Weather question, how often is it correct if ever??

[Shayne 3]

I have done like 30 flights and I have had the live weather work only twice and that was because there= was no clouds and it got the wind correct.

We had 40 plus mph wind for two days in Southern California and all I could get was wind from the wrong direction and 10 MPH with no gusts.

I am using live weather from the start and not changing anything after that, am I doing something wrong or is it that inaccurate.

Crazy with all the talk and hype, I hope its fixed soon as that is a big part of flying.

[jrw4 624]

Did you check the Meteoblue web site map to see what it was showing? As I understand how MSFS weather works, it pulls the local weather from the Meteoblue global model. For example, here's the current Meteoblue weather for Florida:

https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/webmap/beta/witham-field_united-states-of-america_4178594#coords=5.62/27.677/-84.61&map=wind~hourly~auto~10 m above gnd~none

It's showing that the wind at my nearest airport (KSUA) is from a bit south of east around 8-10 kts, and here's the most recent METAR:

KSUA 281247Z 11006KT 7SM SCT016 BKN030 27/23 A3008

The temperature and pressure are pretty much spot on if I compare the METAR to the value displayed on the corresponding maps (which can be selected from the menu depicted at the right of the map).

There are both freeware and payware utilities for injecting METAR-based weather into MSFS, which seem to work fine, although they have to provide a way to "smooth" transitions between reports at different airports, as well as linking to  high level winds, etc. Some folks want the smoothness of the current model, others want their weather to correspond to the METARs. We do have a choice.

Best wishes.

 

[chapstick 2,757]

Live Weather is rarely live.

[wthomas33065 994]

47 minutes ago, jrw4 said:

There are both freeware and payware utilities for injecting METAR-based weather into MSFS, which seem to work fine, although they have to provide a way to "smooth" transitions between reports at different airports, as well as linking to  high level winds, etc. Some folks want the smoothness of the current model, others want their weather to correspond to the METARs. We do have a choice.

Yes.  the unreal weather app is freeware and works off of METAR's but won't provide Winds Aloft data so it's randomized.  It's not as smooth as the current model, but you can do quite a bit of tweaking to make the transitions smoother if you desire, there is a section in the blog specifically for this.

I use it all the time as an alternative and I have been happy.  It's like the FSX 15 minute "live weather" update setting on steroids.  Not perfect, but it will do until the in-game engine gets rid of the excess thunderstorms.

Edited October 28, 2020 by wthomas33065

[kerosene31 349]

It is just super inconsistent.  Sometimes it works quite well, other times it is lagging many hours behind, still other times it seems fairly wrong.  One thing I notice for sure is if you see a real weather event and try to catch it in sim, the sim is often lagging way behind.  A big cold front went by my house, so I wanted a good 2 hours and tried my local airport, and the front was rendered perfectly, but it was still many miles west of me.  It was actually very "accurate" in a way, just the timing was way wrong.  

One thing I notice is that the sim seems to try and take severe conditions and "make them nicer" if that makes sense?  It is like the sim is trying to give you good flying weather over trying to render the real (awful) conditions.  Finding any kind of bad weather seems to be harder than it should be?  Looking at a weather map of the US I pick places that should be terrible, but the weather seems off.  

 

Edited October 28, 2020 by kerosene31

[leprechaunlive 1,852]

Always right, with the mod unreal weather. Metar based. Transitions beetween stations not the smoothest, but good

[Jeeeno 314]

I would say overall 50/50. Inconsitent

[177B 730]

Seems to work most of the time for me anyway. Both in the Americas and Europe.

95 hrs flying most in real wx and time.

[wthomas33065 994]

16 minutes ago, leprechaunlive said:

Always right, with the mod unreal weather. Metar based. Transitions beetween stations not the smoothest, but good

Yeah.  I've tweaked mine so that the weather_transition_step_seconds:  0.05,   My metar_polling_frequency_minutes: 10 and weather_transition_span_seconds: 300

The lower transition step gives smoother results for the cloud changes.  The other two settings help keep the weather from changing too fast.  The transition period only lasts for 5 minutes, and then I stay at the new METAR for 5 minutes before the next change. 

This allows for 50% of my flying to be in a stable weather state.  In fact at this setting I rarely notice the transitions at all. 

Great APP.   

[leprechaunlive 1,852]

27 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

Yeah.  I've tweaked mine so that the weather_transition_step_seconds:  0.05,   My metar_polling_frequency_minutes: 10 and weather_transition_span_seconds: 300

The lower transition step gives smoother results for the cloud changes.  The other two settings help keep the weather from changing too fast.  The transition period only lasts for 5 minutes, and then I stay at the new METAR for 5 minutes before the next change. 

This allows for 50% of my flying to be in a stable weather state.  In fact at this setting I rarely notice the transitions at all. 

Great APP.   

Exactly the same setup here but metar every 10 minutes as i usually fly low and slow 🙂

[wthomas33065 994]

25 minutes ago, leprechaunlive said:

Exactly the same setup here but metar every 10 minutes as i usually fly low and slow 🙂

Yeah, I METAR every 10 minutes as well.  But I only transition for 5 minutes so I can stay at the new METAR for 5 minutes before the next METAR.

[Tom_L 533]

The third-most voted topic for the upcoming Developers Q&A is "Live weather questions". Let's see if they dig into it....

[wthomas33065 994]

There's a very real possibility that this could be a server side issue.  We don't see the presets incorrectly placing lightning where it shouldn't.  So it's quite possible that garbage in equals garbage out.

Previously everyone was complaining that Live Weather never produced thunderstorms, now it produces too many.  We're all assuming this is a bug within the client side of the sim.  But it's equally possible that whatever data is being provided server side could also be the culprit.  I would hope that if it WERE server side, they could go ahead and just fix it without needing to release an update.  

[JRBarrett 3,070]

22 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

There's a very real possibility that this could be a server side issue.  We don't see the presets incorrectly placing lightning where it shouldn't.  So it's quite possible that garbage in equals garbage out.

Previously everyone was complaining that Live Weather never produced thunderstorms, now it produces too many.  We're all assuming this is a bug within the client side of the sim.  But it's equally possible that whatever data is being provided server side could also be the culprit.  I would hope that if it WERE server side, they could go ahead and just fix it without needing to release an update.  

I’m pretty sure it is client-side. The excessive lightning problem started with the advent of patch 3, and has existed ever since.

In MSFS, The lightning does not (necessarily) occur in association with large cumulonimbus clouds. ANY clouds can generate lightning - even very small fair-weather cumulus. I am assuming that some subroutine client side is looking at the incoming Live Weather data, and deciding to create lightning based on some combination of temperature and moisture. 
 

My guess is that they have incorrectly associated lightning with any form of cumulus cloud (CU), instead of associating it only with cumulonimbus (CB).