Request Ideas for weather work around

[Sky Trail 13]

Hey everyone,

So... i want to plan my flights in Sim brief or any flight planning software using live weather. How do I achieve that using metoblue's weather in MSFS ?  Every time, I plan a flight the winds/clouds not to mention visibility are exact opposite to what is in the Metar. I am using mostly high altitude planes.. including A320N FBW. Am I being forced to buy aftermarket weather mods to get this like Active Sky in P3D ? or do any of you nice chaps here have a trick, or i  have to resort to checking metoblue app and running the numbers in Simbrief like I do for now ?

Cheers

Matt

[haskell 298]

Nothing actually works. There are third-party apps - REX Weather Force $$ and Unreal Weather (free) but neither are very accurate. The big issue is that it is impossible to set an accurate visibility in MSFS. Also, with no weather info available to 3rd parties (and MS saying it will not be) they have to rely on hacks. I have used both extensively and either is better than the rarely-even-close conditions generated by the built-in weather.

So try Unreal and see if it works for you. I don't recommend spending the money on REX. I did. It's not worth it. 

Unfortunately, MSFS may never be a suitable IFR platform. 

[sd_flyer 6,042]

4 hours ago, haskell said:

Nothing actually works. There are third-party apps - REX Weather Force $$ and Unreal Weather (free) but neither are very accurate. The big issue is that it is impossible to set an accurate visibility in MSFS. Also, with no weather info available to 3rd parties (and MS saying it will not be) they have to rely on hacks. I have used both extensively and either is better than the rarely-even-close conditions generated by the built-in weather.

So try Unreal and see if it works for you. I don't recommend spending the money on REX. I did. It's not worth it. 

Unfortunately, MSFS may never be a suitable IFR platform. 

Really?

 

[jrw4 624]

What is deemed suitability for IFR? With regard to IFR procedural training and practice, it seems that FS2020 is pretty good. The depiction of weather might not hew exactly to the METAR, but IRL that sometimes happens, too. The last thing anyone should do near IFR minimums is be surprised by the weather. 

[fppilot 4,371]

7 hours ago, haskell said:

So try Unreal and see if it works for you. I don't recommend spending the money on REX. I did. It's not worth it. 

I purchased and use REX Weatherforce and am generally happy with it.  It at least provides weather realistic for the day.  Accurate winds, surface and aloft, representative for the day cloud layers, spot on barometric pressure (altimeter), and some control over visibility.  Where the combination of MSFS and REX WF fall well short is MSFS ATIS/AWOS.  MSFS ATIS with REX WF reports Temp and Altimeter accurately, but Dewpoint, winds, and cloud layers reported are shockingly off base from the actual conditions encountered.  I have had nearly calm REX WF surface winds reported by MSFS ATIS as 60° off and over 50 knots.  ATIS will report something like temp of 8°C and a dewpoint of 13°C.  Can't happen.  ATIS often reports three cloud layers even on clear days.  It is the MSFS ATIS that is bizarre.

The most important weather element for me, especially in regard to flight planning and actual performance (time enroute and fuel burn) is winds aloft, and REX WF is providing very representative results.

Edited December 15, 2020 by fppilot

[snglecoil 1,828]

Live weather continues to show improvement from what I am seeing. The past several days winds, temp, and barometric pressure have been really, really close with the current METAR, as have generally the cloud depictions. Like Frank said, the weather broadcast (ATIS/AWOS/ASOS) continues to be an issue with dewpoint and cloud layers that bear no resemblance to reality or even what is depicted in the sim. 

The other issue that I am finding is that the barometric pressure readings jump significantly in flight. These jumps are ± 0.1" Hg (± 100' alt deviation) or more at a time. I'm assuming that this is happening as I cross into a new weather "cell" in the MSFS atmospheric model. Atmospheric pressure is always changing, of course. It doesn't, however, generally jump so suddenly and drastically. Makes handflying an instrument scan very interesting when all of the sudden you are 100+ feet off altitude 😜

 

[Sky Trail 13]

3 hours ago, jrw4 said:

What is deemed suitability for IFR? With regard to IFR procedural training and practice, it seems that FS2020 is pretty good. The depiction of weather might not hew exactly to the METAR, but IRL that sometimes happens, too. The last thing anyone should do near IFR minimums is be surprised by the weather. 

Sure that makes sense, I wouldn't want to be surprised by weather down to mins. But think the other way around,  how about on take off ? We are doing our due diligence planning for a full flight, and yet there is no good way to do the whole trip with accurate or semi accurate depiction of anything close to low Visibility/winds...

[Sky Trail 13]

1 hour ago, snglecoil said:

Live weather continues to show improvement from what I am seeing. The past several days winds, temp, and barometric pressure have been really, really close with the current METAR, as have generally the cloud depictions. Like Frank said, the weather broadcast (ATIS/AWOS/ASOS) continues to be an issue with dewpoint and cloud layers that bear no resemblance to reality or even what is depicted in the sim. 

The other issue that I am finding is that the barometric pressure readings jump significantly in flight. These jumps are ± 0.1" Hg (± 100' alt deviation) or more at a time. I'm assuming that this is happening as I cross into a new weather "cell" in the MSFS atmospheric model. Atmospheric pressure is always changing, of course. It doesn't, however, generally jump so suddenly and drastically. Makes handflying an instrument scan very interesting when all of the sudden you are 100+ feet off altitude 😜

 

Yeah, love to see those great improvements in Live weather. I am certain and I am OK with Meteoblue's depiction, as it's never going to be close to being live weather IRL. So going forward, without buying additional weather add-ons, Simbrief and other flight planning software (with live weather) is never going to be really productive as MSFS inside weather is different from current conditions.

 

[Sky Trail 13]

2 hours ago, fppilot said:

I purchased and use REX Weatherforce and am generally happy with it.  It at least provides weather realistic for the day.  Accurate winds, surface and aloft, representative for the day cloud layers, spot on barometric pressure (altimeter), and some control over visibility.  Where the combination of MSFS and REX WF fall well short is MSFS ATIS/AWOS.  MSFS ATIS with REX WF reports Temp and Altimeter accurately, but Dewpoint, winds, and cloud layers reported are shockingly off base from the actual conditions encountered.  I have had nearly calm REX WF surface winds reported by MSFS ATIS as 60° off and over 50 knots.  ATIS will report something like temp of 8°C and a dewpoint of 13°C.  Can't happen.  ATIS often reports three cloud layers even on clear days.  It is the MSFS ATIS that is bizarre.

The most important weather element for me, especially in regard to flight planning and actual performance (time enroute and fuel burn) is winds aloft, and REX WF is providing very representative results.

Been an Active sky user for years, have yet to use REX in MSFS. I have seen a few review flights, has it improved those transitional effects ? and low FPS which comes with it ? I am glad to hear the winds aloft is representative, is the rest not possible due to MSFS SDK ?

[haskell 298]

5 hours ago, sd_flyer said:

Really?

 

I don’t dispute that MSFS can generate IMC, but does it match real-world conditions? On numerous occasions I have flown into a field reporting minimums and, upon arrival, had scattered clouds and 10 mile visibility. 

My experience has been that it is inconsistent at best. 

[sd_flyer 6,042]

Just now, haskell said:

I don’t dispute that MSFS can generate IMC, but does it match real-world conditions? On numerous occasions I have flown into a field reporting minimums and, upon arrival, had scattered clouds and 10 mile visibility. 

My experience has been that it is inconsistent at best. 

REX Weather Force handles it pretty good. My biggest problem with that are stutters and drop of fps when it loads weather. In any case weather improvements are listed in development updates will see what gives in nearest future

[jrw4 624]

2 hours ago, Sky Trail said:

Sure that makes sense, I wouldn't want to be surprised by weather down to mins. But think the other way around,  how about on take off ? We are doing our due diligence planning for a full flight, and yet there is no good way to do the whole trip with accurate or semi accurate depiction of anything close to low Visibility/winds...

If I may paraphrase my instrument flight instructor, plan all flights as if your were doing approaches to minimums, etc., i.e., for the worst case scenario. That's especially true for winds aloft, the forecasts for which were really bad when I was flying, but probably improved now. Believe me, there's no forum to post in IRL when the weather is significantly worse than expected, but we need to be prepared to deal with the consequences in any case. There's no ESC button. This is why the effective IFR range of an aircraft is so much less than that of a full tank.

Best wishes to all for a happy holiday season and a healthy 2021.

[Jeff Nielsen 1,386]

11 minutes ago, jrw4 said:

If I may paraphrase my instrument flight instructor, plan all flights as if your were doing approaches to minimums, etc., i.e., for the worst case scenario. That's especially true for winds aloft, the forecasts for which were really bad when I was flying, but probably improved now. Believe me, there's no forum to post in IRL when the weather is significantly worse than expected, but we need to be prepared to deal with the consequences in any case. There's no ESC button. This is why the effective IFR range of an aircraft is so much less than that of a full tank.

Best wishes to all for a happy holiday season and a healthy 2021.

A forecast that doesn't verify is totally different from those conditions that just don't match.  They need to match.  The weather in the sim needs to match what's being pulled.  It's not that difficult of a concept.

Rapidly changing WX happens, and you can't expect a weather engine to necessarily catch that, but matching needs to happen regardless if it's right or wrong.   You can't use 'forecast' data as METAR or reporting station data.  It's that simple.

[jcomm 5,936]

AFAIK, proper visibility / RVR is not possible right now in MFS. There are workarounds, and the developers / ASOBO mentioned that in the future they'll further enhance their method for visibility simulation, namely the use of that so called "aerosol density", plus the types and base of cloud formations in order to be able to more closely match reported visibility conditions from RW METAR.

This is presently a limitation, and I really look forward for a fix.

OTOH, having the Meteoblue feeding aloft weather ( model based ) could be really good news for guys like me who have long been asking for features such as non-ISA temperature and pressure lapse rates to be simulated so that, for instance, operations in terms of precision approaches flown under cold or hot weather can simulate the associated effects ( i.e.: reported baro altitude bellow / above glide path ( GS ) )

Let's see what they're able to do with their weather engine, but for a start they really have to find a way to more consistently represent observations, because as it is today, it's still a bit erratic at times 😕

A better merge between METAR / SPECI and model data is welcomed, something like Aerowinx did for the NG update which also included a new weather model where weather tunnels around your route can be set based on operational flightplan weather summary.

Edited December 15, 2020 by jcomm

[jrw4 624]

1 hour ago, Jeff Nielsen said:

A forecast that doesn't verify is totally different from those conditions that just don't match.  They need to match.  The weather in the sim needs to match what's being pulled.  It's not that difficult of a concept.

Rapidly changing WX happens, and you can't expect a weather engine to necessarily catch that, but matching needs to happen regardless if it's right or wrong.   You can't use 'forecast' data as METAR or reporting station data.  It's that simple.

Not sure if I understand this.

I know of no desktop flight simulator matches real world conditions. XP tries, but its weather lags behind real world METARs by varying amounts. There are add-ons that try to do this, including those that interface in some way with FS2020. Similarly, AFAIK, because each of those add-ons bases its weather on discrete locations that  may be separated by significant distances (e.g., the oceans), they have to synthesize conditions between those locations in some way and make them blend smoothly both over space and time.

FS2020 appears to base its weather depiction on global models provided by Meteoblue. These should avoid abrupt transitions and provide  a smooth interface with realistic winds and temperatures aloft. It doesn't appear that this works as well as it should right now, but in principle it's as valid an approach as that based on METARs. The current FS2020 implementation has issues, but given time, it may prove to be brilliant.

For those who want sim weather to match METARs at specific locations, add-ons are currently available. Others would be pleased to have a somewhat idealized representation that also provides a more realistic global atmosphere. We can pay our money and make our choice.