OK..so I just did a flight in SU7 in daylight so I could see what the fuss was about regarding haze, abrupt transitions, etc.  My A32NX flight started great and WX looked good on departure and also enroute (KSRQ-KSBN).  I began to think...what are these people seeing?? Nothing looks wrong at all!!  I then started my descent and at about 20k'..boom...a jarring layer of something appears beneath me. Oh no!!  Well ok, I guess this is what I have been reading about.  Another couple thousand feet...boom!  Another strange layer appears, not sure what it is supposed to be but it came out of nowhere.  Several more were spotted and just as I turn final...whammo...a layer of thick muck fills the air at an airport that should have been 'severe clear'.  Ughh...what has happened to my wonderful MSFS WX?!!  

I really think the new WX system that was created for MSFS has been brilliant and everything a simmer has always wished for (I go back to Sublogic 1988).  Seeing different WX conditions out in front of you or off to the side has been something we all have hoped for.  Could it be improved upon? Sure, I think some changes to how visibility is drawn and maybe how cirrus clouds & thunderstorms are depicted could be improved on.  BUT, what you have given us (up until SU7) was wonderful! I never saw an abrupt WX change or anything jarring that ruined the experience. 

SU7 comes long and we are now supposed to have more accurate WX to better match local METARs. This sounds good in theory but there are several issues with this and I'm curious how they would be resolved.  The big one...which I think might be the cause of the current abrupt visibility changes is the fact that METAR's report visibility of 10 miles and greater as...10 miles.  You can have 50 mile visibility and the METAR will say 10 miles.  So how does a METAR-based approach solve for this?? If every airport is going to have visibility depicted as 10 miles than that could be a problem.  I posted earlier today about how I trained at an airport on the water and how we would commonly have half the airport under fog so the METAR would show 1/4 mile visibility but less than a mile away it was clear and 30 miles visibility.  It was very localized.  Also, many times you will have reports of 'no clouds below 12,000'.  This does not mean there are not clouds above 12,000.  You could have a layer at 20,000'.  So again, how would this be interpreted correctly using METAR's??  The whole thing seems flawed to me...

I really cannot see how METAR's can be reliable at all for generating WX in the sim aside from temperature and winds.  It seems like the predictive model from MeteoBlue that you were/are using was (nearly) perfect.  All that was needed was a way to see what that in-sim WX "METAR" was.  Why does it matter if it exactly fits the real-world??  I just want to know what the conditions are in the sim at my arrival airport.  I wonder if there is a way to use METAR data for winds and temps only and rely on the predictive model for the visibilities and clouds??  Maybe the METAR visibility could be used for situations where it indicates under 10 miles only?  I have no idea how all this stuff works...I'm just a dumb pilot but I hope what I am seeing so far in SU7 can be improved upon.  I would happily take the WX from SU6 over the what I just experienced on my last flight...

15 minutes ago, Flic1 said:

OK..so I just did a flight in SU7 in daylight so I could see what the fuss was about regarding haze, abrupt transitions, etc.  My A32NX flight started great and WX looked good on departure and also enroute (KSRQ-KSBN).  I began to think...what are these people seeing?? Nothing looks wrong at all!!  I then started my descent and at about 20k'..boom...a jarring layer of something appears beneath me. Oh no!!  Well ok, I guess this is what I have been reading about.  Another couple thousand feet...boom!  Another strange layer appears, not sure what it is supposed to be but it came out of nowhere.  Several more were spotted and just as I turn final...whammo...a layer of thick muck fills the air at an airport that should have been 'severe clear'.  Ughh...what has happened to my wonderful MSFS WX?!!  

I really think the new WX system that was created for MSFS has been brilliant and everything a simmer has always wished for (I go back to Sublogic 1988).  Seeing different WX conditions out in front of you or off to the side has been something we all have hoped for.  Could it be improved upon? Sure, I think some changes to how visibility is drawn and maybe how cirrus clouds & thunderstorms are depicted could be improved on.  BUT, what you have given us (up until SU7) was wonderful! I never saw an abrupt WX change or anything jarring that ruined the experience. 

SU7 comes long and we are now supposed to have more accurate WX to better match local METARs. This sounds good in theory but there are several issues with this and I'm curious how they would be resolved.  The big one...which I think might be the cause of the current abrupt visibility changes is the fact that METAR's report visibility of 10 miles and greater as...10 miles.  You can have 50 mile visibility and the METAR will say 10 miles.  So how does a METAR-based approach solve for this?? If every airport is going to have visibility depicted as 10 miles than that could be a problem.  I posted earlier today about how I trained at an airport on the water and how we would commonly have half the airport under fog so the METAR would show 1/4 mile visibility but less than a mile away it was clear and 30 miles visibility.  It was very localized.  Also, many times you will have reports of 'no clouds below 12,000'.  This does not mean there are not clouds above 12,000.  You could have a layer at 20,000'.  So again, how would this be interpreted correctly using METAR's??  The whole thing seems flawed to me...

I really cannot see how METAR's can be reliable at all for generating WX in the sim aside from temperature and winds.  It seems like the predictive model from MeteoBlue that you were/are using was (nearly) perfect.  All that was needed was a way to see what that in-sim WX "METAR" was.  Why does it matter if it exactly fits the real-world??  I just want to know what the conditions are in the sim at my arrival airport.  I wonder if there is a way to use METAR data for winds and temps only and rely on the predictive model for the visibilities and clouds??  Maybe the METAR visibility could be used for situations where it indicates under 10 miles only?  I have no idea how all this stuff works...I'm just a dumb pilot but I hope what I am seeing so far in SU7 can be improved upon.  I would happily take the WX from SU6 over the what I just experienced on my last flight...

I 100% agree. I was sweating bullets when they mentioned that they were going to find a way to implement METARs into the weather system. I just KNEW this would happen. This is one of those times I wish they would've just ignored the vocal part of the community who was SO adamant that METAR data would make things better. I guess if they can address the 10SM vis issue and the fact that they seem to have mixed up MSL and AGL in regards to cloud rendering, I'll feel a bit better. IDK, I just really didn't think we needed this...

Try Rex, update just released.

Please at least make this METAR implementation optional, so those who don't care about 100 % accurate weather at airports can choose to still enjoy the best weather engine we ever had in a flightsim.

39 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

Please at least make this METAR implementation optional, so those who don't care about 100 % accurate weather at airports can choose to still enjoy the best weather engine we ever had in a flightsim.

this yes please. 

Yeah. As I understand it, ASOBO wants to do crazy things with their weather engine going forward: All cloud types and better depictions. I really hope they don't build such a great weather system on the rocky foundation that is the METAR.

Personally, all I wanted changed from the previous WX system was a way to read weather not currently loaded; It's needed for proper VNAV and flight planning.

The silly obsession of some vocal simmers to see the weather as it is through their window by the minute is ruining the excellent Asobo engine. This METAR thing is absurd, I see now strange ominous cloud formations close to the ground. The haze is overdone. SU7 is a step backward in direction of what we left in P3D and that we do not regret.

The only problems it has is a very poor UI, the lack of historical weather and of course the lightnings.
 

#BringBackMyWeather #NoMetar 😋

 

 

Totally agree with this topic and, to make matters worse, the weather doesn't match the metar anyway, at least the cloud cover doesn't in the scenarios I've tried. Much preferred the weather pre SU7 and, for the most part, I found it to be more accurate to.

So true. I have always said (being a meteorologist) that METAR is absolutely NOT the right data source to build a worldwide 3d weather depiction from it. Everyone who tries this will run into severe problems earlier or later. I personally don't care wether the current weather at an airport is 100% correct or not, as long as it is consistent and realistic within the sim. Please Asobo, rethink about that. As often is the case, the loudest whiners get the most attention because they are loud, but not because they represent the majority of people.

BTW: Did a flight in southern Spain yesterday evening with live time and live weather: The new haze visualization in the engine is absolutely stunning! Great job on this, Asobo! I took an approach to Malaga, and especially when facing to the sun it was incredibly realistic. Wow. If we can get rid of sudden changes with the haze and at least somewhat realistic cirrus clouds on top that would be absolutely amazing.

Metar derived wx for airports is vital for those of us who fly on Vatsim/Ivao etc because our ATC determine runway in use derived from Metars. It's important that they match. Also for cloud base (which MSFS doesn't understand), QNH etc. We need to be on the same page as ATC.

It is no problem to derive METARs from the MeteoBlue model data for all the airports and make them available for those purposes. Much easier than all the complications you run into when trying to squeeze data into the sim that are in no way suitable for a worldwide 3d weather depiction. As it is now it significantly breaks immersion.

Yup, METAR-based wx IS important for a significant contigent of simmers.  It makes everything work so much smoother and more realistically on VATSIM when everyone is seeing the same conditions, and they match real world data sources so if you're practicing a flight with, say, Foreflight, the real-world data is applicable to the sim.

We had this in FSX with a variety a wx injection engines.  It worked very well at interpreting the wx between airports so transitions were smooth enroute, but conditions at the airports matched the real world.  So it's very achievable; just gonna require ironing out some bugs. I hope they make it a high priority. 

I flew from East Hamptons to Boston in the turbo bonanza tonight in the sim, IFR on Vatsim with real wx.  It was very well done. Saw some haze enroute, but only to my west which you'd expect at night over the inland higher terrain (I set daylight in the sim so I could watch for it).  It was beautiful; haze where you'd expect, and clear to the east. I got cleared for the visual at least 15nm from BOS and could probably have taken it at 30nm.  They're building something REALLY good here. 

I completely agree that people should be able to turn it off though.  There are reports of it appearing even with manual weather set to clear, and that's not right. 

While we're at it, can we please, PLEASE have the ability to specify a visibility value at the airport? If I want .5nm vis, I want to be able to type that in somewhere, I don't want to have to play with 3 different sliders to make something that seems about right!  😉

 

It has been working very well with Active Sky since ages ...

They use all sources of observation as well as model / forecast data, merge them into consistent display and voilá! it's there as I would expect to see it in MFS too since they're feed by an acceptable source.

They mentioned they're still working on it, so, let's wait for the upcomming SU's

 

Edited November 20, 20214 yr by jcomm

On top of that, it seems that cloud base in new METAR system is based on MSL (instead of AGL):

Are cloud bases in new METAR system in AGL or MSL? - Bugs & Issues / Online Services & Activities - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

Edited November 20, 20214 yr by Ohmsquare

2 minutes ago, Ohmsquare said:

On top of that, it seems that cloud base in new METAR system is based on MSL (instead of AGL):

Are cloud bases in new METAR system in AGL or MSL? - Bugs & Issues / Online Services & Activities - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

I guess that explains why I felt clouds were basically hugging the ground constantly