MSFS LIVE Weather: is there an app that can read/search it?

[hangar 661]

Yea Mike...crazy, isn't it?

As a little side note here - just tried the freeware weather app (Unreal Wx)...and as far as my first attempt is concerned, this time the built in live weather was much more correct and inline with the real world metar than the Unreal Weather was...oh man, so frustrating. You're left not knowing when I should use one or the other, hehe. Think I'll take a rest for a couple hours 🙂

[MrSpeaker 122]

Going to wait for Hifi to figure this stuff out. They are the best of the best in my opinion. 

[marsman2020 1,310]

4 hours ago, Mike S KPDX said:

MS has stated that this access is 'not planned' and therefore will have to be fully overwritten by third parties.

This item was poorly worded and unclear (like many Q&A items where the intent of the question is not clear) and no one has any idea what the "not planned" means.

Personally I think it means "not planned" to provide features for 3DP to implement other weather engines (they will need to hack). 

I don't think anyone ever said they want to make life difficult for the pilots using the MS weather engine on purpose.....

Edited April 11, 2021 by marsman2020

[MattNischan 3,823]

3 minutes ago, marsman2020 said:

Personally I think it means "not planned" to provide features for 3DP to implement other weather engines (they will need to hack). 

This is correct. Jörg has mentioned quite emphatically in a couple dev Q/As that they do not intend to open the weather API to make weather injection from the outside a 1st class citizen. They strongly believe that getting live weather correct is a core sim issue, and as such, as Martial said in the last dev Q/A there is a large weather refactor coming that will address a number of the shortcomings as far as local accuracy goes.

However, _getting_ the current conditions (in a granular way) is not intended to be locked down. That being said, if the accuracy improves, then real METARs should be relatively as close as they are in real life (which is to say, most of the time pretty close and occasionally not very close at all).

-Matt

[hangar 661]

4 hours ago, MattNischan said:

However, _getting_ the current conditions (in a granular way) is not intended to be locked down

Interesting (truly)...

...but if it's going to take another 8 months (near end of year I heard?) that means approx 1.5 years from it's initial release for MS/Asobo to fix the ATIS reports in-game and also for us to just be able to pull the weather conditions from within the sim to a 3rd party reporting app like littlenavmap (among others). Just does not make sense. Regardless of re-writing the engine, we should have had the ATIS fixed and weather reporting hooks provided within the first month or 2...ok even 3...alright, alright...covid slowing you down some? how bout 4 months...5 then?...what were they doing about it in month 6 then?...and it's 3 months later than that right now. Nope, doesn't make much sense, to me. They have waited much too long for such a vital part of a flight "sim". I mean heck...it's the weather and ATIS, which is basically 50% of aviation, geez.

Edited April 12, 2021 by hangar

[jarmstro 2,405]

23 hours ago, marsman2020 said:

It's not possible.  The sim does not allow the data to be queried. 

But then where does the A320nx and WT CJ4 get their METAR data from? You can query and view it in the FMS's. Do they not get the data from the sim? Or is it from an external source? It seems to exactly match what you see.

Edited April 12, 2021 by jarmstro

[marsman2020 1,310]

11 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

But then where does the A320nx and WT CJ4 get their METAR data from? You can query and view it in the FMS's. Do they not get the data from the sim? Or is it from an external source? It seems to exactly match what you see.

FlyByWire runs their own API on a webserver which both aircraft use.

From the CJ4 source code for 'CJ4_FMC_DatalinkMain.js':

let _atisOrg;
let rcvdATIS = new Array();
let atisURL = `https://api.flybywiresim.com/atis/`; // Use FBW's API for all ATIS requests until a better solution can be found
let tafURL = `https://api.flybywiresim.com/taf/`; // self explanatory
let metarURL = `https://api.flybywiresim.com/metar/`; // also self explanatory

So not provided by the sim.  They created their own workaround.

The GNS530 and GTN750 mods also use an external web api token to get the data from another source.

[jarmstro 2,405]

11 minutes ago, marsman2020 said:

FlyByWire runs their own API on a webserver which both aircraft use.

From the CJ4 source code for 'CJ4_FMC_DatalinkMain.js':

let _atisOrg;
let rcvdATIS = new Array();
let atisURL = `https://api.flybywiresim.com/atis/`; // Use FBW's API for all ATIS requests until a better solution can be found
let tafURL = `https://api.flybywiresim.com/taf/`; // self explanatory
let metarURL = `https://api.flybywiresim.com/metar/`; // also self explanatory

So not provided by the sim.  They created their own workaround.

The GNS530 and GTN750 mods also use an external web api token to get the data from another source.

Ah. Thanks for the information.

[vbazillio 2,393]

16 hours ago, jrw4 said:

You might want to try the Rex Weather Force app. It links the MSFS weather to real-time METAR data and should give you reasonable fidelity to real world weather.

... I did as well as the free Unreal Weather. But it doesn't fit my VFR expectations. Even if sometimes the real METAR doesn't match perfectly MSFS Weather, the capability of MSFS to have an global situation with several different conditions at 360 degrees is a must. I did a long test only in French and decided to continue with MSFS embedded weather engine. METAR only based weather engine relies on the METAR coverage and lack of great transition as well as the capability to display, if needed, different weather conditions at 360 degrees.

To illustrate how MSFS can be great in replicating the real weather, here an example. It was yesterday, approaching Nantes (LFRS) southbound. A line of rain "blocked" my route. Perfect opportunity, to train my VFR skill. When MSFS reaches this level of fidelity, as a VFR pilot, I'm blessed

Edited April 12, 2021 by vbazillio

[regis9 4,034]

I use the built in MSFS most of the time as it will generally now depict weather close enough to METARs for my purposes and as noted above, it’s the only option the current depicts different weather systems in a 360 degree view.

I keep Rex in reserve in case I come across something really weird that prevents me from doing what I want to do (ie very low clouds/visibility when it should be vfr), but my need to do so has become more and more rare. 

I have been a vocal critic of the weather accuracy but it has certainly improved a lot since launch, hopefully there’s still more to come.