FSX-SE FSX SE weather stuck for past 2 weeks

[hughVFR 2]

Hi,

  I've googled this already and seen that this was a problem in FS9 and in the pre-SE FSX, and the latest post I found for this issue was 2013.  Has anyone notice the real-time weather suddenly be stuck on whatever the weather was about 2 weeks ago? So far when I googled this, there didn't seem to be any option short of abandoning the FSX default real-world weather updates in favour of an add-on.  So in 2017 and with the FSX-SE, I'm asking if a) anyone has had the real-weather updates stop updating, and b) was there any resolution?  It seems folks have tried completely uninstalling and reinstalling to no avail. If I didn't know better, it is almost as if this feature stops working after about 2 months of using the updates.

-Hugh

[charliearon 3,017]

It yam what it yam!  The weather inside the Sim will fail to do the updating from time to time and then, all of a sudden it will start updating again.  There are several freeware weather addons that can take the place of the in-Sim weather.

[hughVFR 2]

OK, I will acknowledge that I should probably abandon the built-in real-time weather in favour of a 3rd party add-on.   It's too bad really as the built-in was good enough for my purposes while it was working.  For 3rd party weather, I'm a bit confused about what exactly I need. I'm just looking to replace the live weather updates with ones that work - I don't need a completely new set of cloud imagery. What is the simplest way to achieve this and would I typically have to run two apps side by side (i.e. FSX + the weather app)?  If I need to run apps side by side, I can see a problem because when I'm running FSX, the rest of my system is unreachable (and it appears that FSXWX runs standalone outside of FSX although I never could get it to generate any current weather).   I'd also be interested in a solution that is not going to tax my machine as it's already running full out every time I go for a flight (need to get a dedicated machine for simming).

Thanks in advance.

-Hugh

[charliearon 3,017]

Far as I know...all 3rd party weather runs in it's own application using FSUIPC to connect to FSX.  The in-Sim weather that updates every 15 minutes is working but using old information if the server is not working. I always use it and not too concerned if it's suppose to be raining but the screen shows sunny or barely cloudy.

[vortex681 806]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxNkk-A2TXk

16 hours ago, hughVFR said:

For 3rd party weather, I'm a bit confused about what exactly I need.

If you want a free weather engine these two seem to be the most popular:

FSXWX: http://www.plane-pics.de/fsxwx/home.htm

FSrealWX: http://www.fsrealwx.net/index.php - although it looks like payware, the basic app is free and fully functional but you can pay for extra options.

Either of these two is all you need. They automatically replace the built-in live weather feature in FSX and use the default cloud textures. If you have REX4, this will noticeably improve the cloud textures and is compatible with both of these apps.

If you want to significantly improve the weather depiction in FSX, and don't mind paying, then I would highly recommend AS16: http://hifisimtech.com/as16. They also sell custom cloud textures but these are not required to actually use the product. The other possible option is the upcoming REX Sky Force 3D - earlier today in their developer forum they said: "We are close to finishing our fine tuning of the final product. We will be publishing a new build for the team to test on Wednesday.  Hopefully, this will be the last". It looks amazing in the publicity video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxNkk-A2TXk. However, it's worth noting that it has been coming for well over a year now and there's still no official release date.

[hughVFR 2]

6 hours ago, vortex681 said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxNkk-A2TXk

If you want a free weather engine these two seem to be the most popular:

FSXWX: http://www.plane-pics.de/fsxwx/home.htm

 

I did try FSXWX (with FSUI running as a module within FSX). On the FSXWX console, although it could communicate with FSX, it couldn't seem to find any weather stations, and so I ended up with no weather in FSX (zero wind, zero clouds). The only thing that's so far scared me off AS is hearing that it is quite resource intensive.  I am always half expecting my CPU to go into a temperature related panic when I'm flying FSX.

-Hugh

[HighBypass 2,339]

There is also FSOpen Open Clouds. It's free coverage for the UK, but £5 for a 12 month subscription for rest of the world weather.

http://www.fsopen.co.uk/software/openclouds/

 

[vortex681 806]

14 hours ago, hughVFR said:

The only thing that's so far scared me off AS is hearing that it is quite resource intensive.

My experience has been that it makes no noticeable difference to performance. If I run FSX without it I don't see an increase in FPS.

[hughVFR 2]

I managed to get FSXWX to work finally. IT seems it's not enough to have FSX loaded, but you have to actually be in a flight, before it starts receiving METAR data.  Oddly enough, the FSXWX app was still able to get METAR data after FSX stopped.  I may be wrong about that and perhaps in my last attempts, it really wasn't able to read any of the METAR stations. 

I watched a couple of youtube videos on the FSXWX and you sort of need to run FSX in windowed mode (i.e. not fullscreen, but inside a child window) in order to access the FSXWX console although when I kicked off a flight, it did automatically pick up the weather at my starting airfield which was nice.  Fortunately it's possible to toggle back and forth between windowed and full screen as I found the virtual cockpit in windowed mode to be abysmal quality.

-Hugh