Ya the live weather is trash. Can’t fly anywhere without thunder and lightning. Frustrating part is that asobo doesn’t know what’s causing it and doesn’t seem to realize how terrible the issue is. Live weather is basically unusable for me
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Weather was spot on Sunday and Monday. Tested it in EDDF, EDDM and LOWS vs the Metars around 12UTC. See my other posts with screenshots. So it seems a bit hit and miss, will keep an eye on it…
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Live Weather is an alpha or tech demo level feature in this simulator currently, which is a real tragedy as it spoils the experience for many. There are gaping holes in the implementation:
- ATIS is broken/not implemented
- The World Map and UI are super flakey on how they update and what conditions they show relative to what’s depicted in the simulator
- The simulator cannot draw proper visibility conditions
- Many variables from the live weather source appear to be ignored/not implemented, even when it does work
- The live weather source is super flaky in reliability and currentness
- Basic cloud types are missing including cirrus, realistic looking stratus, contrails…
- Thermals/updrafts don’t appear to be implemented except for basic turbulence and orographic, terrain induced flow
- Numerous bugs including excessive lightning in skies without storm clouds, and unrealistic layers of cloud such as convection emanating from the ground
The METAR injectors are “third party hacks”, meaning they manipulate the simulator in ways not intended, do not use an SDK or API made for third party developers, and are not supported by the Flight Sim devs. They are also a regression to the weather of the previous generation of simulators, featuring static weather scenes with harsh transitions. They also suffer from the same limitations of the simulator’s weather engine such as being unable to accurately reproduce visibility conditions. You can try them out to see if it improves your experience, but I’d only recommend such a thing if you absolutely need a couple of variables (winds, pressure?) to match the historical weather as reported by a METAR at an airport’s single point location. They otherwise break the continuous, smoothly flowing volumetric weather that Flight Simulator creates.
My main advice would be to just keep raising the issue here until it sees more attention, and until then, enjoy other parts of the simulator that aren’t broken.
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Right now on the west coast USA, near Portland ish, if I select live weather, the map will show me a huge cloud bank, the weather icon will show cloudy…but when I spawn at the airport (any) it’ll be clear blue skies.
Don’t know if you have this, but if you use this airport much, you can bookmark this:
https://aviationweather.gov/metar/data?ids=KBKL&format=decoded
Ok I’m using Unreal weather, some have said that this also doesn’t reflect the outside weather, Really?, cmon, I just did a flight from 2MT0 to CYQL, I took off in clear calm conditions, had some turbulence over the mountains then clouds the came in at about 10000ft high and I got a good tailwind, and on landing still had clouds and strongish winds. Now I don’t live in that are so I had no idea if that really was the weather, but does that really matter? All that matters is the weather was type A at departure and type B enroute and type C on arrival, it varied, it changed I had variety, this is a sim thats all I ask for, try a flight with unreal, dont look outside your window and enjoy your flight. I also had a quick look at Renton in the sim with Unreal and it was heavy overcast with rain, again Im not there so no idea what the real weather is but there was DIFFERENT weather being displayed.
A lot of people are using ATIS to gauge if the in-game weather is correct or not, this is a mistake as the ATIS is almost always giving you faulty info.
The wind direction will usually be correct, but the wind speed is usually much higher than reality, the cloud info is always wrong, the temp is usually close to correct, dewpoint is always 10, and doesn’t actually seem to be implemented into the engine. The altimeter setting will usually be correct and visibility is fantasy it seems.
The best way I’ve found to figure out the actual in-game weather is to use Little Navmap as it pulls some of the weather from the game.
Gives you some nice info in the progress window.
I am tiered of the thunder! No more thunders please! 
Yeh live weather is not great. Try flying from Delhi (VIDP). Its always poor visibility there. Visibility was 2500m for several hours but in the sim it was 56 miles. I think the only way to have low visibility is if clouds are at ground level but in Delhi’s case its because of pollution since it was clear skies. I dont expect msfs to use pollution data but if visibility is 2500m at the airport it should show low visibility. Looks like its not modelled which is a shame since default fsx can do it.
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It would be interesting to know where are the people concerned by the delay with the live weather.
In the Meteoblue presentation, their CEO was talking about a huge model (250 millions boxes of 2 square meters with 60 layers for each). I don’t know if it is possible to make instant update of such huge model everywhere in the globe at the same time, so there might be part of the world where “boxes” get their data a long time after the computing.
In my area, close to Basel (where Meteoblue is based), the live weather is pretty accurate: cloud coverage is good, ceiling is perfect when I compare with live observation of cloud touching the mountain around the area, rain showers are accurate (place and timing) but often have a lower intensity (heavy rain is replaced by regular rain, small rain is represented by a thin layer of cloud going from the cumulus cloud base to the ground), winds were accurate (since the first correction of the 3 kt bug, and I am talking about IRL flying and IRL measurement) .
The only problem for me is the unwanted thunder but it has decreased during the past week and unwanted strikes became rare…
hehe just got the “Hydroplaning” achievement while flying on live weather in sunny skies with lightning and thunder in the distance. Gotta love it
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Hi all,
If you’re concerned about the live weather, please consider to vote here and here to get yourself heard. I care a lot about live weather, which is why I started both topics in the first place. (No, my ego isn’t boosted by the topics getting votes.)
Cheers
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I would like to know what happens to all the zendesk reports regarding this? In the Q&A they mentioned a caching issue and kinda acknowledged the lightning bug. They also explained the difference between METAR and meteoblue fed data, hinting that maybe we’re just looking at the wrong wind layer. Nothing else was said about weather being way off and I wonder if they even know about it.
Well I now know I’m not the only one with this problem so I’ll send a bug report. If everybody sends bug reports via Zendesk instead of complaining on the forum I’m assuming they have loads of them already.
I’ve voted 
Hello! I live near Lake Zurich and real weather has definitely been a very hit and miss experience as far as our local flying weather. in sim I fly mostly from Lachen-Wangen (LSVP) which I can see from where we live.
I’ve been checking the last weeks, and often even the general character of the weather is off–a beautiful sunny Autumn day is translated into solid overcast and rain in the sim. We had a storm a few weeks back with high winds, and I checked the sim a few times over the day and found the windsock of our local airport hanging lifelessly each time,and no hint of rain, though the storm lasted most of the day. This is more than a delay, unfortunately.
Flew the other morning to watch a beautiful sunrise over the lake accompanied by thunder and lighting in clear skies. 
Mostly I check live weather in game, and if it’s off I just adjust it to local observations.
I just got the same thing
I live on the other side of the border in France, 40 km away from Basel near the Vosges mountains, and from here the live weather is pretty accurate.
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Maybe it’s the reporting stations? I tried Lugano and found it to be very accurate. But on the east end of Lake Zurich it’s really bad.
Sure–if it’s sunny and bright outside and raining and overcast in the sim you don’t notice…uh huh. 