I took a flight from Liverpool and REX said it was mostly cloudy but in MSFS it was clear skys as far as the eye could see. Also I have just noticed that the earth is STILL FLAT. NO curvature on the horizon. MMMMM maybe those explorers in the 13 & 14 century were right and the earth is actually FLAT. Well I never… what did they fix in this update ??? 
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Ok, checked to see if LW is working today. Real weather KDJZ is ceiling 200 feet, fog, low clouds, drizzle. Here is the MSFS-2020 picture I took 10 minutes ago tops. You can see clear blue skies. Today, you could not fly unless IFR qualified.
I have live wx selected in the menus necessary for it to work unless I am missing something. All you experts, how about list of things which have to be on or checked for this to work. Thank you.
Who, exactly, are you referring to when you talk about “All you experts”…?
You know all the alpha and beta testers who are the experts. I got it selected in the controls/options. I look at the weather icon, it’s selected, and the box seems to be active. I gave sim 250GB cache, and so it should be able to do it if I got all the buttons pushed/knobs turned, and boxes checked. It sure is not working for me. I also have live traffic selected, but aint got a clue if I am really seeing “real live traffic”. I suppose I could go to flightaware and see what planes are close to me, and see if they show up in the sim, but my guess is there is some kind of delay or something. This thing, if it’s a bug, has more holes in it than a package of swiss cheese. Just saying. Only second time since release, I have had successful “well sort of” 787 flight from TO to LDG without issues which caused me to terminate early. Today, was playing with it, and the altitude knob was going from 45000 to 11000 feet like a jack rabbit running away from a fox. Read swiss cheese statement above.
I’ve been on vacation, and just got to fly the 1.10.11.0 patch for the first time today. The weather still does not match reality. Clouds were present in sim., but way higher than they should have been. Winds were wrong direction and were supposed to be 4 to 7 knots, instead I had 17 to 26 knots. Barometric pressure was supposed to be 29.98, and instead was 30.34 up to 30.40 at destination.
The good news was ATIS was right about the in game weather at my departure and destination airports. This included wind direction, speed, and altimeter settings. ATC also had me use the correct runway for take off at departure. There was a better runway at destination. Winds were at 323 at 26. A runway 32 was available, but ATC had me use runway 36. Still better than landing with a tailwind in 26 knot winds. The crosswind was noticeable, and accurately depicted. Also, field elevations at both airports were accurate compared with the in sim. barometric pressure.
Often now I’m seeing weather in game that is what is forecasted about 12 hours later.
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So I’m no expert at this but I’ve seen enough issues to come up with what works for me anyway.
Firstly multiplayer=on forces you to use LW. If you start a flight with that set and you spawn into clear skies with pressure 29.92 then it’s game over, as you can’t choose any weather presets from the drop-down menu. The only solution I ever found to work is to restart the sim. If you are lucky the next time you spawn you’ll actually get LW. If not, try again (yes, even a restart hasn’t worked for me every time!).
What I have also found, which really gets my goat, is that you can see the LW on the map (your departure and arrival airports will show different wind directions and speeds) but when you spawn at the departure airport…bingo…clear skies and 29.92. Crazy! Again, restart the sim. I have not yet found a way to force MSFS to connect to LW once it has decided it doesn’t want to…outside of restarting.
If you don’t care about multiplayer then turn it off, download Unreal Weather, and then you at least have an alternative if LW decides not to play ball, without needing to restart the Sim. With the later releases MS introduced a LW preset into MSFS, so you can switch between LW and UW “in game” to see what suits you best, or at least have something which works (UW) if LW goes away when you spawn.
NB. As I have MSFS on an SSD I don’t mind restarting to correct LW issues but this may not work for everyone.
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Which airports did you visit and what is their elevation?
I truly thought I was going Mad, glad someone else has noticed this.
I’m not sure this matters, as it seems to happen everywhere. In the last version altitude seemed to accentuate the problem.
I took off from KMCW elev. 745 ft, and flew to KMSN elev. 928 ft.
When I looked up the data for yesterday’s flight, 12 hours back was much closer to what I was seeing. KETB (Departure) was correct for wind direction, speed, and altimeter setting. KMSN (arrival) was correct for direction) but winds were supposed to be 9 knots, not 20+ altimeter was supposed to be 30.37 not 30.40, but it does look like you’re on to something.
Now the question is why? and can it be fixed? Or, we just start using historical weather for flight planning?
Who knows, it is getting beyond frustrating, it’s been 3 months and I have yet to have a flight with what I would call “live” weather. With how and what I fly I’ve really only had two issues, weather and the awful building generation at default smaller airports. But patch after patch that list somehow grows.
This was my experience Sunday when I checked the weather while working on some liveries. Correct wind but that was it.
Actual METAR
KETB 152115Z AUTO 28018G32KT 10SM OVC036 02/M03 A2957 RMK AO2
The pressure and temp seem to show what is forecasted about 12 hours from now.
Yeah, Live Weather appears to be broken tonight. It’s been raining at my house for the last 12 hours however when I tried to fly out of my local airport, clear skies, wind 227 at 3 kts.
Yet, when it works, it works well. I just completed a flight from KLAS to KDTW. Weather at departure was quite close. Upper winds enroute over the upper Midwest were right on the money at 320 at 131 knots with temp of -56. Landing winds were very close: Actual 320 at 10-20, LiveWeather: 318 at 19. Temperature was the same as METAR (0C). Pressure a little low 30.34 vs. 30.41 in the METAR.
Where did you try this? Spent a lot of time at KPWT yesterday where it was supposed to be light rain (verified by looking at live webcam too) but there was not a drop of that in the sim.
Current METAR
KETB 180455Z AUTO 00000KT 10SM OVC100 M01/M07 A3045 RMK AO2
Weather in-game.
Winds are complete fantasy, I can’t find wind in the last 24hours that match it and nothing in the next 10 days, temp seems 12 hours from the future.
Everyone needs to stop comparing their sim weather with METARs. If you want to know if live weather is ‘working’, compare it to the computer weather model from MeteoBlue, as this is the data source for MSFS.
Here’s 3 images for the above location KETB, at 11pm CST 17th (I think I got the METAR time correct?)
Wind, 16-20km/h from the Northeast. Close to the MSFS wind.
Temp, -2, ok a little different from the MSFS, but not drastically (ie 10°C or more difference)
Pressure, 1032-1033. Matches the sim perfectly.
Also note, MeteoBlue blue only generates 2 forecasts models/day based on the data gathered at 0000z & 1200z. The computers then runs the models, and generate the forecast data 6-8 hours afterwards. This data is a snapshot at hourly intervals, for the next 168 hours
This dose not make the data ‘out of sync’ with time so to speak. It just means that the absolute newest data avaliable to MSFS, is a forecast that is based on data already 6-8 hours old, possibly 20 hours old for the worst case.
As the MeteoBlue date is at hourly intervals, any changing of weather within the sim over a shorter time frame than this is generated by the MSFS weather engine. Probably heavily based on smoothing of the hourly data.
All this means that METARs are probably the worst source to compare live weather to, in order to determine if it is ‘working’.
I encourage people to read more about the Metoblue system, it’s really quite enlightening.
Whether this concept as used in MSFS is the best approach for a flight simulator is another debate entirely, and probably not for this thread.
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I concur – with some reservations.
I can think of three aspects of “does live weather work”, and one of them needs to be split in two.
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Does weather in the sim match Meteoblue forecasts. That is the first step and tells if the weather injection works properly. If this aspect does not work everything is broken.
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Do Meteoblue forecasts match official aviation weather forecast products, like NOAA forecasts. This aspect determines if flight planning works. If we have an issue here it is probably due to the age of the forecasts; it takes a good while for a Meteoblue forecast to make it into the sim, whereas a TAF 6 hours out could come from a more recent model run.
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Do Meteoblue forecasts match “real weather”. This is the trickiest one, and I would divide it in two:
3a. Do Meteoblue forecasts match real weather in a wider sense. Specifically (and I keep coming back to this in thread after thread): Do forecast weather patterns match real weather patterns. If Meteoblue predicts airmass thunderstorms, do we see airmass thunderstorms in the sim. If Meteoblue predicts a cold front will pass, does a cold front pass at roughly the right time, with the associated weather phenomena caused by said cold front.
3b. Do Meteoblue forecasts match METARS. Depending on weather patterns, this might work fine, or it might be fundamentally impossible. For example (again my standard example), if the weather is dominated by airmass thunderstorms there is no way a model run 12 hours ago can predict the exact time and location for individual thunderstorms. But it is possible to predict that thunderstorms will affect a certain area. In other weather patterns, such as a moist airmass behind a warm front, weather is stable and it is quite possible for the forecast to precisely match the METARs.
For aspect 1, that just has to work, and it currently seems to be broken. That is just a bugs that need to be fixed.
For aspect 2, that comes down to the capability of quickly getting Meteoblue forecasts into the sim. Maybe there is room for improvement there.
For aspect 3a (edit to my original response), that depends on what aspects of the Meteoblue forecasts are depicted in the sim. An example of an issue with this aspect is the current inability of the sim to adjust aerosol settings to match Meteoblue models.
For aspect 3b, that is where I think some users will never be satisfied and will prefer METAR based weather, because they care more about comparing numbers in the METAR at a particular time than they care about depicted weather behaving like real weather. I strongly disagree with them, but I recognize that disagreement is a matter of opinion, and their opinion is as valid as mine.
Note that comparison with METARs only addresses aspect 3b. It says very little about aspects 1, 2, and 3a.
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This is not acceptable for serious simming. They need to do something about it. Period.
The main problem seems to be 1 here.
As said, when live weather works its mostly correct. The problem is when its only clear sky whatever is expected in meteoblue forecast or metar.
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