecast or whatever - but something “credible” in terms of appearance and above all constant and without any abrupt changes and other anomalies (and that is what we had before SU7 !)

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Asobo should at least make a statement and give us some info about an eventual hotfix. Especially when something gets really broken in the sim

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Yes, but not right away. If you turn around immediately, you usually have to fly for miles until it goes back. Like you either have to get closer to the next METAR or the next volumetric voxel. So it makes it difficult to avoid this issue as a result.

Part of the problem is a lack of communication/documentation on how the system is supposed to operate.

Most of the live weather issues that occurred late last year into the first half of this year was finally discovered to be an issue with the sim loading in the wrong forecast hour for a certain portion of the day. (This is why you’d have half the users complaining the weather was wrong while the other half said the weather looked okay to them). It took months for the community to determine when weather was being updated and how often because nothing is documented or explained anywhere. It all was discovered through observation and reporting on our part.

Has anyone noticed how the complaints about inaccurate weather dropped significantly after April/May this year? That’s when the issue was finally fixed and most people had mostly accurate weather since within the confines and limitations of the system. But due to a lack of explanation, by the time it was finally fixed, everyone had already jumped on the METAR bandwagon and used that as the sole explanation for why the weather wasn’t accurate.

Flight simulators are complex, and weather even more so. How the system works and interprets the data needs to be explained to us so we know what to expect and what to look for when things don’t seem right.

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Personally I had no complain about WX after SU5. It was smoth and pretty accurate. What I don’t understand is that i believe these SU are tested for weeks before release. One of these 3 things here:
1: They don’t test
2: They are sooooo incredibly lucky not to spot the issue
3: They just don’t care
It was clear that most people would have complained about such a problem so I don’t understand why to complicate their life

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I completely agree on the end goal: I would like to see credible-looking weather without abrupt, unrealistic changes. To be honest, it sounded like that’s what we would be seeing in this update. Before SU7, the weather engine used global model data from MeteoBlue and modified it based on the latest METARs. But the modification seemed to be weighted toward the model data, rather than the METAR. On one occasion, I flew into an airport where the model data indicated broken clouds, but the METAR reported clear. I was flying through clouds until I approached within a few miles of the airport, and then I suddenly broke out into a clearing around the airport. This was unusual before SU7, though. More often, the sim weather looked consistent, without any abrupt transitions, and it didn’t always match the METAR.

Leading up to SU7, the devs explained that MeteoBlue would be incorporating the METARs into their model system. That sounded like an improvement to me. The National Weather Service does this in their high-resolution weather analysis (known as the RTMA – Real Time Mesoscale Analysis). The analysis is based on a high-resolution model forecast adjusted to more closely match METARs and other observations. Overall, the RTMA produces a realistic-looking weather depiction without abrupt changes around METAR stations. That’s what I hoped to see in SU7. I’m not sure why they were unable to achieve it, but it’s worth noting that the RTMA has been under development at the National Weather Service for more than a decade. Producing a high-quality product that blends observations and models is VERY hard. With more time and effort, I’m sure MeteoBlue can improve the current product.

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Perhaps then what we should all do to help troubleshoot this…

When we encounter sudden transitions:

  1. Take note of the real world time it happened (not the simulator time)
  2. Take note of which METAR station you were flying into and the general location where it happened.
  3. If you can, after a transition turn 180 degrees in the opposite direction and take note if it suddenly transitions back to what it was and how long it takes for that to happen.

For this issue it’s important to determine if this happens due to ■■■■■■ transition between METAR stations or ■■■■■■ transition between weather updates to the sim itself.

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My sense is that the testing period is too short. In order to fix all the bugs and issues identified during testing, they might need a few months to iron everything out. There isn’t enough time to address everything, so fixes are planned for the next update, rather than delaying the current update. So in my opinion they are testing, and they are likely identifying many of these problems during testing. But the timetable doesn’t allow for a proper fix.

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Everyone was asking for METAR based weather, now we got it, with all the downsides of it, like appruplty changing weather.

I hope they can smooth it out, but then again, peoples will shout “IT IS NOT EXACTLY AS IN THE METAR”…

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It’s definitely a spatial/geographic transition (a temporal one might also be possible). You can indeed repeatedly cause the transition by flying back and forth between METAR stations.

An easy one to reproduce is to simply fly north and then south out of KONT. The Mojave Desert just to the north is almost always clear, and Ontario sits in the LA Basin which is inundated with the marine layer this time of year. Once you get over the mountains, the fog disappears suddenly. You have to get within a few miles of KONT to make it come back, and likewise fly all the way back to mountains to get it to go away. But the change is always instant and over the same location.

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I totally agree…so if there is no time to make an implementation skip the feature for the next update but don’t give users a broken sim.

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I experience similar issues and talk about it in my video.

It’s a bit a rant ^^, excuse me.
But I talk about the issues I have ran into.
Mainly:
Very inaccurate live weather and the apprupted changes of it.
Watch the first 3:30 minutes, the rest is rather the same :slight_smile:

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This information is definitely helpful.

My next question then is this:
Was the fog the only aspect of the weather that transitioned suddenly, or did everything else transition suddenly as well (winds, clouds, pressure, etc)?

From what I’ve seen in the videos showing this issue, the sudden transitions seem to only happen with the fog, nothing else.

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One thing is asking for METAR based weather, another is finding yourself flying in perfectly clear skies and then go into zero visibility in zero seconds. I’m sure that none of those guys wanting METAR based WX is happy right now. METAR are clearly not correctly implemented in the weather model and it really reminds me of flight simulation 8 years ago

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Fog was the only thing I noticed. Winds and pressure may suddenly change as well since they are apparently using the same METAR based system. I’ve seen reports on this forum of rapid changes in the clouds as well, but I haven’t seen it myself except once when I first loaded the SU7 beta, and took it to just be some random fluke.

I’m wondering if elevation has anything to do with this and if this is possibly related to the AGL/MSL issue. Using your example of KONT and then flying north, the elevation on the other side of the mountains seems to be much higher than in the LA Basin. Because clouds aren’t being rendered at the right altitude, I’m wondering if this is also affecting the fog layer and how it generates. WIth the AGL/MSL issue, a lot of weather is generating into the ground depending on where you are.

So the next thing I’m going to keep an eye out for:
Does the sudden transitions only happen when flying between METAR stations that are at significantly different altitudes.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. If a feature is not ready for primetime, it should not be in the build. If more testing is required, keep it until the next update and test it properly. People will be impatient, but it will be better than pushing half-tested, incomplete updates that break functionality. I’m not sure how that works in practice, as features are sometimes interdependent. But it’s a goal worth striving for.

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That’s what makes me worry: a decade is the lifespan promised for MSFS.