29 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

It's not just the problems people are having, it's also the implementation of Live Weather. Unless I've missed something, there is no way to filter or cap the injected weather like there is in add-ons like ActiveSky.

I enjoy flying in real weather, but there are times of year in the places like the Pacific Northwest in Fall and early Winter when the wind speed is just too high for light GA planes and helicopters. And with an FSEconomy flight, I have to complete every flight with a landing, so I need a minimum cloud base for breakout on final.

I want the real weather injected clouds for immersion, and at least some of the wind, but also control over things like minimum cloud base and maximum wind speeds. I can get that with ActiveSky's granular control over injected weather, and I'd like to see that level of control in MSFS.

If that isn't Asobo's "vision" for injected weather, then it's one reason why we might need a 3rd party add-on to get the kind of injected weather some of us prefer. We don't all fly airliners that can mostly just ignore everything but the absolute worst weather conditions.

 

I completely agree. Next to historical weather I always relied heavily on these kind of settings in Active Sky for P3D. I also miss the option to set different weather for different areas.

I'm not worried about the current apparent bugs in the weather system of MSFS, because they will be fixed eventually. I don't really understand why people complain about the same known issues again and again event though MS / Asobo already announced that these issues are being adressed.

Much more important to me is that so far there is no clue at all that MS / Asobo even consider to implement features like historic weather and the settings / adjustments for the injected weather you mentioned. And from what Hifi commented here recently - regarding the SDK not providing anything for weather addons so far - there is only little hope to see ActiveSky for MSFS any time soon.

I wish MS / Asobo would at least give an outlook on what to expect from their weather system in the future. And - if they really want to go no further than the plain live weather - let 3PD like HIFI do the job with an appropriate SDK.

 

1 hour ago, JRBarrett said:

Based on the admittedly ambiguous statement Asobo made about live weather in that Q&A, I think the ultimate goal for MSFS live weather is to blend forecasted weather with r/w METAR data for airport surface winds at least.

From the standpoint of flying online on networks like VATSIM, having the same surface winds as controllers, and other online pilots using METAR-based weather injection (in sims like FSX/P3D/XP) is quite important. The other weather parameters might still come from the model in MSFS. Having the same barometric pressure as other non-MSFS clients is less important. As long as an MSFS client syncs their aircraft altimeter to the current pressure provided by live weather by hitting the “B” key, the Mode C altitude that a Vatsim controller sees for the aircraft should be correct.

A hybrid system will definitely be better than a strictly forecasted way of doing it as they do now. I imagine this winter will show how bad this way of doing things will actually play out. Cold fronts for example. Typically models will forecast fronts sweeping across the US. Many times the timing will be off on how fast the front moves through. In the Southeast US for example winds will typically blow hard from the south, southeast with an approaching front and then switch to a northerly component after the front moves through. Imagine how that will play out on Vatsim. Those on P3D will have at the most 1 hour old METAR from HiFi while those on MSFS will have God knows how old data on when Metoblue forecasted the front to move through.

 

MCO Approach (5 aircraft in sequence for 36L): Wind 330/18, expect 36L. 

Pilot #6: ummm, I am showing 170/22, would like 18R...

MCO Approach: Logs off 

Edited September 9, 20205 yr by B777ER

5 hours ago, ahsmatt7 said:

You must not have used p3d....

Unless I'm missing something, P3D never had a live wx option its menus.  Unlike MSFS, and unlike FSX.  

When they go to the trouble of putting it in their menu/options, a person kinda expects it to be there, and function.

36 minutes ago, Mace said:

Unless I'm missing something, P3D never had a live wx option its menus.  Unlike MSFS, and unlike FSX.  

When they go to the trouble of putting it in their menu/options, a person kinda expects it to be there, and function.

That's kind of my point ....p3d never had the option for it. 

I get what youre saying but it's not like it's not a step in the right direction.

3 hours ago, B777ER said:

A hybrid system will definitely be better than a strictly forecasted way of doing it as they do now.

It's one thing if the forecast is for Darwin, Australia in September. But most of the people that bought MSFS are likely to be focusing their flying in NA and Europe, where forecasts can be hit or miss. The problem with the MSFS weather is not that Asobo used forecasts. It's advertising the weather as being "live". Four key components were drastically oversold by the developers: live weather, live traffic, the navigation database and ATC. Again, that's acceptable if the developer provides an SDK to allow third parties to improve the base app. But Asobo didn't. I've spent hours testing and coming to the same conclusion that the folks at AIG did independently, that it's going to take 6-12 months to produce decent AI traffic in MSFS:

https://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index.php?topic=34391.msg343115#msg343115

The lack of weather functions in the MSFS SDK  has already been pointed out by HiFi, so they aren't even giving a timeframe for an weather injection utility for MSFS. The ATC really suffers from inaccurate terminology and just general gaffes, but without Speech Recognition, it's a ten year old mess. But my real disappointment is that the navigation database is so inaccurate, not to mention that it doesn't follow an AIRAC release, as best as anyone can tell. 

None of these issues has anything to do with the fact that MSFS is fun to fly with and sightsee, which appears to be all that its user base cares about.

1 hour ago, jabloomf1230 said:

It's one thing if the forecast is for Darwin, Australia in September. But most of the people that bought MSFS are likely to be focusing their flying in NA and Europe, where forecasts can be hit or miss. The problem with the MSFS weather is not that Asobo used forecasts. It's advertising the weather as being "live". Four key components were drastically oversold by the developers: live weather, live traffic, the navigation database and ATC. Again, that's acceptable if the developer provides an SDK to allow third parties to improve the base app. But Asobo didn't. I've spent hours testing and coming to the same conclusion that the folks at AIG did independently, that it's going to take 6-12 months to produce decent AI traffic in MSFS:

https://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index.php?topic=34391.msg343115#msg343115

The lack of weather functions in the MSFS SDK  has already been pointed out by HiFi, so they aren't even giving a timeframe for an weather injection utility for MSFS. The ATC really suffers from inaccurate terminology and just general gaffes, but without Speech Recognition, it's a ten year old mess. But my real disappointment is that the navigation database is so inaccurate, not to mention that it doesn't follow an AIRAC release, as best as anyone can tell. 

None of these issues has anything to do with the fact that MSFS is fun to fly with and sightsee, which appears to be all that its user base cares about.

Concur with everything you said. They sold us on "live weather" when in fact, even after they fix the weather issues the software currently has, it will still be hours old "forecasted" weather, nothing "live" about it. If people say it looks just like it should for where they are, it is simply because the forecasted weather happens to be close to what actually panned out. Many many times, that will not be the case. They really went about the weather injection all wrong. 

Edited September 9, 20205 yr by B777ER

I'm glad I stumbled upon this thread. Searching through google never yields any actual insight into the problems I'm experiencing.

I have yet to experience anything resembling live weather in the sim. Very often the pressure is wrong, visibility is wrong, winds are wrong, and cloud coverage is wrong. Probably most noticeable, however, is the winds aloft. I only ever seem to get winds from the south/south west at 1-3 knots. Looking at winds aloft reports from nearby airports indicates this is incredibly inaccurate. This occurs regardless of where I'm flying in the US.

The inaccurate data (among a myriad of other issues with G1000 and taxiway markings that are random at the very best) makes flying with confidence in an online ATC nearly impossible, and I may have to stick to X-Plane 11 for that, which is a shame.