I have used been using real weather downloads (FSMeteo) for quite some time now but recently I have begun to doubt their usefulness - at leat for Australia and trans oceanic flights where reporting stations are few. For example, I fly from Melbourne to Perth across the Great Australian Bight and I get Melbourne weather then Adelaide weather and eventually somewhere over Esperence I get Perth Weather. For most of the trip the weather dished up is for places hundreds of miles from my flight path and will most likely be not even close to reality. Similarly, if I fly from Sydney to Lord Howe Island half way between Australia and New Zealand, I get Sydney weather and then Brisbane weather - that's it! Also I live at Merimbula on the New South Wales far south coast but the online weather provided for Merimbula airport (YMER) is for Canberra (YSCB)- an inland city hundreds of kilometres from here. Now it seems to me you can do a better job by simply looking up the local weather Bureau forecast on the net and use the FS9's advanced weather feature. You can often get local observations as well so you can set up the correct QNH and winds for locations that the weather program has no data for.Until real weather programs come up with something much closer to reality then what is the point - especially when you have to put up with the wind shear bug as well?Now while I have only used FSMeteo from what I have read other real weather programs don't ofter anything much better.Bruce

I think it all boils down to availability of weather soruces and probably public ones at that.I know when ActiveSky was being developed the weather stations in use were nearly all US based but after posts by all us hard done by European Virtual pilots the number of weather stations did increase.It might be worth asking in the ActiveSky forum if it covers your part of the world, that's if you would consider purcahsing another weather program.

To each his/her own... We have many Australian pilots who enjoy Active Sky everyday and we have made great progress in supressing the FS winds bug.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004proudsupporter.jpg

I know that AS2004 is actually quite accurate, or as accurate as can be if there are weather stations reporting. There was one post here by someone commenting about snow in Prince George (I think that was it, northern BC, anyway) but when I checked real world weather it really was snowing there.

So with AS2004 if I fly from Melbourne (YMML) to Perth (YPPH) where will I be getting my weather from? And if I fly from Sydney (YSSY) to Lord Howe Island (YLHI) where will I be getting my weather from at my destination? These are only examples as, with FSMeteo when flying in Australia, I frequently find that the downloaded weather is from airports a long way from my flightpath (in general only the major cities).Bruce

Conned isn't the right word. What we need to realize is that flying over expanses of the world where weather sensors are not positioned, there is little the real weather generators can do for realistic weather. This is not a limitation of the software, rather a limitation of real world infrastructor. We can't blame the weather engines for that :)

According to this:http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/AU_cc.htmlthere are 26 reporting stations in Australia.For YMML you would get YMMLFor YPPH you would get YPPHFor YSSY you would get YSSYFor YLHI you would get YBCGHope this helps,JimActiveSky Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004proudsupporter.jpg

that's well stated. Government's are who pays for the weather data infrasturcture - and most aren't willing to share everything in the public domain. AS2004 does a very good job, and is getting better all the time. Damian hasn't said so, but HifiSim's server-side value is tremendously under-advertised in my opinion. It's a great source for accurate weather data. That said, I was really disappointed that I couldn't find a single source that depicted Brazil's (arguably) first hurricane which his Florianopolis, Santa Caterina, and vicininty last month...oh well!Best,sg

Not very many for a country the size of Australia, and I note that with AS2004 (as with FSMeteo) for my flight from Melbourne to Perth, much the same as flying across the US, the enroute weather will be that for Melbourne, possibly Adelaide and then Perth and that the weather for Lord Howe Island will be from Coolangatta which is just south of Brisbane and hundreds of kilometres away. In making these observations I am not blaming the weather programs as such, but I'm sure that when the average sim user buys these products they naively think they are getting real world weather for their FS flights when for much of the world this is simply not the case.Now there is an enormous amount of real world weather data freely available on the net for the whole globe eg the Institute for Global Environment and Society (http://grads.iges.org/). What is needed is some way of coverting this data into a format FS can use. Of course the user can do this right now by simply downloading the current weather data from this site and use the custom weather utility to reproduce the same thing in FS, but it would be neat to be able to automate this.Bruce

It's OK, in AS the actual METAR has a direct influence of 2 miles.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004proudsupporter.jpg