9 minutes ago, Agrajag said:

I'm not sure I see the point of this. Let Asobo have a shot at fixing this once they can breathe

What's the problem with hoping that Active Sky can come up with a better weather add-on for MSFS? It's no different than hoping for better third party airports and aircraft, ATC and AI traffic, all of which aren't that great in the default sim. MSFS is beautiful to look at, but the piloting features need a good update.  I'm patient, but if HiFi releases Active Sky for MSFS, I'm on it in 10 seconds.

What has this to do with the topic at hand? 

21 minutes ago, Peter Clark said:

Evidence suggests they’re not taking the METAR or winds aloft balloon observations and integrating it into the sim metoblue or something. I find it disapponting considering what they could have done by amalgamating a lot of free data with the meteoblue forecast to generate the atmospherics in the sim.

 

 

Winds aloft used in R/W aviation do not come from direct real-time observations. They come from computer forecast models initialized with balloon RAOB observations taken at 0000Z and 1200Z worldwide. Even ActiveSky creates winds aloft based on a forecast model. It does appear that MeteoBlue is supplying worldwide winds aloft data. You can see them on the world map if you enable the LOW or HIGH winds visualization. The problem is that the sim is not using those upper (or surface)  winds in some geographic locations - in particular the US. Winds do generally work in Europe.

The second issue is surface observations. It seems pretty clear that the system does not use real time surface METARS. Airport weather appears to be coming from the MeteoBlue forecast model which predicts what the weather “should” be at a given location and time - not necessarily what it actually is. Only METARS can give exact surface weather. Sometimes the MeteoBlue forecast will be “close”, sometimes not.

There are technical reasons why they may have chosen to do it this way. For one thing, having all weather (surface and aloft), come from a single unified gridded model, would make smooth transitions between surface and aloft weather much easier to do without sudden shifts in wind or pressure. Using a combination of real-time and model data requires a lot of interpolation - something which took Active Sky years of work to truly perfect.

However, real-time METAR weather is what all other sims are able to provide...

1 minute ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

What has this to do with the topic at hand? 

Ask Charles Dudley Warner:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dudley_Warner

 

 

1 minute ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Ask Charles Dudley Warner:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dudley_Warner

 

 

Sorry my comment wasnt directed at you, but at the two boys infront of your post. Do we really need to step up on our soapbox at every opertunity? Can't we just sometimes stick to a topic lol 🙂 

5 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

I'm getting 50-60 winds above France

Yep. Winds aloft do seem to work properly in Europe. It is the airspace above the US where they do not. The sim is clearly capable of injecting upper winds. Whether it does nor not depends on where the aircraft is positioned.

16 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

What's the problem with hoping that Active Sky can come up with a better weather add-on for MSFS? It's no different than hoping for better third party airports and aircraft, ATC and AI traffic, all of which aren't that great in the default sim. MSFS is beautiful to look at, but the piloting features need a good update.  I'm patient, but if HiFi releases Active Sky for MSFS, I'm on it in 10 seconds.

Just what I said are the problems.... The foundation here is a good one. If your car needs a tune-up do you buy a new car??? If, tomorrow (for the sake of argument), Asobo fixed the weather issues would most people still rush to add ActiveSky? Heck no. The vast majority will, quite frankly, be happy with what's already here. For the rest of us (me included) we want more accuracy and reliability. Both of those things can be had if the existing product just worked as advertised. That's dramatically different from every flight sim of the past where the foundation for the weather was almost entirely simplistic. A weather engine is also a lot more involved than overlaying scenery.

Edited August 20, 20205 yr by Agrajag

3 hours ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

I just took off from HAAM in Ethiopia, and I was unable to access the weather options or time at all. I have had access to it earlier, so I just might have to restart the sim (its rock stabile this sim, btw - only had 1 random crash since launch). 

I think you will find you cant access the weather options from within the sim(airplane) when you choose live weather at the start.

Just now, sanh said:

I think you will find you cant access the weather options from within the sim(airplane) when you choose live weather at the start.

Also make sure you don't have 'live players' selected, set it either to all players or turn MP off.

Edited August 20, 20205 yr by Tuskin38

Just now, sanh said:

I think you will find you cant access the weather options from within the sim(airplane) when you choose live weather at the start.

Hmm I dont think that is correct. I have been playing more or less on live weather constantly, but I have had the cloud icon in the quick menu all along. Except for that one time, and a relog fixed it. Maybe the servers acting up. 

Just now, Tuskin38 said:

Also make sure you don't have 'live players' selected, set it either to all players or turn MP off.

That is true, I never have live players because that makes me loose control of time and weather. 

3 minutes ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

Sorry my comment wasnt directed at you, but at the two boys infront of your post. Do we really need to step up on our soapbox at every opertunity? Can't we just sometimes stick to a topic lol 🙂 

The topic is "Live Weather Inaccurate / not working"

Part of that topic is WHY it's not working and WHAT we expect. No emotion aimed at you here. I just would feel better knowing that Asobo gets that we're not happy about this and 500 posts of "The weather is wrong in Kirabati (boy did that come and go)", "The weather is wrong in Lisbon", etc., doesn't really convey that. Both types of responses are, to my view, very much on topic.

Why it isn't working is interesting, but probably very speculative for most of us. The "what we expect" part is what I dont see the need to discuss in ever single thread created in this forum since monday. 

I set weather to -90c with winds gusting to 300 knots.

Pretty funny.

4 minutes ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

Why it isn't working is interesting, but probably very speculative for most of us. The "what we expect" part is what I dont see the need to discuss in ever single thread created in this forum since monday. 

Eh, that's just a by-product of the state of the existing product and will die down as things progress. I also have to disagree on the "what we expect" part. Take the large CH Products Not Supported thread. Customers are making it clear example what they expect in there. Some here saying they want Active Sky speaks to what set their expectations. Heck, there was a time when clear skies was all we had, and people were happy with that. I'm with an early poster. I want to know why the darned time changes when I change the weather.

Edited August 20, 20205 yr by Agrajag