My real weather has never worked and I’m using the West USA server. Some people are very sure that real weather works for them. So a question, for those who it works for them.
What server are you using when it works
What airports has it worked at?
I would like to try and replicate working real weather somewhere in the world on my system.
Thank you. I’m hoping the moderators don’t bury this in some mega thread about weather.
I have used both East and West US and get a 50/50 on real weather. It’s broken.
Alright, my Live Weather almost always works with the odd exception of that stupid lightning glitch that takes over. Anyways, the European servers generally work no matter where I’m flying.
Western European server, never had any problems other than that it’s behind with a few hours sometimes
Yep same here - that’s the server I was thinking of.
Western Europe. Very happy so far. During all my 7-8 EGGP-EGLC flights the live weather has been spot on.
Hmm im mostly on western Europe myself, the weather is right most of the time.
But i get like 70% chance that you also hear thunder and see lightning, even on sunny sky´s without clouds and so on
I’m on US West and the live weather does stuff. It’s not always 100% representative of the real world, but it’s consistently “there”. Winds as well (flew in like a 40kt wind near Alaska yesterday)
Same here (Western Europe or Western USA). WX is pretty much spot on within a 5 hour period.
Get this free addon and you will never have to worry about live weather again.
A more accurate statement is you will never have to worry about live weather at airports. Unreal Weather does not have accurate winds aloft and cannot represent upper cloud layers unless they are mentioned in the METAR. It is not a substitute for Live Weather, but can be used in conjunction with Live Weather. For example, use Unreal Weather when departing or arriving at airports and switch to Live Weather for the enroute portion.
Thanks, is the best way of using it!
It’s hit or miss on the weather for me, and I’m always on the same server (East USA). Weather is horribly broken atm.
I have days where it works ‘fine’. And by fine, I mean if I take off at my local airport, which I do often, the weather is pretty similar in terms of sky conditions, temperature and winds as I would get if I were outside my house. Sometimes there seems to be a delay of an hour or two from the time a storm actually hits locally to when it happens in game. Any other place I go, I may not be able to validate the local weather readily, but at least the weather in game is dynamic.
Other days, I get “live weather” on my first flight, then all subsequent flights are clear, 225/3, 29.92. The only way I can get weather to work correctly (whithout manually setting weather conditions myself) is to restart the sim.
Other days, I get constant clear, 225/3, 29.92 no matter what I do.
And the ATIS is currently useless. It always reports rpughly the same cloud conditions (400 broken, 1100 broken, 4000 broken) regardless of actual sky conditions, and the wind readings are completely unreliable. Even ATC don’t have a reliable wind readings. They’ll tell you wind is from 225 at 5, assign you to RWY 20, and you come in to land with a nasty 120/25 crosswind.
Yeah, the whole weather system is a complete mess at the moment, regardless of how “mostly working” Asobo seem to think it is.
On a side note, I haven’t seen rain in game for the last couple of weeks. Even if I’m taking off in rainy conditions, I never see actual rain in game.
US East and I seem to have an 8-12 hour delay on the weather. Also possible that it is so wrong that it just happens to sort of match weather from that long ago.
From other weather threads, people that say it’s working perfectly also mention they don’t really care if it’s accurate, just so it looks pretty, and never provides any sort of evidence of the weather being “real-time” or “live” as Asobo claimed it would be.
Right now trying to plan VFR flights in a nightmare, yesterday I should have had VFR conditions all day but was met with IFR in-game, today should be an IFR day but in-game is easily VFR.
The biggest problem with live weather is that it’s not LIVE! This creates a huge issue while trying to fly on VATSIM since the ATC is giving you instructions (runway selection, altimeter, etc) based on the assumption that you have live working weather. Last night I fly a vatsim event from Winnipeg to Minneapolis and the ATC and other pilots kept warning me of turbulence and wind shear but of course in FS2020 I had clear skies and smooth air. We need fully working live weather for this reason alone.
US West.
Usually works, sometimes it doesn’t. I believe it always works for the first flight I enter/build after I load the sim, and never works for any subsequent flights without closing the sim first, but I am not 100% sure it is that consistent.
I just loaded the sim with Live Weather at KICT, Wichita, KS, and got reasonably accurate live weather there (overcast) if you are still online and want to go check.
There is much more to accurate weather than simply being “overcast”.
Seems to be a common problem where the only condition people have for accurate weather is that the clouds look correct.
By that simple approach when I load up my local airport I could say it’s accurate since it is both overcast in-game and in the real world. Except that in the real world its MVFR with scattered clouds 1900ft, broken clouds 2400ft, and overcast 4000ft with light snow, and in-game I have a ceiling over 7000ft and obviously no snow. Along with wind, temp, and pressure being incorrect.
That is a different topic covered in other threads and you and I have already discussed that at length in those threads. We can go back to that thread if there are still new things to say, but I doubt there are since I believe we made our points quite clear (and, if I recall, agree to a great extent).
The OP specifically asked a separate question to not get thread merged - this topic is about whether Live Weather even loads at all or if attempting to load Live Weather results in the Clear Skies preset, and if that could have something to do with what servers are used.
My apologies, I wasn’t sure if he was just having clear skies at all times or his “live” weather was just incorrect.
I use the US East server, and always have Live Weather on the initial flight, though it rarely works on a second flight unless I completely exit the sim and restart it. (Known bug). That is not to say that the Live Weather is necessarily accurate, but it does inject weather.
The classic symptom that live weather is NOT working would be completely clear skies, pressure exactly 29.92, temperature 15C (if loaded at a sea level airport), and no wind.
There is far more than just “a” server involved with MSFS when it is running online. When the sim is running on my computer (physically located in the US northeast), it establishes continuous TCP/IP connections to no fewer than 5 different servers with different discrete IP addresses. (Sometimes even more). One of them shows a very large number of incoming packets, which, I assume, is the scenery stream. I am quite certain that the Live Weather comes from a different server than the scenery.
Several weeks ago, (when the 225/03 wind bug was still a “thing”), another user here on the forum with far more networking knowledge than I have, did an analysis of the TCP/IP connections that MSFS makes, trying to figure out why winds were working in European airports, but not in North America.
He determined that there may actually be two different servers involved in Live Weather. One appears to provide the weather data that actually gets injected into the game, and a different one provides the data for the cloud and wind graphics on the world map. If that is indeed the case, and those servers get out of sync, it may explain why sometimes the wind shown on the world map for a given airport might be very different than the wind you actually get once fully loading an airplane at the same airport.