8 hours ago, AnkH said:

You are aware that we do not talk about accuracy here? It is freaking 22°C in NZ now, yet the sim displays snow coverage and frozen lakes... freaking ridiculous and immersion breaking as hell. Unless you always fly with weather presets...

I get it, but what I'm saying is the sim is pulling in meteoblue snow depth data and the the meteoblue snow depth map is showing snow in NZ on the west coast opposite Christchurch.  There seems to be a few glaciers in the area such as the fox glacier and the franz josef glacier, so having snow and ice in that area may be correct in the higher elevations.

49 minutes ago, slashed2 said:

I get it, but what I'm saying is the sim is pulling in meteoblue snow depth data and the the meteoblue snow depth map is showing snow in NZ on the west coast opposite Christchurch.  There seems to be a few glaciers in the area such as the fox glacier and the franz josef glacier, so having snow and ice in that area may be correct in the higher elevations.

New Zealand is a particularly complex and challenging climate for something like the sim weather.

Huge variations of climate can be found just kilometres apart.

Such as it being very wet on the west coast of the south island to almost arid dry areas in the north.

Huge swathes of the south island are officially categorised as Polar throughout the whole year with permafrost and glaciers.

I am not doubting their are issues with the sim weather and with the frozen lakes, but what @AnkH has said is too simplistic to cover what the problem is. It absolutely can be 22 degrees in New Zealand with visible snow and frozen lakes.

It won't help anyone feel any better about it; but this stuff is extremely complex and no one has tried this before. Not only do the devs have to understand this diverse climate but they also have to construct it within a virtual world and make it work with ever other data point they have. That's just one region too.

1 hour ago, slashed2 said:

I get it, but what I'm saying is the sim is pulling in meteoblue snow depth data and the the meteoblue snow depth map is showing snow in NZ on the west coast opposite Christchurch.  There seems to be a few glaciers in the area such as the fox glacier and the franz josef glacier, so having snow and ice in that area may be correct in the higher elevations.

You're right, the map of Meteoblue shows some snow in the area in which one of the screenshots on the other forum was taken.

I think this is a bug or corrupted data or whatever you wanna call it on the part of Meteoblue, because it only shows when you zoom out.

When you zoom in it disappears instead of getting more fine-grained like it normally does, as can be seen in these images:

What's more interesting than the bug, I think, is that this suggests that the sim doesn't draw in the most detailed data available. The question is, what data (i.e. what level of detail) does it draw in? 

Aboso really need to get off their butts and get Seasons fully integrated into the game as promised as a priority for them!

 

We have 3rd party individuals releasing seasons so there's no excuse for them to get this done at this point in my opinion!

2 hours ago, Kilo60 said:

We have 3rd party individuals releasing seasons so there's no excuse for them to get this done at this point in my opinion!

In my opinion they should take their time and do it right and not in a „half-###ed“ way, as the head of MSFS used to put it (words that have rung in my ears many times over the last 18 months…). I can imagine that doing seasons is quite a complex undertaking.

Let’s take snow for example. To look really convincing we need:

- more detailed coverage (see my post above)

- less abrupt transitions between snow and no snow (more detail in coverage might already do the trick)

- accurate ice coverage on water bodies (for the sea Meteoblue have quite accurate data, for rivers and lakes it‘s probably a bit more complicated. Making it dependent on temperature might be an easy solution) 

- cleared and partly cleared roads

- snow effects on windscreens (+ wiper effects)

- volumetric/dynamic snow (leaving tracks etc)

- steep rocks (and vertical walls in photogrammetry areas) shouldn‘t be covered with snow (this one might be difficult to achieve)

And the list goes on. And that‘s just snow. 

Edited January 18, 20224 yr by Shack95

Yes, this word not allowed statement of not doing things half-backed but rather correct. Ridiculous statement considering the vast amount of half-baked stuff currently in MSFS, but that is a different story. 

Regarding snow cover: I seriously do not see it that difficult, as meteoblue really provides a very, very good solution with their snow coverage map in the highest resolution. Why not simply USE the stuff their partners already provide? Your other points are far less relevant in my point of view, but I am aware that this is again fully individual:

- transistion is done fine in my eyes, on certain occasions it is to abrupt, but I can live with this.

- water bodies: for lakes, I would seriously prefer a solution without any ice coverage at all, as we had in the old sims. Sure, this would then look strange in those regions where you actually have frozen lakes, but well... OR: simply restrict frozen lakes by latitude and altitude. I would assume that like this, the amount of "wrongly" covered lakes with ice could be reduced dramatically if you for example just restrict frozen lakes to latitudes above 60° in Europe and altitude above 1500m. Sure, in Asia and America, you would need slightly different numbers, but I am pretty sure that would be possible, as we also have biomes for e.g. resulting in different flora around the world. So if Asobo now tells me that they can control several hundred biomes to get vegetation variable but not continent-based differences in ice coverage for lakes, I would simply shake my head in pure disbelief...

- cleared and partly cleared roads: one of the things I have ZERO, absolutely ZERO understanding how this is still in the sim 18 months after release. Seriously, this can for SURE not be difficult to tell the sim that each and every road is free of snow? Again, with this "solution", you would still have some roads displayed wrong because they actually ARE snow covered, but come on, either you get 95% wrong (as we have now), or you get 5% wrong (when all roads are free of snow). Which approach should you take? NO understanding why they took the 95% wrong approach...

- snow effects on windscreens: no need for me currently, of course it would be nice, but this is really not a priority to me. Same goes for volumetric snow with leaving tracks etc.

- steep rocks shouldn't be covered with snow: I agree, this would look way better in the Alps for example. However, if above stuff would be solved (at least for the Alps), I could EASILY get along with snow covered steep rocks. 

But then, all of this is just my opinion. Some might put the priority completely different.