On 4/5/2021 at 11:23 AM, mikealpha said:

Hm, I had several occasions where I got clear skies while current Metar (or ATIS) reported much differently. I am not really convinced. And it seems impossible to check why it goes wrong.

Mike

Remember that a METAR can be up to an hour old. 

On 4/5/2021 at 4:59 PM, rob0203 said:

Isn’t weather in real life dynamic, I mean a metar report can also be not spot on in real life. Weather can change really fast or maybe I am wrong?

100% correct. And ATIS is often just a beam shot straight up into the air. If it hits something it reports a ceiling. That might be the only cloud within 100 miles and it will report a ceiling of 5,000 feet, when in reality it is basically CAVU. Seen this plenty of times in real life. He ce the saying that if you want to know what the weather is, go to the airport. 

3 hours ago, mtr75 said:

Remember that a METAR can be up to an hour old. 

Yes, Ok. But what can you do, if neither the current QNH from the latest Internet METAR is correct for MSFS nor the one given by MSFS ATIS. Corresponding to that, then anything else given in the Metar is just guesswork. And no, that never happens in real life, at least not for me in Europe.

While that might be not a big deal for some small iron flying in MSFS, for serious airliner simulation it is not acceptable

Mike.

Edited April 10, 20215 yr by mikealpha

50 minutes ago, mikealpha said:

for serious airliner simulation it is not acceptable

In what sense?

For low IFR operations, it seems that one needs the latest QNH in the sim world, not the one in real life. As a VATSIM controller, I always provide the latest VATSIM QNH, but that isn't the one that individual pilots should actually use when flying a CAT II/III approach. They need to use the one provide by their sim platform/weather engine, whatever that is, so the one I provide is really just there to help with the immersion. Presumably (and I think I checked this), the MSFS ATIS does provide the QNH reported by the Rex WF data, so we're OK with that. What we don't want is to use a more "realistic" or current value that doesn't correspond to that which is depicted in the sim.

I recall that in P3D at least ActiveSky had an option to use the VATSIM METARs within a certain distance of the departure and arrival airports. That's a nice touch, but there's no guarantee that the controller clients have updated their weather on the same schedule as the pilot client sims. It's usually all pretty close to real world conditions in the vicinity of the airport, but in truth everyone's sim has a unique weather world in one respect or another. Yet, it all works. Usually.

26 minutes ago, jrw4 said:

Presumably (and I think I checked this), the MSFS ATIS does provide the QNH reported by the Rex WF data, so we're OK with that. What we don't want is to use a more "realistic" or current value that doesn't correspond to that which is depicted in the sim.

Yes, that is correct of course. But how can I get info which QNH actually got loaded in the Sim ? With Live Weather, not with Rex WF, as I don't have that. The QNH provided by the MSFS ATIS certainly not. When setting that, I often get wrong airport elevation, so that can't be it.

Of course for takeoff I can just set the QNH to match the correct elevation, but what can a user do just approaching the airport ?

That's what I basically meant with guess work and not suitable for airliner simulation.

Mike

Edited April 10, 20215 yr by mikealpha

LOL. This morning I get a thunderstorm at LFPO. Current metar is LFPO 110530Z 36011KT 4500 -RA BKN008 BKN013 05/04 Q1010 NOSIG. How on earth can you derive a thunderstorm from that ? Sigh ....

Mike

4 hours ago, mikealpha said:

LOL. This morning I get a thunderstorm at LFPO. Current metar is LFPO 110530Z 36011KT 4500 -RA BKN008 BKN013 05/04 Q1010 NOSIG. How on earth can you derive a thunderstorm from that ? Sigh ....

Mike

In real life or in sim?

22 minutes ago, Tomaz Drnovsek said:

In real life or in sim?

Thunderstorm in the sim. 

Later the destination METAR (LFMN) had 5km visibility and FEW005. What I got in the sim was heavy rain with next to no visibility, had to fly a go around and land at LFML. 

This is completely useless. 

Mike

7 hours ago, mikealpha said:

LOL. This morning I get a thunderstorm at LFPO. Current metar is LFPO 110530Z 36011KT 4500 -RA BKN008 BKN013 05/04 Q1010 NOSIG. How on earth can you derive a thunderstorm from that ? Sigh ....

Mike

Actually I have seen thunder and lightning in the midst of a snowstorm, but only once or twice. Still MSFS still needs refinement in that regard.

I have had a similar experience with unexpected weather on final approach, but it was in XPlane. If one catches the update cycle just right, the weather can be very different than that displayed, but that's just a limitation of the desktop experience.

2 hours ago, mikealpha said:

Thunderstorm in the sim. 

Later the destination METAR (LFMN) had 5km visibility and FEW005. What I got in the sim was heavy rain with next to no visibility, had to fly a go around and land at LFML. 

This is completely useless. 

Mike

Well, of course, MSFS does not use METAR info.

28 minutes ago, Tomaz Drnovsek said:

Well, of course, MSFS does not use METAR info.

Maybe so. I also had a look at the actual weather situation around Departure and Arrival Airport and there was not the slightest reason to predict the result in the sim. 

I have read there is some artificial intelligence involved in Live Weather. Well, the current result is much more artificial than intelligent. 

Mike

I had enough of live weather finally and got Weather Force. So far I'm quite pleased. METARS are actual, and remained actual during entire flight. Most weather transition except one went smooth and gradual. Overall it's much more consistent, it makes airliner flight plannable. At least more plannable than with the Live Weather phantasy artificial intelligence.

Mike

20 hours ago, mikealpha said:

...Overall it's much more consistent, it makes airliner flight plannable. At least more plannable than with the Live Weather phantasy artificial intelligence.

That's what I like about it. If I use Live Weather, the World Map screen will give me wind direction and speed and thats it. Once I get into the sim it could be different, and my ATIS has read the same line for months now so that doesn't help me. At least with REX I can see my actual METARS when doing my flight planning and it will inject that into the game and be pretty accurate visually. 

I thought today, well let's reinstall and use REX WF. I then used in in VR, well, looks great. But then: when flying it seemed to load weather for another area, and after that fps stayed at 2-5 fps.... still after a minute or so.... to, this is a no go alas.

5 minutes ago, Rene_Feijen said:

I thought today, well let's reinstall and use REX WF. I then used in in VR, well, looks great. But then: when flying it seemed to load weather for another area, and after that fps stayed at 2-5 fps.... still after a minute or so.... to, this is a no go alas.

In the manual they explain what to change if you are experiencing low FPS with weather updates. There are a couple different options you can try for how REX updates the weather. Some have more or less impact on FPS.

Edited April 12, 20215 yr by PWJT8D