Real world weather not representative of local conditions.

[highflyer2020 607]

2 hours ago, fppilot said:

This is more a rhetorical queston.  Do you/did you ever fly in FSX, P3D or XP with Active Sky, REX, or FSGRW?

I don't follow where you are going with this...but to answer that q I used to use Active Sky for FSX .

[Mike S KPDX 597]

3 hours ago, loge said:

As a "casual" and fairly new simmer (I played FSX and early P3D versions a few years ago, but only really got back into it with MSFS), I'm interested to understand why many people consider accurate (as opposed to realistic / forecast) RW weather - in particular, closely matching the RW METAR at particular airports - to be a very important feature.  Is it because you fly on Vatsim, or use flight planning tools that use RW METARs as their weather inputs, or simply that you fly in your local area and like the weather to look the same as out of the window?

Just trying to understand more about how the more "serious" simmers on here fly using RW.  From my limited viewpoint, I think the weather depiction is absolutely stunning in MSFS - far more "realistic" looking than FSX with weather addons, which had abrupt weather transitions if I remember correctly - and it generally more-or-less matches what I see in Little Navmap (I don't use any other planning tools), if not quite accurate.  But appreciate there are other viewpoints, as this topic is often discussed.

I cant speak for others, but for me this is a frustration.  I am not overly concerned about if the real world wx matches what the sim is showing.  My frustration is that as a player I can not query the wx.  I cant program the airliner for destination wx performance, active runway, ect.  I should be able to sit in the aircraft in San Francisco and query the 'in sim' metar at Los Angeles - but you cant.  I cant determine in the sim where there may be IFR conditions.  I cant get high altitude winds.  There is an entire list of things that is just closed for the user.  The only resource we have for this data then is real world info - which often will not match.  For me it is in the planning aspect, not necessarily matching real life.

The down side is that this is not planned to be addressed by Asobo and they have stated that.

[jrw4 623]

And I used Active Sky in FSX and P3D, along with their cloud art product. Used together, these were very nice, but so is the MSFS default, but maybe in a different way. As far as I can tell, MSFS is unique in the way it can depict synoptic weather phenomena, but honestly I don't recall AS in that regard.

[ryanbatc 12,775]

2 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

One of the issues is live weather only updates once a day in game.

There is a work around to get it to pull more current weather:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/bug-logged-live-weather-not-accurate-give-this-trick-a-try/397005/53

 

 

Thats pretty much what a lot of us have been thinking...  

At least Asobo is looking at it.

To the OP, I use Unreal weather for departure that way it's METAR based and quite accurate...then I just switch to in sim LIVE on climbout.  I'll try it on approach but sometimes it'll grab weather from the nearest airport and it may be vastly different than the destination.

[Gazzareth 808]

1 minute ago, Mike S KPDX said:

I cant speak for others, but for me this is a frustration.  I am not overly concerned about if the real world wx matches what the sim is showing.  My frustration is that as a player I can not query the wx.  I cant program the airliner for destination wx performance, active runway, ect.  I should be able to sit in the aircraft in San Francisco and query the 'in sim' metar at Los Angeles - but you cant.  I cant determine in the sim where there may be IFR conditions.  I cant get high altitude winds.  There is an entire list of things that is just closed for the user.  The only resource we have for this data then is real world info - which often will not match.  For me it is in the planning aspect, not necessarily matching real life.

The down side is that this is not planned to be addressed by Asobo and they have stated that.

I was just about to post exactly the same thing, even FS ATIS seems wrong, let alone 3rd party ATC that is left to query RW.

Even if it exported a snapshot you could use for planning/ATC etc it would be a massive improvement.

Definitely miss the functionality of ActiveSky, but don't think we will be seeing that in the sim anytime soon....

All that said, absolutely love the depiction of the weather. Just getting the information out and hopefully making it editable...

 

G

[jrw4 623]

Several payware and freeware aircraft include METAR reports on their respective computer display units. These include the CRJ, CJ4, and FBW A320 (I think). There is at least one METAR reporting add-on

https://www.msfsaddon.com/2020/12/msfs2020-metar-viewer-app-v10.html

To the extent that the MSFS weather parameters other than sky conditions reflect real world conditions, I just use an iPhone app that displays METARs at those airports. 

As for the in-sim ATC and ATIS reports, good luck. I have never used these figuring that they would be as unrealistic as those in other flight sim products.

 

[RandallR 444]

I believe the latest WT g3000 mod also has this capability, therefore it would be available in the TBM.  Also, the metar's accuracy would be dependent on how old it was.

I still use an old free application that was designed for the Terminal Reality Fly! series -  it provides me with current metar reports (if available) from around the world through the NOAA.  I also use this site: https://metarreader.com/.

I have found that the Live real time weather module of FS2020 is fairly accurate, matching the metar winds and other attributes a high percentage of the time.  Now, the ATC has a tendency to ignore winds when assigning runways, so you need to use your head.  🙂

[ryanbatc 12,775]

9 hours ago, loge said:

As a "casual" and fairly new simmer (I played FSX and early P3D versions a few years ago, but only really got back into it with MSFS), I'm interested to understand why many people consider accurate (as opposed to realistic / forecast) RW weather - in particular, closely matching the RW METAR at particular airports - to be a very important feature.  Is it because you fly on Vatsim, or use flight planning tools that use RW METARs as their weather inputs, or simply that you fly in your local area and like the weather to look the same as out of the window?

 

Hi!  I'm a long time simmer and real world pilot of small aircraft.  Matching metars (or pretty dang close) is honestly a big part of where I choose to fly.  I like the adventure of flying a short route and maybe seeing MVFR conditions (that's like cloudy or maybe less than 10 mi vis but good okay for VFR flight) - and I want to attempt to remain clear of those clouds and to be realistic as possible while doing it.  I'll look at Skyvector's METAR feature to get a broad picture of where the weather might be MVFR (or IFR/LIFR if I want to try approaches to minimums).  In previous sims like P3D with third party products such as Active Sky....the METARs matched the airport very well.... and so if the ceiling said OVC008 I knew I needed to find an approach that would allow for 800 ft minimums or greater...that's the fun of it.  

In this screenshot (sorry flickr not working but look at KORD in Skyvector) I'm looking at the Chicago area...might be fun to shoot some approaches at various satellite airports - and I can expect MVFR weather (roughly ceilings lower than 3000 ft agl).  I'll look at the "red" dots for IFR flight.  And in my experience....the conditions at those airports will be very close to the METAR when I fly there.  Again, BKN007 is 700 ft ceiling with broken clouds...so I'll need an instrument approach.

In MSFS....I might get there and it may be cloudy but maybe the cloud ceiling is at 3000 ft AGL...so blah!  That's annoying I was hoping to be stuck in the clouds until approx 700 ft.  That's where MSFS live weather isn't so live.  And this is why I desire accurate METARs. 

 

 

[JRBarrett 3,034]

8 hours ago, cavaricooper said:

Jim-

Respectfully, I must disagree. 

The weather I encounter often does not reflect NOAA METAR (or even Metoblue's website Wx for that matter).  I would agree with the fact that when GFS data matches aloft- it is acceptable. 

With the internet- there is no excuse for not pulling flight path METAR data every few minutes, and importing GFS data at the start of each flight and once an hour, that way when the modeled forecast changes, the Wx aloft  will as well- and not be 11 hours off.

This sim does so many things well, and quite a few not so well.  I keep hoping (against hope) that Asobo will work towards patching the holes in this leaking ship- BEFORE hoisting additional sail.  Hope springs eternal.

Best- C

There are only three values from real time METARS that are used for airport surface conditions with  LiveWeather: temperature, wind direction and barometric pressure. Clouds, precipitation and visibility come from the MeteoBlue model, as do all parameters (including wind, temperature and pressure) outside of the immediate airport environment. 

The use of current METAR for those three airport surface values (wind, temperature and pressure) is something that was added to LiveWeather in early December, and as far as I can tell, does not come from MeteoBlue, but from NOAA. It is one of the few parts of LiveWeather that appears to work consistently well - even when the rest of the overall LiveWeather model appears seriously delayed.

Since they added METAR to the mix in December, I rarely if ever see it fail to match the current NOAA METAR (or perhaps the previous hour’s METAR) for a given airport - but only for those three specific parameters of wind, temperature and pressure. Clouds, precipitation, and visibility might be (and often are) very different from the METAR.

[jrw4 623]

Perhaps it would be good to anticipate the question, "Why not just use the METAR sky conditions instead of those the MSFS platform tries to derive from the GFS model?" The problem here is that the METAR measurements of sky conditions are made from the ground up and only report (a) the height of each cloud layer below an overcast layer, missing any clouds above the overcast and (b) provides no information over the oceans or sparsely populated land areas like deserts and the polar regions. So if there's an overcast layer at 500 feet, that's all the data that you'll get, and the only cloud layer that can be depicted is that lowest one. REX Weather Force takes note of this and blends model data with the METARs in order to provide weather data in remote areas, as well as providing upper level winds from the GFS data I use this software myself and find it to be quite satisfactory.

Where MSOBO deserves much credit is that they are trying to create a full atmospheric simulation analogous to the landmass simulator that does so well in providing the jaw dropping scenery we all admire. This will take time to refine, because the hard work is being done in the cloud, not on the desktop. No doubt there are many engineering compromises being made today that five years from now will largely be eliminated.

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

19 hours ago, jrw4 said:

Several payware and freeware aircraft include METAR reports on their respective computer display units. These include the CRJ, CJ4, and FBW A320 (I think). There is at least one METAR reporting add-on

https://www.msfsaddon.com/2020/12/msfs2020-metar-viewer-app-v10.html

 

 

 

The GTN750 mod connects to METAR letting you bring up reports of waypoints and nearby airfields.  It also lets you bring up charts from Navigraph if you have a Navigraph account.

[eslader 1,774]

30 minutes ago, jrw4 said:

Where MSOBO deserves much credit is that they are trying to create a full atmospheric simulation

Yeah, and I give them that credit, but they should also allow us the option to use a true 3pd weather injector if we want to. I find it irritating that AS is pretty much written out of the picture, and for no good reason. Those guys managed to stretch the weather engine in FSX/P3d to get pretty amazingly close to real world conditions given the limitations they were working with. I bet they could do the same in MSFS, and the only thing stopping them is that Asobo has put weather behind a wall.

That's actually my main complaint about the sim in general. The base platform is pretty great overall, but there's too much stuff in walled gardens. Let more 3pds in so they can improve stuff Asobo hasn't had time to get to yet or has no intention of getting to. 

[highflyer2020 607]

I'd be really interested to know from RW pilots if the METAR reports are 100% accurate with what is encountered in the air.

If they are not then I don't see why they are better to use than the default weather engine..

[fppilot 4,339]

35 minutes ago, highflyer2020 said:

If they are not then I don't see why they are better to use than the default weather engine..

Provides more current weather experience when compared to hours old forecasts.  Still not nearly as good as AS16 or FSGRW in FSX/P3D.

[fppilot 4,339]

39 minutes ago, eslader said:

Yeah, and I give them that credit, but they should also allow us the option to use a true 3pd weather injector if we want to.

+1ⁿ