Live weather info

[Jetman67 517]

Hi all

With the live weather inside differing from the asobo source how are you guys getting accurate weather details such as surface winds for arrival,winds aloft at various levels, QNH etc. Also given the fact that the atis is always wrong also. Would have been nice if the Sim showed the data it's using like active sky does, at the moment we are in the dark with weather so to speak

 

Thanks

Wayne

[fppilot 4,355]

I stupidly planned a flight from eastern Maryland to south central Indiana today.  Too much focused on trying a flight after the update, and in the G58 Baron.  Egg on my face.  My history as a meteorologist and I ignored looking at the weather.  Got caught up quickly in the remnants of Hurricane Sally.  In MSF it was not only there, it was pretty darn accurate.  Checked metars and pireps and have no complaints except against myself and my lack of focus.  Weather at KESN, my departure airport, was spot on including winds and baro pressure.  Cloud textures need improvement.  Spoiled by REX.  And I know clouds.

[Jetman67 517]

2 minutes ago, fppilot said:

I stupidly planned a flight from eastern Maryland to south central Indiana today.  Too much focused on trying a flight after the update, and in the G58 Baron.  Egg on my face.  My history as a meteorologist and I ignored looking at the weather.  Got caught up quickly in the remnants of Hurricane Sally.  In MSF it was not only there, it was pretty darn accurate.  Checked metars and pireps and have no complaints except against myself and my lack of focus.  Weather at KESN, my departure airport, was spot on including winds and baro pressure.  Cloud textures need improvement.  Spoiled by REX.  And I know clouds.

What realtime weather service are you using,it's a great Sim I'm enjoying it

[fppilot 4,355]

12 minutes ago, Jetman67 said:

What realtime weather service are you using,it's a great Sim I'm enjoying it

The live weather provided by the sim.

Edited September 18, 2020 by fppilot

[Jetman67 517]

1 minute ago, fppilot said:

The live weather provided by the sim.

Yeh but it doesn't tell you winds aloft, QNH and atis is not right, unless I'm missing something. If you were doing a vfr nav where would you get your winds and QNH

[fppilot 4,355]

20 minutes ago, Jetman67 said:

Yeh but it doesn't tell you winds aloft, QNH and atis is not right, unless I'm missing something. If you were doing a vfr nav where would you get your winds and QNH

My E6B.

 

[Jetman67 517]

1 minute ago, fppilot said:

My E6B.

 

I understand that and I know winds and weather are not always accurate but I would not head off on a nav with no forecast and just my E6B, that's effectively what we have to do on the Sim as the weather at least for me is no where near the real world forecast

[FlyingInACessna 656]

Did a flight from Atlanta to Greenville. Weather matched the METARs pretty well. Wind direction and speed was spot on (except I noticed the wind was lighter on the airport surface than 15 feet above the runway, which was weird). Temp was 1° off at ATL and 0° off at Greenville. Cloud layer reported 500 OVC but I popped out of the clouds around 1300 ft (though there were a few areas where the clouds extended lower - I just didn’t have to fly through them). I forgot to check whether the sim altimeter matched real world during this flight, but I think it was always within .04 in HG.

[Jetman67 517]

6 minutes ago, FlyingInACessna said:

Did a flight from Atlanta to Greenville. Weather matched the METARs pretty well. Wind direction and speed was spot on (except I noticed the wind was lighter on the airport surface than 15 feet above the runway, which was weird). Temp was 1° off at ATL and 0° off at Greenville. Cloud layer reported 500 OVC but I popped out of the clouds around 1300 ft (though there were a few areas where the clouds extended lower - I just didn’t have to fly through them). I forgot to check whether the sim altimeter matched real world during this flight, but I think it was always within .04 in HG.

What site did you use for your metar

[snglecoil 1,828]

9 minutes ago, FlyingInACessna said:

Cloud layer reported 500 OVC

The ATIS in the sim reported 500 overcast...using live weather?

[JRBarrett 3,050]

51 minutes ago, Jetman67 said:

Yeh but it doesn't tell you winds aloft, QNH and atis is not right, unless I'm missing something. If you were doing a vfr nav where would you get your winds and QNH

For winds aloft, I use Foreflight, which uses forecasted winds and temperatures from the NOAA GFS model for altitudes from sea level to 55000 feet for any location. (I use XMapsy to inject the current aircraft position into the Foreflight map).

MeteoBlue uses their own in-house forecast model, but now that upper winds are working, I have found that the two models appear to be very close in terms of direction, velocity and temperature at current aircraft position and altitude.

[JRBarrett 3,050]

37 minutes ago, FlyingInACessna said:

Did a flight from Atlanta to Greenville. Weather matched the METARs pretty well. Wind direction and speed was spot on (except I noticed the wind was lighter on the airport surface than 15 feet above the runway, which was weird).

That is because official airport wind readings are measured at a standard height of 10 meters (33 feet) above the ground. Whatever the wind speed might be at that height, it will always be less when measured closer to the ground at the same location due to surface friction. This effect is actually emulated in MSFS, and AFAIK, it is the first simulation engine to do that, though I think the effect might be a bit excessive.

Very roughly, the wind velocity at 2 meters above the surface (just over 6 feet) will be about 70 percent of the velocity at 10 meters.

Edited September 18, 2020 by JRBarrett

[Jetman67 517]

16 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

For winds aloft, I use Foreflight, which uses forecasted winds and temperatures from the NOAA GFS model for altitudes from sea level to 55000 feet for any location. (I use XMapsy to inject the current aircraft position into the Foreflight map).

MeteoBlue uses their own in-house forecast model, but now that upper winds are working, I have found that the two models appear to be very close in terms of direction, velocity and temperature at current aircraft position and altitude.

Thanks

[FlyingInACessna 656]

1 hour ago, JRBarrett said:

That is because official airport wind readings are measured at a standard height of 10 meters (33 feet) above the ground. Whatever the wind speed might be at that height, it will always be less when measured closer to the ground at the same location due to surface friction. This effect is actually emulated in MSFS, and AFAIK, it is the first simulation engine to do that, though I think the effect might be a bit excessive.

Very roughly, the wind velocity at 2 meters above the surface (just over 6 feet) will be about 70 percent of the velocity at 10 meters.

Good to know! I had heard something similar about that wind phenomenon, but I didn’t know what height winds were actually measured at. So guess winds are really accurate 🙂

[FlyingInACessna 656]

1 hour ago, snglecoil said:

The ATIS in the sim reported 500 overcast...using live weather?

No, the METAR for the airport reported 500 OVC. Didn't check the in-sim ATIS because I was doing a VATSIM flight.