Geoff,This is a well-known issue. Pete Dowson thinks he might have finally found the issue. When either FS or add-on weather program has missing METAR for a station, it goes to global weatherm which is set to 0 ASL. This is a problem because FS9 interpolates many stations for one weather area.Go to Denver sometime. Every single friggin' time there are cloud farms growing out of the deck. Everyone I know has confirmed it (finally). Almost every airport above sea level has this problem.What I don't understand is why other people don't seem to notice, even in otherwise clear skies (as reported by ATIS). I first thought it was fog banks, but then saw it happening in clear weather.Pete's assessment is since there are holes in the METAR data, or programs like FS_Meteo use data for stations that don't exist in the FS9 stations list, when it grabs the global weather for those areas, the interpolation gets totally messed up. So you can have the right weather and the cloud farms, or clear weather and cloud farms or totally bad weather and cloud farms.It's completely irritating and makes using FS9 a PITA. The weather is broken in any case since the ATIS and what the weather is outside the plane doesn't match a majority of the time. There's total overcast and the ATIS says "clear", for example. This is that interpolation issue again.The weather system really needs a total rebuild. If it weren't for that, I'd be 100% happy with FS9 (which is rare). I like almost everything else.What I want to know is why not one FS developer or beta tester noticed this problem. Are there no testers at airports other than at sea level? Pete didn't even notice until the third month I had complained about it when he finally went to Denver and confirmed it.And it's not just Denver. It happens all over the place, even at sea level. You just have to pay close attention.Barry has probably seen more than his fair share of my going on about this. ;-)

Are you sure that the problems are not related to the known cloud visibility issue? Metars include cloud and visibility. MSFS feed includes cloud and vis, but the game engine won't show a full overcast at less than maximum cloud density, and I suspect increments less than the expected octas at everything below that - certainly 5/8 looks more like 3/8 in my system. Yet the vis is carried through without alteration, so where the vis is associated with the clouds, you get the vis limits, but not necessarily the clouds. So it appears as fog.If you ramp up the clouds setting to max, then switch to simple clouds, you'll see how the vis allies itself quite nicely to the cloud coverage.FSUIPC registered offers a nice utility to contorl this.Allcott

I get the annoying fog banks from time to time too! And a haze ?MB

Hi Scott-I not allowed to state whether this was noticed in beta testing or not-but like all beta testing situations I am sure you are familiar with,many things are noticed, mentioned-and the developer chooses whether it can be fixed or not...sometimes based on based on practicality, limits of resources, or what can be done at the time. I am sure with your experience with your product you are familiar also with similar things that may not be caught-the "slow voices" that snuck out strikes me as perhaps similar.The complaint about avx I don't buy as being this phenomena. As I explained to Barry-when you have a dramatic difference of weather at avx (say 1/4 mile fog) going to unlimited visiblity a close distance away (Calif. coast) and no reporting stations in between-the sim has to average and make the change. I don't really see when using real weather how this could ever be changed. The shots I submitted above I think actually do a pretty good job of this transition. However, with such a rapidly and dynamic changing area as takes place much of the time in this geographic location of the world-it will always be a guess, and somewhat of a compromise.Re; your post above-It seems logical to me that if the metars are broken that the sim would have problems too when using real weather. More taxing to me than this "fog" problem is the reliablity of the Jepp feed which seems to have more problems more often than other metar sources-though they all burp here and there from time to time. As far as setting to 0 asl when a metar has a problem-something that I would think could be fixed. Should MS have a plan for when the metars are not working?-perhaps-I think for now I simply would resort to dynamic weather should this occur-but it might be a nice feature for the future, or even if Peter can add it.Remember however-that we are on a transition from ice cube clouds in fs'98, to pixilated clouds that didn't show up until near them in fs2000,to adding real weather downloads (I harped about this since the early 90's), to what we have now-an increasingly better depiction of the sky environment.For me-if I were to complain-the thunderstorm depictions are still not even close to reality. Since I deal with those quite a lot in my area of the country-that actually is more of a factor, or lack of reality for me (than the "fog"). Does that make flying "vfr" totally unreal and spoil the sim for me?-or is the weather engine broken, or needing an immediate patch because of this?Not in my opinion-it is getting better and closer with each version.Now when fs has flocks of migrating birds to avoid as I have been having to do almost every flight for the last month-then we will have reality! :-)http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

I'm not sure what you mean by "ramp up the clouds setting to max". Where in FS9?1. >World >Weather >User Defined Weather >Customize Weather >Conditions >Clouds?Or do you mean 2. >Options >Settings >Display >Weather?If you mean the latter, I have the "Cloud Cover Density" set to maximum and I still have the problem of clouds growing out of the deck, clouds in a sky where there shouldn't be clouds, etc. etc. etc.There is an error in the system somewhere. It is not an earth shattering error or bug for sure - but it is still there.I have FSUIPC v3.10 (bought and paid for) How do I configure it to get rid of these problems?Thanks,DonaldS

Geoff,I agree about the T-storms. I also agree that the concept of the new weather system is a lot better, although I do still have the clouds pop in and out, regardless of which weather system I'm using.Strange thing is that add-on wx programs, as MS says, uses the "old" cloud calls, where the internal Jepp system uses the "new" calls. So a lot of people see better clouds with the internal than external calls. I persaonally haven't seen much, if any, difference.I can't speak for the issues at Avalon since the closest I fly there is LAX or San Diego. I have had a lot of 0-vis issues at KSAN, which the METARs don't have, though.The only real issue I have with the weather system, besides strange effects when using FSM (which I believe Marc is working on), is the cloud farms.One thing Pete has suggested to Marc is that Marc compare his station data to the FS station list and exclude those that don't exist in FS9. Then if a METAR is missing, Marc could use the closest station as fill in. I like that idea.However, the only thing I've found to fix this "clouds growing out of the ground" issue (cloud farms) when using the internal wx system, is if I first go into World/Weather/Customize Wx, then set to use the cloest station. Then the picture dipiction of the ground goes to my altitude (correctly) and the weather adjusts accordingly, and no cloud farms. But I have to do this every friggin' time.But this does fix the weather in general, and either the FS weather or FSM then work and the ATIS, Pete's WeatherSet2, and the weather outside the window match nicely.So as long as I can force FS to get the ground altitude right, the weather problems are fixed. To me that means it's fixable in the FS code. I just think it's an oversight. If I'm at 5000', FS shouldn't set global to 0'. Then fill-in interpolation would work fine.I just hope MS looks into it. Like I said, I really like the new flight engine and handling, general weather improvements, the fact I can now use old FS98 scenery (which I couldn't in FS2002), the fact real satellite imagery is coming out, etc, etc. It's just that one thing that drives me nuts.It would also help if there were some clouds at my altitude (say, FL350 and above), since there never is any - even when there should be.But I do suggest you fly to Denver sometime and just see this weird cloud farm phenomenon. I can guarantee it will happen there, or KCOS, or just about anywhere in Colorado.As for the visibility issue, Pete's tried everything to figure this out, but so far hasn't totally. I've noticed this is more a sea-level airport issue than anywhere else. I would have to actaully test to see, then compare METAR data with what's in FS9.BTW - I like the pics you posted.