Microsoft has satellites or maybe other partners, they could do the more exact cloud´s shape that you have on top of you in the reality, that would be possible and not complicated nowadays, as you simulate the real world around you, why not real clouds and weather?

. It is a logical and easy next step forward in simulation.

Exactly what i was afraid of pre-release. With all honesty i wish REX best of luck with their product. Most likely i wont be a customer as i believe its only right that in such a new product that claim to be game-changer and got a service life of 10 years (we are barely one month from release),  Asobo will stand by it and make it better, so that we wont need 3rd party to make a core feature working correctly. If MS/Asobo got some under the table deal with REX regarding this, its very bad...

Sorry REX its nothing personal but more of a general opinion.

Finding myself surprisingly skeptical about this, having been a big fan of REX in my FSX days. 

Is metar really a better solution for lower level bush / GA flying away from small / rural airports? Also will it interfere with MSFS’ local airflow around buildings and topography?

Happy to be proved wrong, but see no real reason to be excited about this yet.

5 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

Happy to be proved wrong, but see no real reason to be excited about this yet.

Don't worry. Their marketing, will change your mind 😉

 

One of the good things about REX - besides the great customer service - is their modern UI - in contrast to Active Sky's crappy interface which seems to be stuck in the 1990s and looks thoroughly amateurish.

Ditto for their respective websites. 

Edited September 16, 20205 yr by Ricardo41

7 hours ago, rstough said:

Metar's is about as accurate as you can get.  It is reported data directly from a human or an automated station. 

Sorta. 

Let me preface this by saying that I am a long-time user of your products, and I think SkyForce and EnvironmentForce are absolutely superb, and this is not a commentary on the upcoming product. But ASOS/AWOS reporting stations have their limitations, as any pilot really should know. They have what is called a ceilometer, which is essentially a laser beam [insert Dr. Evil image here] which, generally speaking is shot straight up into the sky. If it hits something like a cloud or fog, it reports it. If it doesn't hit anything it reports "sky clear," whereas oftentimes in reality there is a cloud layer, be it scattered, broken or otherwise. Just last week I was driving to the airport and listening to the ASOS, and while it said "sky clear," there was a broken cloud layer at about 4,000 feet AGL for as far as the eye could see.

But generally speaking I'm sure you guys are aware of the limitations, and on the whole, METARs are a good source of weather information. I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with.  

Edited September 16, 20205 yr by mtr75

I actually see a market for a weather engine and cloud textures for MSFS. I am currently running MSFS on a PC with sub-minimum specs. It runs OK on medium settings, but only when I turn off weather and clouds. I will update my system at some point, but even then I would expect that volumetric clouds and weather simulation will use a big chunk of GPU/CPU performance. Once we all start to use more complex addon airplanes, ground crew simulations etc, even a good PC may struggle to run MSFS smoothly. A simplified yet accurate weather depiction may then be a welcome compromise for some.

Peter

Three things 3d party developers all took advantage of in previous versions of Flight Simulator were Weather, AI Traffic and ATC, it remains to be seen how much further development Asobo will implement. Do they want to improve these to a point there are no need for 3d party developers to improve them. In the future would Asobo create addons for extending the realism of the sim

Right now its way to early to be throwing cash into addons 

Historical weather what we really need, is on a waiting list for the updates of this new product. I might purchase it when that is ready.

2 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

Are you guys planning to release a MSFS version of Texture Direct/Soft Clouds?

MSFS doesn't use sprites. 

Im pretty happy with MSF native weather engine. I just need to to be in line with metar reports. I'm sorry, but some companies make money because previous sims had big gaping holes in them that SOMEBODY needed to fill. I know Asobo is very attentative towards TPD so they dont ruin the eco-system, but I wouldn't want Asobo to deliberately make holes in their product so TPD can make a buck. That is how "free to play" cashcows operate: they make the game, then take away stuff that they sell to you in the store.

What I see with MSFS is a change in paradigms when it comes to weather: In the old days we had Metars and developers built the weather around them. Now we have weather and are in need for Metars. But I am pretty sure there is an interface within MSFS that maybe is not documented as of now. But on the flight planning page you can see that the sim fetches some information from within its systems as at least the wind on the ground is shown to determine the departure runway. I'm pretty sure the other information is there as well, it just needs to be extracted. And imho that is clearly the preferred way. Yes, the weather ist not exactly as I can see out of my window, but mostly it resembles the conditions quite well. And consider this: You can have a solid overcast in several layers and pretty bad visibilty while your Metar reads CAVOK simply because only clouds below 5000 ft. or below the MSA are reported and a visibility of 11km against the sun is pretty bad IRL. Programs based on Metars can't interpret such conditions.

So how will METAR generated weather work with the MSFS model depicted WX?  Will there now be sudden shifts due to disagreement between the two??  Weather Force has been in development for P3D for several years and was never released.  It is still not even clear what the product even is because there was a WX engine included with SkyForce (that never worked correctly).  REX  has claimed you would need 'Weather Force' to fix the WX engine in SkyForce which would stop the sudden WX changes from occurring among many other issues.  Now they claim they invented Weather Force after they got the MSFS Alpha build??  Look at the before and after shots..one of the Metar's shows 5 miles visibility and the REX shot still shows unlimited visibility.  What is the point here??  I would like to hear from MS whether we will ever be able to set visibility in this sim.  A big fail IMO for something that is supposed to be a flight sim.  If an addon cannot do this either than I fail to see the point of buying an addon just to have some themes....which is what this product sounds like it will really be....a theme generator.

Edited September 16, 20205 yr by Flic1

8 hours ago, MarcG said:

Once Asobo fix the weather issues and improve upon it in the future then i don't really see the need for a separate App, especially if that app charges X amount a month or one off payment. Each to their own of course and I'll keep an eye on it, but not overly fussed.

Depends on how long you are willing to wait. While they may fix their current version of "live" weather, it will still not be accurate until they incorporate METAR data sources. They are strictly using forecasted weather model data which lends itself to many inconsistencies in it's depiction. 

27 minutes ago, Flic1 said:

So how will METAR generated weather work with the MSFS model depicted WX?  Will there now be sudden shifts due to disagreement between the two??  Weather Force has been in development for P3D for several years and was never released.  It is still not even clear what the product even is because there was a WX engine included with SkyForce (that never worked correctly).  REX  has claimed you would need 'Weather Force' to fix the WX engine in SkyForce which would stop the sudden WX changes from occurring among many other issues.  Now they claim they invented Weather Force after they got the MSFS Alpha build??  Look at the before and after shots..one of the Metar's shows 5 miles visibility and the REX shot still shows unlimited visibility.  What is the point here??  I would like to hear from MS whether we will ever be able to set visibility in this sim.  A big fail IMO for something that is supposed to be a flight sim.  If an addon cannot do this either than I fail to see the point of buying an addon just to have some themes....which is what this product sounds like it will really be....a theme generator.

I would wait until the product is released until you make a serious judgement.

Edited September 16, 20205 yr by fs1