Microsoft's answer to ActiveSky

[Ops Normal 57]

After watching the video, I heard more about forecast condition than actual conditions. In my daily real world flight planning, I rely on apps like METEOBlue, WIndy winguru etc to give me a general picture of the coming days and really more on the METAR for actual weather reports because I have had many days when all my weather apps failed woefully with their predictions. 

I would like to see how the new sim will depict actual conditions in terms of METAR's, and the forecast conditions i.e  Meteoblues weather models simultaneously in the sim. 

[highflyer2020 607]

2 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

Agree, they should...   And yet, the history of MS FS, is that MS never provided more than the basic platform which many addon developers added attractive new content for..  This is very likely going to be the case again, I would suspect..  And that is not a bad thing  🙂

The "basic" weather MS is providing though is a generational leap from what we have on current platforms. Can it be improved? Yes certainly.

But can it be improved enough that someone will spent money on an addon for it? I'm sceptical I think whatever developer tries to make a weather addon for FS2020 is only going to achieve something marginally better than what you get for free.

 

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

4 minutes ago, highflyer2020 said:

The "basic" weather MS is providing though is a generational leap from what we have on current platforms. Can it be improved? Yes certainly.

But can it be improved enough that someone will spent money on an addon for it? I'm sceptical I think whatever developer tries to make a weather addon for FS2020 is only going to achieve something marginally better than what you get for free.

 

History would not support that.. but we can all hope that you are right, would be nice 🙂

Edit... "Marginally better" is actually a good description of what many of us have been paying big bucks for in the past 😄

Edited June 13, 2020 by Bert Pieke

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

24 minutes ago, Ops Normal said:

After watching the video, I heard more about forecast condition than actual conditions. In my daily real world flight planning, I rely on apps like METEOBlue, WIndy winguru etc to give me a general picture of the coming days and really more on the METAR for actual weather reports because I have had many days when all my weather apps failed woefully with their predictions. 

I would like to see how the new sim will depict actual conditions in terms of METAR's, and the forecast conditions i.e  Meteoblues weather models simultaneously in the sim. 

I always rely on Windy, SkyDemon (here in UK for real world flying) a ponder over the Aviation Briefing Service stuff and a glance at the METARs for where I am and where I'm going along the way on the night before and during the run up to the flight and during.

I always thought FSX/ P3D and add-ons were pulling METARs from Noaa and Met Office and the other principal observation and reporting authorities so were pretty accurate. In other words if MS can improve on what it already had it will be very good indeed - that's up until it cancelled Jeppesen contract in about 2013 - after which unless you were using AS16 or another add-on you got very odd weather indeed and nothing related to real world conditions.

Edited June 13, 2020 by Will Fly For Cheese

[Dominique_K 10,147]

27 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

Agree, they should...   And yet, the history of MS FS, is that MS never provided more than the basic platform which many addon developers added attractive new content for..  This is very likely going to be the case again, I would suspect..  And that is not a bad thing  🙂

What you say is that MS has enrolled Meteo Blue, a well known AI specialist of weather analysis and forecast to do, at most, the same than some coders shoehorning METAR in FSX at the Aces Studio in the early 2000s ? Okay 😋… What makes you "suspect" that it would be the case ?

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

21 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

What you say is that MS has enrolled Meteo Blue, a well known AI specialist of weather analysis and forecast to do, at most, the same than some coders shoehorning METAR in FSX at the Aces Studio in the early 2000s ? Okay 😋… What makes you "suspect" that it would be the case ?

That is not what I said at all..

I am prepared to be impressed, but in the past, MS delivered  a platform for others to build on, and I see no reason to expect anything different this time around..

[RALF9636 1,956]

 

1 hour ago, Bert Pieke said:

... the history of MS FS, is that MS never provided more than the basic platform which many addon developers added attractive new content for ...  This is very likely going to be the case again, I would suspect.. 

That would completely contradict everything they told us so far in the last 12 months.

Of course addon developers will most probably still be able to build upon the default sim in some regards, but MSFS will certainly be more than just a "basic platform" as it was in previous sims (and still is in P3D).

Edited June 13, 2020 by RALF9636

[GCBraun 2,392]

8 minutes ago, Bert Pieke said:

That is not what I said at all..

I am prepared to be impressed, but in the past, MS delivered  a platform for others to build on, and I see no reason to expect anything different this time around..

Newsflash: the Microsoft of 2020s is a totally different beast from the Microsoft of the 90s.

Edited June 13, 2020 by GCBraun

[Will Fly For Cheese 1,710]

I agree both Bert and Dominique! - I think you're saying the same thing.

FSX (please just take it as read that includes P3D) was able to set the weather with pretty good accuracy - especially after Jeppesen came aboard.

It was weather DEPICTION in the sim that sucked. The conditions were there; METAR on the ground and winds aloft. But becuase of the lousy clouds and graphics limitations and code it didn't visually represent the conditions to the eye.

Hopefully, ASOBO with MeteoBlue will correct this. Although I wonder how much MeteoBlue will be involved from a graphics POV - apart from muttering occasionally - "That doesn't look right Monsieurs - when gazing at the graphics depicted."

What I'm trying to say is there are two discussions going on here;

How accurate the weather is going to be.

And how visually correct that weather will look to the eye.

Edited June 13, 2020 by Will Fly For Cheese

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

36 minutes ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

What I'm trying to say is there are two discussions going on here;

How accurate the weather is going to be.

And how visually correct that weather will look to the eye.

I'm glad you posted that because I was just about hit "submit" reply with the same comment. From what I see, the MeteoBlue component will pretty much close the door on 3rd party weather injectors being needed in MSFS. As to depiction, MSFS looks better than anything out there at the moment, but I don't think that in the long run, the atmospherics will look any better than what P3d5 with trueSky can potentially provide. As Rob A. pointed out, the difference might be how open the MSFS SDK will be when it comes to allowing changes to weather depiction. I am somewhat of cloud gazer and the MSFS clouds all look pretty much the same. They have different base altitudes and heights, but given that MSFS is still an alpha build, I'm confident that cloud variety will be improved. Even if it isn't, it still exceeds anything we've seen before in a flightsim.

[bonchie 2,305]

21 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I think the clouds look ridiculous (missing transparency and way too dark) and very unrealistic in MSFS ... with all due respect.  
 

I’ll take TrueSKY and HiFi and/or REX and/or RealWeatherGlobal and/or Opus ... glad to have the choices and dedicated developers working on it and looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.

Of course you will.

Nothing is perfect, but MSFS' clouds do not look "ridiculous." The darkness is a part of the lighting engine, specifically in bad weather, dawn/dusk, or terrain casting shadows. There are lots of scenarios where the clouds are bright white and become transparent in MSFS.

P3D has trained people to think clouds are always one visual presentation. They aren't. And the ability of MSFS to build cloudscapes like in the above picture at the top of this page is unmatched. Claiming it looks "ridiculous" is just biased hyperbole. It needs work, but it's capable of more than any other simulator in existence.

Edited June 13, 2020 by bonchie

[bonchie 2,305]

2 hours ago, Ops Normal said:

After watching the video, I heard more about forecast condition than actual conditions. In my daily real world flight planning, I rely on apps like METEOBlue, WIndy winguru etc to give me a general picture of the coming days and really more on the METAR for actual weather reports because I have had many days when all my weather apps failed woefully with their predictions. 

I would like to see how the new sim will depict actual conditions in terms of METAR's, and the forecast conditions i.e  Meteoblues weather models simultaneously in the sim. 

METARs will obviously be part of the data set, but for much of the world, there are no METARs. The ability to realistically forecast conditions and present them in a sim is revolutionary. It will never be perfect, but neither is a 250 square mile box in FSX with no realistic data whatsoever.

Edited June 13, 2020 by bonchie

[HiFlyer 9,359]

All I know is what I have been using in FSX, P3D, X-Plane, DCS and other sims for the last decade and I know what I am used to seeing.

I also know what I am seeing now, and can say with confidence that I have zero intention of paying extra for what I believe will be, in the best of all possible circumstances, a somewhat similar rendition tacked on to the existing sim, when the built in depiction, designed from the ground up for the unique rendering pipeline of that sim, is available and providing more than I have ever had before. (including payware)

Not gonna happen!

Edited June 13, 2020 by HiFlyer

[rocketlaunch 614]

The clouds and weather simulation in the MSFS2020 alpha are to be frank mind blowing. As said many times before in this thread, light years ahead of anything we have right now. Are people (the usual) honestly trying to tell me that P3D 5.0 (which I do own) is viable competition in regards to weather? 

We have a company like Meteoblue involved with flight simulation and we are told to forget them because Hifi simulations has already got this! 

I think some people are just afraid of MSFS2020 as it will seriously shake up the market and take us into a new era of flight sim. This IS next gen, get used to it. 

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

16 minutes ago, rocketlaunch said:

I think some people are just afraid of MSFS2020 as it will seriously shake up the market and take us into a new era of flight sim. This IS next gen, get used to it. 

I guess I am not a "true believer"... but I am prepared to be impressed... 🙂

Some of us have lived through the MS FSX, FSXI, Flight roller coaster... and need to see something that MS does not drop when it does not live up to expectations, or exceeds its budget projections..