Weather in MFS...

We were told on one of the features videos about cooperation with 3ps that Meteoblue is the feed for weather in MFS.

At a first glance I thought MS / ASOBO had decided to somehow take control of the weather in MFS's environment, creating a feature full built in system. Apparently this is not, at least for now, the case...

We can glance at the Globe and see patches of cloud systems, or use the filters to choose winds and other sorts of data, but afaik it is mostly that. Cloud coverage looks great in MFS, and that part of the data assimilation and display / physics model feed is indeed done by MFS's weather engine, but either because they didn't yet found the time to complete it, or simply because it's supposed to be handed to freeware / payware devs, truth is

we lack a proper blend between forecasts and observation ( METAR ), and while the wind flows around montainous or city areas is indeed turbulent and / or variable due to the associated effects, truth is

I haven't seen thermals modeled, or proper definition of prevailing visibility, even air density due to temperature appears to lack some detail, and it would be great to have T and Td, etc...

On the Aircraft Environment Data described in the SDK docs, and although the "Environment / Weather" section of the docs is still "TODO", there are the usual variables that allow for proper tuning of

AIRCRAFT WIND X,Y,Z; AMBIENT DENSITY;... AMBIENT WIND X,Y,Z; ...

IMO this is where the usual, and eventually new players can contribute to create a much more complex and thrilling environment to fly in MFS.

Instead of "losing" their time and resources tweaking the cloud / visibility depiction which is now astoundingly driven by MFS's simulation engine, these 3pds can focus on details and do their best to

profit from the new GRIB / SIGMET / METAR... source that Meteoblue appears to be.

I see promising times ahead regarding weather modeling and fine tuning in MFS 🙂

Edited August 28, 20205 yr by jcomm