1 hour ago, sightseer said:

What's wrong with a simulated METAR?  Why does it need to match real world 100%?  A simulated system can produce variables and a better weather simulation than real world limited data sets ever could.  Its not to not have "METARs", its to not rely on the limited real world versions.

If they're going to have "LIVE" weather it needs to be live.  Might as well call your version custom weather.  (Which can be fun as well - creating your own layers or vis for practice)

3 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

If they're going to have "LIVE" weather it needs to be live.  Might as well call your version custom weather.  (Which can be fun as well - creating your own layers or vis for practice)

MB is not  observed live weather but  predicted live weather, still a bit different of custom weather.

1 hour ago, ryanbatcund said:

Exactly!  This thread is dangerous to the sim as a simulation.  

Saying that flight sim doesn't need metar-based weather is like saying that airplanes don't need wings.

I will never understand why on earth it is not okay to just derive METAR from the model data and take that. Those would always be consistent within the sim could be made available to systems like ATC and VATSIM and whatsoever and would not create those incredibly complicated problems, because METAR is one of the worst datasets for creating a worldwide 3d weather depiction. Using METAR for this purpose is a pretty bad idea.

I think we can (eventually) have the best of both worlds.  A number of options.  Once could involve sync'ing the airport's weather to the real world, and then allowing the predictive model to take over.  Another could be going straight-predictive.  Another could be going full-on real world.

There could be some logic built-in to allow for the 10SM vis issue with METARS, where as Ryan mentioned the system could switch to another means to detecting vis, such as cloud cover, temps/dewpoint, or even terrain.  The latter might be pretty complex.  But it would assist in depicting the New York valley cold fog conditions mentioned earlier in this thread.

8 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

If they're going to have "LIVE" weather it needs to be live.  Might as well call your version custom weather.  (Which can be fun as well - creating your own layers or vis for practice)

The problem with this idea is that 'LIVE' RW weather is completely dynamic and even actual METARs have a level of low resolution to them, of course.  As this post aptly framed it it's essentially impossible to replicate to a very high level of accuracy, which means 'LIVE' really is going to always be some level of approximation of reality:  https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/610577-dear-msasobowhy-metar-based-wx-will-not-work/?do=findComment&comment=4668135

 

 

 

47 minutes ago, WestAir said:

Asobo can please us all. Have a toggle between hard-metar-constraints and meteoblue forecasts.

Those of us who want 0 popping and more realistic looking weather can choose meteoblue, those of us who need absolute 1:1 winds and temps for VATSIM / historics can use METARS.

From my understanding as to what has been said in two Q&A's is that the toggle option is obsolete with SU7, as METAR data now are "integrated" (don't ask me for technical details) into the weather model by Meteoblue, meaning the weather as we see it in MSFS now (awful!) is delivered as a package from Meteoblue. Imho this is to appease those who have asked for opening the weather system for "old" METAR based weather programs and have been denied. Therefore we will probably have to live with the chimera we are seeing now and can only hope that there's enough qualified input by the community (Zendesk and the official forums that is) to get it better. Mind you, the night lighting, which is now pretty decent imho, was awful after the first attempt by Asobo" to "improve" it. It took thousands of posts and a year to get it to the current state.

Participate, is all I can say:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/weather-transition-is-not-smooth-after-su7/472467

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/sim-update-7-live-weather-degradation/472486

and more...

1 hour ago, Noel said:

Makes sense--so perhaps this is why Asobo decided to start w/ implementing RW METAR based weather.  For me I'd be happy w/ the popup example above where I could enter any ICAO and see what in-sim weather is at that moment in time.

To add to my knowledge base, seeing the in-sim METAR in a popup as in the example above, what else would you be needing to look at in an EFB for practice/training?  

Basically, a fully modeled in-sim version of Foreflight is what would be needed, and of course that's not happening.  It's much more than just clicking an airport and reading the weather pop-up; wx data factors into every phase of flight planning and execution, and is thus deeply integrated into most of what you'll do with an EFB.

I haven't personally seen issues with violent weatherv transitions or popping, but I believe that it's happening.  There are bugs to work out for sure.  But we know this is doable; other providers have been doing it well for years. 

Regarding the "fog in a valley" example, this is doable as well.  At the real life job, I spend a lot of time doing company custom RNP approaches to SE Alaska airports and some of them are known for this. I used to enjoy taking the PMDG NGx into Juneau with Active Sky weather, and AS handled this. The only problem was with weather depiction in FSX; you couldn't see a fog layer below you and then descend into it.  So you'd be descending in clear air and your vis would tunnel as you got into the fog without being able to see it coming.  But MSFS can show us weather that way. 

Point is, AS could understand local fog in valleys, so it's doable. 

13 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

If they're going to have "LIVE" weather it needs to be live.  Might as well call your version custom weather.  (Which can be fun as well - creating your own layers or vis for practice)

It is simply not possible to build a worldwide 3d weather depiction from METAR data. METAR is NOT the right data source for doing so. For technical and physical reasons. There is no way around that.

Earlier versions of MSFS did not have any sort of a real physical and visual 3d weather simulation. There have been add ons the "faked" that on a flight path by interpolating certain weather conditions between waypoints. But that's a complete different story to what we have now. Again: mixing METAR location based data with forecast data on a 3d grid is a very complicated task even without any flightsim coupled to it.

The MeteoBlue model data have been very good in terms of simulating the real world weather so far. No need to squeeze any additional data in and produce a whole bunch of pretty bad side effects. I understand the problem that some hardcode fans of VATSIM and some other scenarios need consistence between airport weather and the weather information for that airport. Just derive METAR data from the model data and everything is fine. If this is still not enough: Go out and fly in real life I'd say.

How can you ever get an accurate sky depiction above an airport based on METAR?

If the airport has a 100 foot thick of fog laying over it, and METAR is reporting 0 SM VV010 ... how does it know this is only 100 feet thick?  And what layers are above that?

It can't, in real life the only way the tops are known is due to PIREPs.

The only think they could base it off would be guesses around the temperature/dewpoint spreads and temperature decrease with altitude.  But that's all it can be, a total guess.

Before this update Airports were already using METAR data for pressure, temperature and wind. The only stuff it wasn't displaying was precipitation and visibility.

Visibility is very important for flight planning.

1 hour ago, Weatherman said:

I will never understand why on earth it is not okay to just derive METAR from the model data and take that. Those would always be consistent within the sim could be made available to systems like ATC and VATSIM and whatsoever and would not create those incredibly complicated problems, because METAR is one of the worst datasets for creating a worldwide 3d weather depiction. Using METAR for this purpose is a pretty bad idea.

Sure derive it from that but make it accurate.  At least where I fly in the upper midwest of USA, if the METAR says OVC007 - you're almost always going to get cloud bases at 700 ft.  If there's an update, a SPECI will generate and change it.  Or a controller will change it, or the NWS will change it.  So I'm writing about examples where the sim is waaaaay off from what the metar/speci is saying.  If you fly into an airport, and it's scattered at 007 and the metar says OVC....  that's not bad - probably realistic at times as a layer "burns" off.  But if the real world metar says OVC007 and I see SCT040 - that's a huge difference and very annoying to me.  

It's the wrong way trying to push real live data INTO the sim, this won't work since there is no adequate real life data; METARs are not "live" either since they are a mere description of something that could look different from location to location (e.g. scattered or broken clouds) AND most importantly METARs can be almost an hour old. That's not "live" weather in any way.

So instead they should focus on their prediction model which creates are similar weather to real life (though not identical) and then create in-game METARs from the in-game weather, which can be pushed OUT of the sim and then be used by e.g. Simbrief or whatever. This is the only way to have correct METARs worldwide AND have no transitions and other restrictions of pushing real life METAR data into the sim.

Just now, Fiorentoni said:

So instead they should focus on their prediction model which creates are similar weather to real life (though not identical) and then create in-game METARs from the in-game weather, which can be pushed OUT of the sim and then be used by e.g. Simbrief or whatever. This is the only way to have correct METARs worldwide AND have no transitions and other restrictions of pushing real life METAR data into the sim.

No, that goes against why people want METARs. People aren't uploading METARs to flight planners, nor is online networks or other sources using MSFS' weather. They are using the current METAR data to sync across multiple networks, multiple platforms, a single constant everyone can use for an approximation of synchronization, that is the point. Flight Planners like SimBrief are using real world data to feed you flight plans and real world also uses real world data. MSFS isn't going to be the source of data for any of these platforms. 

55 minutes ago, Tom_L said:

From my understanding as to what has been said in two Q&A's is that the toggle option is obsolete with SU7, as METAR data now are "integrated" (don't ask me for technical details) into the weather model by Meteoblue, meaning the weather as we see it in MSFS now (awful!) is delivered as a package from Meteoblue. Imho this is to appease those who have asked for opening the weather system for "old" METAR based weather programs and have been denied. Therefore we will probably have to live with the chimera we are seeing now and can only hope that there's enough qualified input by the community (Zendesk and the official forums that is) to get it better. Mind you, the night lighting, which is now pretty decent imho, was awful after the first attempt by Asobo" to "improve" it. It took thousands of posts and a year to get it to the current state.

Participate, is all I can say:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/weather-transition-is-not-smooth-after-su7/472467

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/sim-update-7-live-weather-degradation/472486

and more...

My understanding is that the INTENT is for Meteoblue to incorporate Metars as additional sample points into their worldwide prediction model.  That is NOT yet what we have in SU7.  The last Q&A said this is still scheduled for next year.

MS/Asobo has been pretty clear that the path towards the ultimate weather model is a multi-step process and this is only part 1.  Until the point that the metar data is helping to drive the entire prediction model there will always be a inconsistency between the two. Once the METAR data is plugged directly into the global weather prediction, the pops and inconsistencies will go away.  It’s really the only way to do so.
 

I think it would be best if we avoid the knee-jerk “sky is falling” reaction every step along the way (pardon the pun).  If the devs had said “tada, this is it” then, yeah, maybe a cause for concern.  For now, improving the weather model is still top on their list and the steps they have laid out to do so make a lot of sense to me.  I’m willing to be patient while the process plays out.  Even now, with its flaws, I find the majority of the atmospheric depiction in MSFS to blow away what I’ve seen anywhere else.  If they pull off what they have planned it will be even better and should make everyone happy.

 

3 hours ago, Noel said:

They will refine it, of course.  Just look at the rest of the project.  It's remarkable they released SU7 in the state they did, but I have less than zero doubts they will fix the big breaks hopefully sooner than later.

I don't see RW METARs as having anything to do with 'flight planning'--what does matters is being able to see what in-sim METARs are for flight planning.  That in-sim does not *perfectly* match RW should have zero do with planning your flight in your simulator.   We want the range of conditions possible and after that it's really academic only to simulate what a 3rd party METAR reader offers.   Something like this for MSFS would be fabulous, even if it did not perfectly match RW METARs:

exactly !