Real Weather in FS2004 is outdated and inaccurate

[Guest flightjunkie]

Hi, has anyone noticed that the real weather reports are outdated and inaccurate? For example at 2pm Pacific Time, KLAS (Las Vegas) reported only 84 degrees. I checked online and it was actually 106 degrees in reality.Other stations were not reported correct or nearly up to date weather either. Can someone confirm this?

[Guest WorkingStiff]

I'm not surprised to hear that. :-)A check of my firewall access log shows that the COF2004 weather server - http://fs2k.zone.com/ - is the same as the one used for FS2000 and FS2002.I normally use ActiveSky wxRE so I get accurate weather.

[Geofa 108]

The weather reports are generally updated about 5 minutes before the hour, once an hour unless something really exciting is happening. Then, sometimes an individual station doesn't report.It is possible if you updated at 2 pm -that the new report issued at 1:55 pm is not yet in the system-and therefore you would be getting the weather from 12:55. If for some reason your station missed reporting-you might even get earlier.Then again-there could be a problem on Microsoft/jepps end.I'd keep trying and see how you do.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

[greggerm 312]

It always seemed as though the FS2000 / FS2002 weather was a few steps behind the weather data fed to programs like FSMeteo and ActiveSky wxRE. Given the above info relating to the servers, maybe the Microsoft server is designed to be a little off? I have played with ActiveSky wxzRE Beta 1.9 under FS2004, and it was spot-on. It's native FS2004 counterpart was lagging, though. (This was in the middle of the hour)

[Guest]

I'm at work now and can't verify till this evening... but have an observation and a question.When using native FS2k4 real weather I see all the various weather activities within the range I have set up in Display Properties. For example, a thunderstorm to the south, clear skies to the east and north and partly cloudy to the west. This is excellent and a huge improvement over earlier versions although it is disappointing the weather information from Jeppeson is outdated and only refreshed at the server side once per hour.I tried FSMeteo this weekend and noticed that whatever the current reporting station had for weather was populated throughout my weather scene. In other words, when it was clear skies locally, it was clear everywhere the eye could see. When cloudy, it was cloudy everywhere you looked. There was no variety of weather situations in any direction. Does this mean we have to select the FSMeteo "download world-wide weather then stay offline" switch to "populate" all the various weather reporting stations within FS2k4?Any insight or suggestions would be appreciated!Doug3.06Ghz P4 533FSB512 MB RAMBUS RAMSony CPD-G410R 19" CRTRadeon 9700 Pro (Not O/C)Catalyst 3.6 DriversSB Audigy 2120 GB ATA Ultra DriveMS Sidewinder Force FB ProWinXP Pro SP1DX 9.0b

[Geofa 108]

I just tried the following experiment.Luckily local weather helped-an hour ago (kptk area) it was overcast-in the present hour it has gone from that to almost completely clear.I didn't get an initial duat report(wasn't planning to do this experiment) -but I started at 11:45 my flight.The cloud cover fs produced matched what had been in the air an hour ealier-but did not have the clearing trend yet.I got a duats report-the new report came out at 11:53 am. This new report did have the clearing trend-however since I started fs before this-it of course took the latest report which was 10:53 am.As I continued to fly (I have the live weather 15 minute update chosen) I watched as the original cloud cover started to thin gradually-now at 12:20 pm it matches what is outside the window perfectly.For my area this strikes me as very accurate-not only did it start the flight with the latest report-but when the new one came in not only did it update-but gradually transitioned to the new weather (vs. the old style instant change).Now there could be issues with individual areas of the country-and the ms server might burp every once in a while but it looks pretty reasonable to me.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

[Guest]

It's screwed up. Houston, TX was reported as 75 degrees and clear yesterday when in reality it was 90 degrees and overcast. I don't think it's just behind an hour or two because it hasn't been 75 degrees here in months.Maybe it will start working on the offical release date:)

[Geofa 108]

Next time you get an rw update-zoom around the map and see what nearby stations are reporting..see if they are all wrong-and if you can zoom out enough-find out where they start reporting right.It could be a fault with one-or an entire geographic area-or perhaps as you mentioned-the complete deal may not be up or running till release date .However, I have been real weathering for quite a while in a variety of areas and checking it against duats.I posted some shots in the screen shot forum about a week ago where I followed a live coldfront with severe weather across our state.If there is a bug for a particular area of the country though-the sooner reported the sooner it can possibly be fixed!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

[Guest]

Hi, Geoff.I'm curious about your detail settings for clouds.After a great deal of experimentation, I settled on 30% 3d clouds, 50 miles cloud visibility, and 100% coverage. 100% coverage seems to be the only way to get true overcast skies. As I noted in another post, Anti-aliasing and filtering has a BIG effect on performance when clouds are in the sky. In order to keep 2xAA and 2:1 anisotropic (I sure wish I could go to 4:1!) I had to make some pretty big reductions in the cloud settings.What settings are you using? Have you run into any problems with complex real-world weather?

[Guest flightjunkie]

Ok, I can now surely say that the Real Weather reports in FS2004 are not right.When I flew from Tokyo to Bangkok, I looked at the ATIS at BKK and it said it was 15 degrees Celsius (about 58F). If you know anything about Bangkok, it is NEVER 15 degrees Celsius being so close to the equator. Even if it's 20 degrees Celsius (68F), it must be a record low because temps in Bangkok are always around 25-35C, or higher.Here is the METAR right at when I was landing:VTBD 282200Z 22010KT 9999 FEW020 SCT120 BKN300 28/26 Q1008 NOSIG You can see the winds are 220 at 10 Kts, scattered and broken clouds at FL120 and FL330 and the temperature is 28C, dewpoint 26C. When I landed at BKK, FS said it was winds calm, temp 15C and clear skies. I checked back several hours and the observations were almost the same as what I just posted in the METAR.

[Geofa 108]

I just leave the AA off-period. Your cloud settings are about what I use. The real world weather seems spot on where I have tried it-obviously not the case everywhere...http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

[Geofa 108]

Just a shot in the dark here-is your dynamic weather slider off when you are using the live downloads?http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

[JRBarrett 3,034]

>>>When I landed at BKK, FS said it was winds calm, temp 15C and>clear skies. I checked back several hours and the observations>were almost the same as what I just posted in the METAR.>That's the default "standard day" settings which FS defaults to when there is no external weather input... is: temp 15C, winds calm, sky clear.It would appear that the Bangkok METAR was not in the Jepp data feed at the time you were landing there, so FS2004 fell back to its default.Quite possible that MS will not implement the full data feed until the official release date tomorrow - or, (as has been noted in the past with FS2002) the "official" MS Jepp Wx feed is often missing a lot of data, and/or is often quite dated. That, after all, was the main reason why add-ons like FSMeteo and Active Sky became so popular.I strongly suspect that the problem some have noted with clouds "growing" out of mountains is due to corrupt data in the Jepp feed, rather than a bug in FS2004 itself. ie: if the METAR for a particlar location shows the cloud ceiling to be below ground level (negative height), the sim will produce the "buried" cloud bases in response.Jim Barrett

[Geofa 108]

Sounds resonable.Also-with all my good results-I just did a rw download-didn't match anything at all. Perhaps they shut it down for some maintanence before the official opening-I guess we will find out!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

[gosta 0]

>A check of my firewall access log shows that the COF2004 weather server - http://fs2k.zone.com/ - is the same as the one used for FS2000 and FS2002.:).Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg