Historic weather - finally considered

[RALF9636 1,959]

After ignoring this feature for a long time, in their last Q&A they asked for some feedback regarding the use of historic weather.

You can participate and vote here:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/why-is-historic-weather-important/405140

 

It has been requested several times before. So to repeat and sum up, why is historic weather important:

 

- It has been a familiar feature in other sims (provided for example by Active Sky) for ages. I used it all the time and considered it a matter of course in a flightsim. It's a shame that the current state of the art flight simulator lacks this feature.

 

- Historic weather offers an abundance of different weather to choose from, just by selecting a date and time. Much more than weather presets ever can. And furthermore - different to weather presets - historic weather is realistic, diverse and dynamic.

 

- Only historic weather allows to realistically experience any season in the sim - independent from the real world season. With live weather you set the date in the sim to July and still encounter a blizzard over New England when it's December in the real world.

 

- The same goes for the time of day. Historic weather is needed to experience a realistic scenario in any time of the day - independent from the real world time. Weather typically is different at different times of day: At night the temperatures are lower and the air is smoother than in daytime. There is morning fog that dissipates by noon, there is building cumulus in the afternoon. If we ever get gliders we will need the thermals of the daytime. Right now with live weather if you set the time in the sim to noon but it's night in the real world you will get weather which is just not adequate.

 

- Historic weather allows to relive experiences you've had in the real world:

You are a passenger in an airliner on a turbulent and stormy approach in the real world and look forward to recreate that approach in the sim when you get home. Impossible with live weather because the weather will have changed by the time.

You enjoyed a scenic ride in a Cessna last summer around some spectactular weather themes and want to recreate that experience a few months later in the sim. Impossible with live weather.

 

- Historic weather allows to practice the same flight again and again. Impossible with live weather because the weather will be different every session - and weather presets just don't offer the dynamic and variety of real historic weather.

 

- There have been several threads in the forums where people enthusiastically tried to chase hurricanes. Bad luck for those who didn't have time for simming at that very time. With historic weather it can be done any time.

 

- If you want to do a VFR flight and find that the real world weather is too bad to allow a VFR flight your only choice now is to use a weather preset. How much more enjoyable it would be to just change the date and get realistic, varied and dynamic historic weather allowing for a VFR flight.

 

- You don't have time for a longer flight today but already look forward to the flight you will be doing next weekend. So you already plan that flight, create a simbrief flightplan etc. Just to find that wind, runways, time and fuel calculations will all be wrong when you actually do the flight a few days later with live weather. Only historic weather allows for that.

 

- You set up a multileg rotation with an airliner. You are behind schedule on your first flight because of the headwind. But you already plan to catch up that time on the return flight thanks to the tailwind. Unfortunately you don't have the time for that flight today and can only do it a few days later. With live weather your tailwind will be gone.

 

- You plan a multileg / multiday VFR cross country trip. Because of your real world obligations a few days in the sim will take you a few weeks in real time. With historic weather you will be able to make these flights in a consistent and immersive weather scenario in the sim. Imagine you land at an intermediate stop with a front approaching on the horizon. You are aware that you need to hurry on the ground to make it out of this valley VFR for your next leg before the front arrives. But when you do that next leg the other day that front will be long gone of course with live weather.

 

- Only historic weather allows to pause the flight for more than just a few minutes.

You have set up everything for the approach shortly before your TOD in an airliner, when real world obligations force you to pause the sim. When you continue the flight a few hours later all your approach settings are completely wrong because the live weather has changed.

Even worse, you have to pause your VFR flight midair while flying clear of clouds and find yourself in a thick soup some time later when you return to the sim - unable to continue your VFR flight unless you switch to a weather preset.

 

- Historic weather opens up many new opportunities for screenshots and videomakers.

 

- Last but not least historic weather simplifies the bugfixing. I remember when we had thunder and lightning out of the blue and Asobo had a hard time to recreate this issue because of the ever changing weather conditions. It would have been easy to recreate with historic weather.

Edited May 27, 2021 by RALF9636

[torque2 24]

Bravo!  Well put!  Historic weather (or the lack thereof) is essential for the way I do my flight simming and is the main reason I don't use this sim.

[Bob Scott 7,721]

Historic wx is only part of what's needed.  Forecastable weather, as well as enroute weather (especially winds aloft) are necessary for flight planning of longer flights.  Nobody just jumps into an airplane and heads off into the wild blue without a forecast of the enroute and destination/alternate weather.  The ability to get accurate *current* weather reporting for stations (e.g. ATIS-style feed) to plan departures, diverts and approaches at the destination is needed as well. 

[RALF9636 1,959]

3 minutes ago, w6kd said:

Historic wx is only part of what's needed.  Forecastable weather, as well as enroute weather (especially winds aloft) are necessary for flight planning of longer flights.  Nobody just jumps into an airplane and heads off into the wild blue without a forecast of the enroute and destination/alternate weather.  The ability to get accurate *current* weather reporting for stations (e.g. ATIS-style feed) to plan departures, diverts and approaches at the destination is needed as well. 

Agreed, of course that has to come along with historic weather.

With live weather we can use the real world reports / forecast (at least to some extent). With historic weather that has to be included in the sim - just like we've had it for ages with Active Sky.

 

[Bob Scott 7,721]

36 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

With live weather we can use the real world reports / forecast (at least to some extent).

Unfortunately, no we cannot.  "Live" weather in the sim isn't that at all.  As an example, a few days ago after the SU4 update I loaded a flight from KCOS...current real-world observation was for scattered clouds at 11000 ft...looking out the window it was clear and a million.  In the sim I had low ceilings and vis, rain, and thunder/lightning--we hadn't seen that in the area for at least 36 hours.  Without a valid time reference that identifies when in time the in-sim weather *was* actually current, we can't identify which reports to use.

[Nyxx 6,993]

Live weather seems now to be updated.

 

Edited May 27, 2021 by Nyxx

[Vulkan 2]

On 5/27/2021 at 3:34 PM, RALF9636 said:

After ignoring this feature for a long time, in their last Q&A they asked for some feedback regarding the use of historic weather.

You can participate and vote here:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/why-is-historic-weather-important/405140

 

It has been requested several times before. So to repeat and sum up, why is historic weather important:

 

- It has been a familiar feature in other sims (provided for example by Active Sky) for ages. I used it all the time and considered it a matter of course in a flightsim. It's a shame that the current state of the art flight simulator lacks this feature.

 

- Historic weather offers an abundance of different weather to choose from, just by selecting a date and time. Much more than weather presets ever can. And furthermore - different to weather presets - historic weather is realistic, diverse and dynamic.

 

- Only historic weather allows to realistically experience any season in the sim - independent from the real world season. With live weather you set the date in the sim to July and still encounter a blizzard over New England when it's December in the real world.

 

- The same goes for the time of day. Historic weather is needed to experience a realistic scenario in any time of the day - independent from the real world time. Weather typically is different at different times of day: At night the temperatures are lower and the air is smoother than in daytime. There is morning fog that dissipates by noon, there is building cumulus in the afternoon. If we ever get gliders we will need the thermals of the daytime. Right now with live weather if you set the time in the sim to noon but it's night in the real world you will get weather which is just not adequate.

 

- Historic weather allows to relive experiences you've had in the real world:

You are a passenger in an airliner on a turbulent and stormy approach in the real world and look forward to recreate that approach in the sim when you get home. Impossible with live weather because the weather will have changed by the time.

You enjoyed a scenic ride in a Cessna last summer around some spectactular weather themes and want to recreate that experience a few months later in the sim. Impossible with live weather.

 

- Historic weather allows to practice the same flight again and again. Impossible with live weather because the weather will be different every session - and weather presets just don't offer the dynamic and variety of real historic weather.

 

- There have been several threads in the forums where people enthusiastically tried to chase hurricanes. Bad luck for those who didn't have time for simming at that very time. With historic weather it can be done any time.

 

- If you want to do a VFR flight and find that the real world weather is too bad to allow a VFR flight your only choice now is to use a weather preset. How much more enjoyable it would be to just change the date and get realistic, varied and dynamic historic weather allowing for a VFR flight.

 

- You don't have time for a longer flight today but already look forward to the flight you will be doing next weekend. So you already plan that flight, create a simbrief flightplan etc. Just to find that wind, runways, time and fuel calculations will all be wrong when you actually do the flight a few days later with live weather. Only historic weather allows for that.

 

- You set up a multileg rotation with an airliner. You are behind schedule on your first flight because of the headwind. But you already plan to catch up that time on the return flight thanks to the tailwind. Unfortunately you don't have the time for that flight today and can only do it a few days later. With live weather your tailwind will be gone.

 

- You plan a multileg / multiday VFR cross country trip. Because of your real world obligations a few days in the sim will take you a few weeks in real time. With historic weather you will be able to make these flights in a consistent and immersive weather scenario in the sim. Imagine you land at an intermediate stop with a front approaching on the horizon. You are aware that you need to hurry on the ground to make it out of this valley VFR for your next leg before the front arrives. But when you do that next leg the other day that front will be long gone of course with live weather.

 

- Only historic weather allows to pause the flight for more than just a few minutes.

You have set up everything for the approach shortly before your TOD in an airliner, when real world obligations force you to pause the sim. When you continue the flight a few hours later all your approach settings are completely wrong because the live weather has changed.

Even worse, you have to pause your VFR flight midair while flying clear of clouds and find yourself in a thick soup some time later when you return to the sim - unable to continue your VFR flight unless you switch to a weather preset.

 

- Historic weather opens up many new opportunities for screenshots and videomakers.

 

- Last but not least historic weather simplifies the bugfixing. I remember when we had thunder and lightning out of the blue and Asobo had a hard time to recreate this issue because of the ever changing weather conditions. It would have been easy to recreate with historic weather.

Very well described why this is an important feature! Anyone has any news or rumors regarding this?

[Stearmandriver 2,296]

Great thread, glad to see it resurrected as I've recently been thinking about this.  My use case for historic weather (aside from the excellent reasons already mentioned) is that I sometimes enjoy long dead-reckoning flights over water, supplemented with celestial nav. 

We have an excellent platform for this in the DC-6 with an excellent cel nav addon now.  Thing is, I have no interest in it actually taking 12 real hours to get to Hawaii, so time acceleration is mandatory between fixes.  In FSX I handled this by doing the flight on a day far enough in the past that there was no danger of accelerating myself into the future, so to speak.  This way, using the winds aloft forecasts for that time period would be at least somewhat accurate (about as accurate as they could have hoped for, doing this back in the day.)

As it currently stands in MSFS, I guess time acceleration would break this in some way. Either the weather would just go static, or it would remain real-time so you wouldn't encounter wind or weather changes as forecast. 

[guenseli 1,591]

I miss it still on a daily basis!

 

Exact this morning we had such a nice foggy sunrise. How nice would it be to come back after work and make this flight again.

24 h history would be enough for me ... in the beginning.

 

Hope this will be implemented one day!

[Dominique_K 10,149]

12 minutes ago, guenseli said:

24 h history would be enough for me ... in the beginning.

This ^^

[JBDB-MD80 1,473]

Historical weather that should be paid DLC like for Active Sky and not be in the base game/sim not everyone wants that and more on Asobos plate than they can handle now.

[vgbaron 3,627]

I would prefer they work on getting current weather accurately depicted. Once that is done, historic weather would be a snap. No point in going back to specific weather when the sim cannot currently depict it properly.

The ability to search for specific weather, ceiling, visibility etc would be major.

[mistercoffee1 26]

Takes me back to the days of using FSXWX to draw up historic weather on FSX.

Edited December 14, 2021 by mistercoffee1

[RALF9636 1,959]

5 hours ago, guenseli said:

I miss it still on a daily basis!

 

Exact this morning we had such a nice foggy sunrise. How nice would it be to come back after work and make this flight again.

24 h history would be enough for me ... in the beginning.

 

Hope this will be implemented one day!

Exactly my feelings.

 

And here is one more reason why historic weather is important:

 

Meanwhile we can have realistic AI traffic using PSXT / RealTraffic with AIG. This not only allows for live traffic but also for historic traffic for the previous 24 hours. This itself is important because otherwise you wouldn't see much traffic if you fly in (real world) night hours. But when you use the historic traffic you also need the respective historic weather otherwise the runway usage might be all wrong.

 

Edited December 14, 2021 by RALF9636

[JDWalley 354]

I think it's important as well.  But the thread on the official site was closed back on May 31, after garnering 61 votes.  Is there any way to keep raising the issue?  I was always assuming that "live weather" had a degree of history already built-in, at least for the past day (so that, if I were to set the time to noon while simming in the evening, it wouldn't have the evening weather conditions), but I guess I was wrong.  To my mind, that's something that absolutely should be part of any serious sim, whether built-in or available as an add-on.