1 hour ago, Bobsk8 said:

I have used Active Sky products forever , but I am going to stay with MSFS default weather from now on. 

Me too, I've bought AS products pretty much from day one but will also be sticking with the default weather. 

I can't believe how many people are content with the state of MSFS default weather.  Aviation and weather go together like peanut butter and jelly.

I've worked air traffic for almost 15 years in various areas in the Midwest.  METAR and winds aloft data are paramount in deciding the flow of air traffic.  When I fly (irl and the sim), weather is at the forefront of my brain...can I go VFR or should I plan IFR?  MSFS does not do well consistently depicting METAR or winds aloft.  Not to mention the sim uses weird, non-standardized terms like aerosol density, while the real aviation weather world uses visibility.

We have third parties begging Asobo to be involved to fix this, but they are again kept away like RXP from GTN/GNS development.

If Asobo is still pro Community they should allow ALL third parties to add their wares to the sim.

12 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

I can't believe how many people are content with the state of MSFS default weather.  Aviation and weather go together like peanut butter and jelly.

I've worked air traffic for almost 15 years in various areas in the Midwest.  METAR and winds aloft data are paramount in deciding the flow of air traffic.  When I fly (irl and the sim), weather is at the forefront of my brain...can I go VFR or should I plan IFR?  MSFS does not do well consistently depicting METAR or winds aloft.  Not to mention the sim uses weird, non-standardized terms like aerosol density, while the real aviation weather world uses visibility.

We have third parties begging Asobo to be involved to fix this, but they are again kept away like RXP from GTN/GNS development.

If Asobo is still pro Community they should allow ALL third parties to add their wares to the sim.

Agreed!!!

On 7/22/2021 at 9:35 AM, ar_0 said:

According to MSFS development roadmap on their site, opening up live weather to 3rd party devs is not currently planned. It may come in the future, who knows. Some features are planned for this year and some for next year, as many of you already know. Not 3rd party weather though, even though it's highly ranked in simmers' "Top Wishes" list.

Those who bought REX WF and those who tried Unreal Weather... this is one of the reasons these addons aren't good enough.

I mean, what made FSX the great sim is was, were the 3rd party addons. And the current state of the weather in the sim is not up to standard. I hate simming without good live weather so much that I just stopped simming.

Can I please have your thoughts on the current state of live weather, and what you hope to see? Thanks

Really, third party weather?   Not up to standard, are you high? The weather in FS20 is phenomenal compared to any other stuff I've seen.  And it doesn't cost extra.

 

1 hour ago, ryanbatcund said:

I can't believe how many people are content with the state of MSFS default weather.  Aviation and weather go together like peanut butter and jelly.

I've worked air traffic for almost 15 years in various areas in the Midwest.  METAR and winds aloft data are paramount in deciding the flow of air traffic.  When I fly (irl and the sim), weather is at the forefront of my brain...can I go VFR or should I plan IFR?  MSFS does not do well consistently depicting METAR or winds aloft.  Not to mention the sim uses weird, non-standardized terms like aerosol density, while the real aviation weather world uses visibility.

We have third parties begging Asobo to be involved to fix this, but they are again kept away like RXP from GTN/GNS development.

If Asobo is still pro Community they should allow ALL third parties to add their wares to the sim.

Nothing wrong with the default weather if your not a word not allowed.

Different experiences. different outlooks and different "needs" I'm fine with waiting for Asobo's implementation of the weather to get better and subsequently not presently interested in a third party solution. Doesnt make me or anyone else a bad person. 

 

As for MS/ASOBO restricting what can be developed by third parties or not.. If they are legally/contractually or security restricted there isnt anything  in the world anyone can do about it short of them renegotiating the contract or suing the developer. At the end of the day its their ball they can decide what to do with it. Can either accept it and do something else or work outside of their framework. From the looks of the feedback snapshot response the decision has already been made so i would presume the next step from the affected third party should ensue with a realization that further arguments trying to gain access with support from ASOBO/MS is not going to happen.

9 hours ago, MarcG said:

You're missing a key area, licensing. For all we/you know Asobo might have a specific licensed tied in with MeteoBlue that prevents opening up the weather system APK to third parties. Throughout my Simulation life I've seen many licensing debates and actual facts about what goes on behind the scenes that the community never get to see, so just throwing this possibility out there.

Also another one - and they've made this clear - is that they want to build the best (live) weather experience they can themselves and simply (read probably) don't want "competition" in this specific area. After all it's their Game, they can choose what they do with regards to opening up the APKs to third parties.

The default weather is great compared to any other sim.  

31 minutes ago, Oldschool61 said:

The default weather is great compared to any other sim.  

 

36 minutes ago, Oldschool61 said:

Nothing wrong with the default weather if your not a word not allowed.

 

37 minutes ago, Oldschool61 said:

Really, third party weather?   Not up to standard, are you high? The weather in FS20 is phenomenal compared to any other stuff I've seen.  And it doesn't cost extra.

 

 Considering your  3 responses within the hour, I believe your vote has been recorded  🙃  👍

IMHO it's really simple and dependent on your individual needs.

If all you care about is seeing some clouds and stuff when you fly, MSFS has beautiful weather.

If you are more concerned with accurate weather and winds, then I'm afraid MSFS is woefully inadequate

I think MSFS, with it's visual quality has generated a whole new class of simmer, the sightseer - they fly low and slow and enjoy taking in the beautiful scenery. A few clouds and shadows are a plus and basically eye candy. I believe it is this group that Asobo caters to.

Don't forget, we are really just now getting aircraft capable of accurately planning a flight and calculating fuel burn, time to climb, etc. Now that we have some of these, the shortcomings of Asobo weather are readily apparent.

Personally, I'd love to see them open up the weather system to 3pd's.

V

 

I always fly on Vatsim when i use MSFS and I don't know what people above are talking about.

I'm able to read metars and wind charts and I would say 95% of the times MSFS live weather is spot on. But if METAR says wind is 34008KT and inside the simulator the wind is 33807KT and you consider this inaccurate, then ASN is better but far less realistic. 

3 minutes ago, vgbaron said:

IMHO it's really simple and dependent on your individual needs.

If all you care about is seeing some clouds and stuff when you fly, MSFS has beautiful weather.

If you are more concerned with accurate weather and winds, then I'm afraid MSFS is woefully inadequate

It goes beyond accuracy, to the level of "bug".   Another issue is what I saw last night -- at altitude -- winds shifting instantly from zero knots to 35 knots, then back to zero.  When it worked, it was right on the forecasted winds.  When it shifted to zero knots, it wasn't. 

Like I said, this is exactly what we saw with FSX in its early days.  It took a combined effort of Microsoft and HiFi to solve that.

28 minutes ago, vgbaron said:

If you are more concerned with accurate weather and winds, then I'm afraid MSFS is woefully inadequate

And for some aircraft - Concorde for example - the upper winds and air temperature are absolutely critical to proper fuel calculation. ISA+5 compared to ISA-10 is the difference between a landing with legal fuel reserves and not making your destination.

Does the default weather info include winds and temp up to FL600?

15 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

And for some aircraft - Concorde for example - the upper winds and air temperature are absolutely critical to proper fuel calculation. ISA+5 compared to ISA-10 is the difference between a landing with legal fuel reserves and not making your destination.

Does the default weather info include winds and temp up to FL600?

The default weather right now is a mixed bag. It looks amazing visually... and I (*****I*****, not everyone else) don't care about it not being 100% accurate with what's going on outside my window this particular second, as long as the conditions approximate some sort of reality or currently forecasted weather, I am great with it. What bugs me is that there is no way to predict or look up what the weather is anywhere. With things like REX that inject the weather the old-school way, it's the same issue as with P3D - the weather becomes the same everywhere until it updates. That's not ideal and transitions are jarring, BUT - there is a way to look up weather. You can queue AS to tell you the weather at your destination, for example. This is useful when flying the Airbus, for instance, because that data needs to be entered into MCDU in your Approach page. In MSFS with default weather, the only way to "find out" the current weather at your destination is to look it up using METAR or even start up Active Sky for P3D and check the weather through that. The problem with that approach is that it's probably not going to match what the sim is simulating at the moment. With REX you can do that, but you gotta deal with ugly transitions and the weather being the same in the entire world until REX loads a new batch of data. With default weather, it's... whatever the sim knows at the moment and there aren't any tools to look up what it knows. THAT is my problem with default MSFS weather. 

 

One solution is old-school but precise. The other is new generation but inadequate as it currently stands. 

 

If Asobo can give me tools to look up weather it's going to simulate in my flight plan, I will be happy to stick with it and not wish for any third party weather solutions. 

I've had nothing but positive things to say about the default live weather since like November. I did have the upper altitude temp issue last night but I'm assuming that will be rectified soon if it hasn't been already (must be a server-side thing). I honestly don't get the obsession with METAR data. It's one tiny snapshot of the weather at one specific part of an airport at one specific time. Yes the weather will theoretically be accurate for that specific time and location but that's it. Weather changes all the time, minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour and day-to-day. I get being frustrated with certain aspects like cloud cover not always being super accurate or precip not always showing up where it most likely should be, but that will all improve. 

Overall the weather system Asobo/Meteoblue have created is phenomenal in terms of immersion - it always feels so alive and different. Asobo is well-aware of the shortcomings and I think we'll continue to see improvements/overhauls - it'll just take time. Think about how far we've come in regards to other aspects of the sim. Third parties are great and all but this is one area I REALLY want Asobo to figure out. This is a nextgen sim and it deserves a nextgen weather depiction. 

@BostonJeremy77, I can’t really add any more to the discussion as I don’t own MSFS.

But as a long-time user of Active Sky products I consider them the gold standard when planning.