Historic Real World Weather

[RALF9636 1,905]

The weather really looked great in the Feature Discovery Series 2 video. Also great to see that actual real world weather is depicted.

What I missed is a mention of historic weather. I really hope that doesn't mean that we won't be able to have historic weather.

Flying with only current real world weather would be a major drawback for me because I almost never set the in-sim time to the real world time - mostly because I only have tim for simming in the late evening but still want to do daylight flights.

So the current real world weather wouldn't match the in-sim time which might lead to unrealistic results when thinking about daytime-dependent weather phenomenons like morning fog that clears by noon or developing cumulus clouds in the afternoon, dissolving in the evening.

 

So please, Asobo, include historic weather. Going back only 24 hours would already be okay for me. A little longer would be even better of course.

 

 

[OSJJ1985 134]

Well 1 year backwards would certainly do the trick for all needs. If the weather really behaves in a dynamic way being true to real world natural laws and patterns then one could also just set random parameters or let the sim calculate a "starting point" that fits the area and it's environment and the time of year and day and then let the engine to it's job. Doesn't need to be real world data. Real world data is really only relevant when you fly online, in which case you need the current weather anyway. 

Edited October 25, 2019 by OSJJ1985

[Dominique_K 10,133]

I concur that it would be a much welcome feature. I often fly visual in mountains and look for a day with reasonably good visibility. I also fly all over the world and having the real weather for a certain moment during the day is important to me.

Edited October 25, 2019 by domkle

[jcomm 5,890]

They're probably leaving that for 3pds to have something to offer... otherwise...

[JanH 4]

According to this post, some historic data might indeed be available, although unfortunately so far nobody has come up with either a second source to verify that statement or alternatively some clarification what "an hour, a day or even longer ago" exactly means, i.e. whether it would possibly even stretch back a full year for complete seasonal coverage.

1 hour ago, jcomm said:

They're probably leaving that for 3pds to have something to offer... otherwise...

They'd have to match the new input data quality the sim now supposedly is able to use (i.e. much more detailed and finer-grained cloud coverage for example as opposed to simply METARs), though...

[jcomm 5,890]

2 hours ago, JanH said:

According to this post, some historic data might indeed be available, although unfortunately so far nobody has come up with either a second source to verify that statement or alternatively some clarification what "an hour, a day or even longer ago" exactly means, i.e. whether it would possibly even stretch back a full year for complete seasonal coverage.

They'd have to match the new input data quality the sim now supposedly is able to use (i.e. much more detailed and finer-grained cloud coverage for example as opposed to simply METARs), though...

At least AS uses far more than simply METARs.

Any weather model ( paid or even NOAA's GFS ) has even more levels than those announced by MS. To give you an example, at work I use 135 levels with a resolution of 5 km :-)

[noisy 4]

I agree, for me historic weather is quite important. Not only for flying at a different than the current time, but also when doing a long flight and I have to interrupt it to continue later. Or if I want to use time acceleration to shorten the flight. For me live only real world weather would be rather useless, I hope we can get at least a few days of history.

[guenseli 1,577]

6 hours ago, RALF9636 said:

So please, Asobo, include historic weather.

 +1000

 

one of the most important features for me!

It is simply that I love to fly at the foggy morning when I come back from work in the evening. Or maybe there was a "nice" storm a few days ago I would like to challenge.

I think, 1 year backwards is really enough.

[AUjeffk 10]

I agree...that is an important feature for me.  One of the great things about flight sim is being able to see different parts of the world, I don't want to wake up at 3 AM to do a 10 AM flight in London, etc.

I've asked the same thing from the guys at Rex Sky Force 3D and they keep saying that it will be in a future build.

[Pastaiolo 1,686]

I am happy with the usual presets (which were shown in the latest video) + real world weather.

I never ever had a reason to use historical weather since i started simming.

[guenseli 1,577]

Another point for historic weather would be time acceleration.

For us guys, which do not have 10h real time to fly, we could start at a point in the past and accelerate during the boring part of the flight, catching up the present time and weather.

[RALF9636 1,905]

9 hours ago, Flamingpie said:

And I'd prefer a little longer than 24 hours 😉 because I often fly at summer in winter, if you know what I mean. And it would also be a drag if the weather is really bad where I want to fly and I can't take off for days because of that: historic weather would solve that problem.

Also take note that a lot of people fly on the other parts of the world which means they will be flying at odd real world hours, resulting in odd real world weather at the wrong simulated times! It's not only that a lot of us fly in the evening: even when you fly at day you can end up flying with night time weather if you decide to fly somewhere else. In short: historic weather would be very much appreciated!

 

9 hours ago, OSJJ1985 said:

Well 1 year backwards would certainly do the trick for all needs. 

 

I agree, the option to go back up to one year would be most satisfactory.

Injecting saved data instead of live data into the sim's weather engine shouldn't be much of a problem. But I have no idea what amount of data needs to be stored for the world wide weather at any given time. Active Sky currently allows to go back five years. The new sim probably takes into account much more data than Active Sky right now though. But since they handle two petabytes of data for the scenery, they should also be able to store the weather data.

 

Edited October 25, 2019 by RALF9636

[kand 205]

34 minutes ago, guenseli said:

Another point for historic weather would be time acceleration.

For us guys, which do not have 10h real time to fly, we could start at a point in the past and accelerate during the boring part of the flight, catching up the present time and weather.

I think for some time even a 10hr flight wont be boring anymore given the new visuals, it certainly was boring in the landclass/billboard cloud world of the past though ! 

[simtom 495]

Not something that I want per se, but wildfires based on real life events could be a nice detail to add (or volcano eruptions). Would definitely make route planning a bit more dynamic and realistic. Would also tie in with the historic weather.

[Kilo60 660]

Good idea but.... How would you simulate a historic snow blizzard/ice storm in July in NY for instance?

 

Sure you could fly through a white out while looking down at full blown summer terrain all over the Northern hemisphere in the middle of the winter months...  But what’s the point as it would look and feel ridiculous anyway!

 

Without seasons any type of winter historic weather would be pointless!