3 hours ago, RandallR said:

The reason real world weather reports are important to me is that they have matched about 90% of the weather (surface and low level winds at least) for my destination approach consideration in MSFS.

May I say you have been very lucky! I use Aivlasoft EFB that pulls the NOAA weather. Of all my flights I made in the last five months, I believe that less than half of my EFB (real world) weather was identical to MSFS, hence ending up preparing my approach for a specific runway (according to real weather) and having to change everything when ATC gives me the approach clearance... Last week only, I made four flights and in all of them, my approaches had to be re-plan... the runways in use were... the opposite to the real weather, and that was in Sydney, Noumea, Auckland, Biarritz and London City!

 

3 hours ago, RandallR said:

Now, if there was only some way to get the in-sim ATC to respond appropriately to requests for changes of approach and runway...

You can. Simply don't use the AI CoPilot, so that you may select a different approach. Having said that, the MSFS wind will be accurate for the approach given, the windsock always confirm that (I never had to make a tailwind approach). Unfortunately.

2 hours ago, Bernard Ducret said:

May I say you have been very lucky! I use Aivlasoft EFB that pulls the NOAA weather. Of all my flights I made in the last five months, I believe that less than half of my EFB (real world) weather was identical to MSFS

Yes I probably have been lucky.  I've begun to document all of this on each flight (starting today) to get the comparisons.  Here's what happened today with a flight from MMQT to MMMT (Mexico):

MMQT:

• METAR (preflight): 360@5, 30.25 hPa, 6 visual, clouds few@1500 - broken@100,000
• METAR (in cockpit): 180/6, 29.81 hPa, 6 visual, clouds: few@1500 - few@100,000
• ATIS: NA
• Sim actual: 360/6, 30.25 hPa.  Clouds and visibility appeared to be close to reported.

MMMT:

• METAR (preflight): 180@6, 29.76 hPa, 8 visual, clouds: few@1500 - few@100,000
• METAR (descending): 160@8, 29.76 hPa, 8 visual, clouds: few@1500
• ATIS: NA
• Sim actual: 196@14, 29.76 hPa,  Clouds and visibility close to reported

At my departure, the latest metar indicated a 180-degree shift in winds but it appears that the sim was one metar report behind: it was almost an exact match of the earlier report.  As this was still a moderate level 90-degree crosswind, I used my planned runway.

At my destination, metar showed a shift of about 20 degrees, though the sim showed a difference of 36 degrees.  This still worked well for my planned runway.  All other items were almost identical to the metar.

2 hours ago, Bernard Ducret said:

You can. Simply don't use the AI CoPilot, so that you may select a different approach. Having said that, the MSFS wind will be accurate for the approach given, the windsock always confirm that (I never had to make a tailwind approach). Unfortunately.

I never use the AI CoPilot.  Whenever the winds require a different approach I request it.  The problem is, after accepting my request (change of approach) ATC still expects me to land on the original runway!  I requested the change of approach to get the wind on my nose - now I'm instructed to use the new approach but circle to land on the original runway, placing the wind back on my 6!  They really need to change this (and many other procedures) but this upsets me the most.  There needs to be a choice of runway change (not just change of approach).

OK here is today's experience - a continuation of that Mexican trip,,,

MMMT:

• METAR (preflight): 210@8, 29.80 hPa, 8 visual, clouds: scattered@16,000
• METAR (in cockpit): 210/10, 29.80 hPa, 8 visual, clouds: scattered@16,000
• ATIS: NA
• Sim actual: 206@17, 29.80 hPa.  Clouds and visibility appeared to be close to reported.

MMMT:

• METAR (preflight): 160@8, 29.89 hPa, 7 visual, clouds: few@1200 - scattered@30,000
• METAR (descending): 170@7, 29.86 hPa, 7 visual, clouds: broken@2000 = broken@30,000
• ATIS: 149@17, 29.85 hPa, 7 visual, clouds close to reported
• Sim actual: 169@12, 29.86 hPa,  7 visual, clouds clearing out

Overall, fairly close all around with no change needed for planned takeoff or approach.  Interesting that the actual in-sim winds were within 1 degree of the metar for the approach (and a little stronger) yet ATIS varied 21 degrees and was 5-10 kts stronger.

One thing I've noticed over the last month is that the ATIS announcing voice will occasionally get things like cloud cover and precip way off.  However, the announced winds will be correct and the actual visual conditions (clouds and precip) will be close to the metar and not necessarily match the ATIS announcement. Today's ATIS was close all around, but I've had approaches where they would announce an overcast (and there was none) or that there was heavy rain (and the precip was light or nonexistent) yet, the actual conditions were a good match for the metar.

For the next couple of days I'll fly in the US and see how it matches up.

On 8/24/2021 at 3:44 PM, lownslow said:

This is the best way for me too. You can simply click on the airport in the map, and it will bring up the weather window (on the bottom left for me). It pulls the weather data from MSFS, so it is the exact conditions in the simulator.

That is news to me thanks.  I have been getting ATIS out of LNM, but this should be much cleaner.  I have been requesting a simple popup as can be pulled up from ActiveSkyNext in P3D:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/use-a-weather-request-pop-up-panel-like-this-to-view-destination-weather-winds-aloft-etc/439822?u=zahidhuubow

Edited September 1, 20214 yr by Noel

Unfortunately, Noel, that would also be news to whoever created LittleNavMap, which can only pull the simulator weather from FSX or P3D. No mention is made of MSFS in LMN documentation.

On 8/26/2021 at 7:10 PM, Alvega said:

On long flights you can enable the MSFS weather to see the nice weather fronts and all but remember to disable it when you start descending so you get the real weather from Unreal Weather (real weather from unreal is nice, lol) again.

But...unlike terrain, rural and urban, which is largely fixed and therefore quite easy to ascertain how well it matches our real world, weather is completely dynamic.  If you didn't KNOW what the real weather was in a given location and time, what really does it matter, especially if it's in the ballpark?  To me what's far more important is having weather depiction, cloud morphology, wind effects etc be maximum plausible and realistic, and to me MSFS Live Weather has a ways to go to meet that goal, esp now post SU5.  This is why I won't bother with Unreal Weather unless, to be consistent, it appears a lot more realistic/plausible, irrespective of matching real world conditions at that moment in time.

1 hour ago, Noel said:

But...unlike terrain, rural and urban, which is largely fixed and therefore quite easy to ascertain how well it matches our real world, weather is completely dynamic.  If you didn't KNOW what the real weather was in a given location and time, what really does it matter, especially if it's in the ballpark?  To me what's far more important is having weather depiction, cloud morphology, wind effects etc be maximum plausible and realistic, and to me MSFS Live Weather has a ways to go to meet that goal, esp now post SU5.  This is why I won't bother with Unreal Weather unless, to be consistent, it appears a lot more realistic/plausible, irrespective of matching real world conditions at that moment in time.

The sim live weather never matches the real metar for me, so I use Unreal Weather on takeoffs and landings and the sim weather during cruise. 

2 hours ago, Alvega said:

The sim live weather never matches the real metar for me...

That's right, and that is the problem.  I use ATIS freq published in LittleNavMap to ascertain conditions about 60-70m out because it reports Live Weather conditions which is all that matter to me, and suggests which runways are in use. 

What I hope is implimented is something like this, in-sim.  Uber simple to do I hope others vote on it.  Instead, as is often the case when you make suggestions like this, you typically primarily get work arounds from people rather than voting for something super simple to code, elegantly simple to us, in-sim.

Edited September 1, 20214 yr by Noel

9 minutes ago, Noel said:

I use ATIS published in LittleNavMap to ascertain conditions about 60-70m out because it reports Live Weather conditions and suggests which runways are in use.

What do you mean "ATIS published in Little Navmap"? Little Navmap doesn't give you ATIS, it only tells you the ATIS frequency. What it gives you is METAR.

15 minutes ago, Alvega said:

What do you mean "ATIS published in Little Navmap"? Little Navmap doesn't give you ATIS, it only tells you the ATIS frequency. What it gives you is METAR.

... "I use ATIS freq published in LittleNavMap."  I saw that and edited my omission prior to reading your post, thanks.  As for METAR, it's not pulling weather information from MSFS near as I can tell, at least it isn't a weather source I can select.  It does seem to display (presumably) the airport selected's wind speed/dir with the little arrow in the top center of the map.  The only test I've done as I just learned about this is when I was in the approach pattern for the dest airport wind speed/dir that is displaying in the Citation Long PFD.  If that's the case, it report wind speed/dir per selected airport that is better than nothing and easier to see than tuning the ATIS.

Edited September 1, 20214 yr by Noel

10 minutes ago, Noel said:

As for METAR, it's not pulling weather information from MSFS near as I can tell, at least it isn't a weather source I can select.

Exactly, it pulls the real metar. That's why I use Unreal Weather (which also uses the real metar) and plan the flights in Simbrief (which also uses the real metar), so everything uses the same weather data and when planning you get the runway that will be used in the sim if you use Unreal Weather, and not the the wrong runway. I also use Pilot2ATC which also uses the real metar for ATC, so everything is good here if I just use the sim live weather during cruise.

1 hour ago, Alvega said:

Exactly, it pulls the real metar. That's why I use Unreal Weather (which also uses the real metar) and plan the flights in Simbrief (which also uses the real metar), so everything uses the same weather data and when planning you get the runway that will be used in the sim if you use Unreal Weather, and not the the wrong runway. I also use Pilot2ATC which also uses the real metar for ATC, so everything is good here if I just use the sim live weather during cruise.

But, according to cianpar's post LNM displays MSFS wind direction and speed for the selected destination airport with the little arrow.  So I just select my destination airport and select an appropriate runway.  My goal is to know what destination conditions are, wind direction and speed at a minimum, early enough in the flight plan so as to fascilitate selecting an appropriate runway and approach to that runway, that's all.  So, what exactly does Unreal Weather add to the picture over what I have in LNM already, if you will?  Remember, for me I don't care about realworld conditions.  That is secondary to matching what MSFS is going to portray at the destination airport.  That's all I really need it seems.

3 minutes ago, Noel said:

But, according to cianpar's post LNM displays MSFS wind direction and speed for the selected destination airport with the little arrow.  So I just select my destination airport and select an appropriate runway.  My goal is to know what destination conditions are, wind direction and speed at a minimum, early enough in the flight plan so as to fascilitate selecting an appropriate runway and approach to that runway, that's all.  So, what exactly does Unreal Weather add to the picture over what I have in LNM already, if you will?  Remember, for me I don't care about realworld conditions.  That is secondary to matching what MSFS is going to portray at the destination airport.  That's all I really need it seems.

If you are ok with having the wrong weather conditions provided by the sim and don't care for the real weather at the airports, then that is good enough for you and you don't need Unreal Weather. Not for me though, because as I said, I need to have the real weather conditions on the airports because I use other software like Simbrief and Pilot2ATC that use them.

When I'm just going to do a quick VFR flight to check the scenery I don't use Unreal Weather and use the sim live weather instead, but not for for longer flights.

 

Well, real weather would be preferred, but of greater priority right now is knowing for sure what weather MSFS will dish out.  I'm not so sure LNM really does what I hoped it would do--I think it's reporting wind data at or near your aircraft so doesn't seem display what the destination airport is doing, so in the meantime will just continue to use the ATIS freq.