Weather depiction / METAR integration

[Stearmandriver 2,237]

I had an interesting experience the other day, and posted about it at the official forum as that seems where most of the weather discussions take place. Thought some of you here might find this worth reading as well though: 

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/great-live-weather-transition-metar-blending/501594

Basically, it appears there have been significant improvements to weather blending. (Note that this is pre-SU8 and I'm not on the beta.)

[MarcG 2,929]

Conversely I saw what I thought was great live weather, it was foggy on take off and I came through to blue skies, but upon looking out the window I noticed something odd.

So I took the drone cam up to an extreme height, turned to look downwards and saw a "circle" of fog airport the airport. Just off to the east was another "circle" over another airport, but with clear skies in-between.....it looked weird, this using SU7.

I concluded that whilst it was cool in the plane, it wasn't (read still isn't) working any better than prior to SU7 when the blend of live weather was very good.

There's been huge threads in SU7 & 8 betas regarding the live weather depiction with METAR and how it blends to other weather, not in a good way either but Asobo seem reluctant to look at specifics.

Work still to be done.

[177B 730]

A funny thing about airports and fog.

I can't count the number of times in real life I have driven to the airport (many different ones actually) on a beautiful sunny morning only to get to the airport socked in with thick fog. Either having to wait for IFR clearance or wait for fog to clear.

This is because so many airports are in flat low valleys often next to rivers or lakes, exactly where fog forma and stays the longest.

This may not be what you experience but it happens a lot in the real world.

I have many times taken off from airports early in the morning when commercial traffic is grounded because of low RVR (runway visual range), It is really fun you often break out at 100', and sometimes the church spires and flagpoles are in the sun but on the ground you can see less them 50'.

These are intense takeoffs, it can be hard to see the runway stripes even. But very rewarding once in the sun and cancelling IFR because of CAVU skies and 100 mile visibility.

Having to land at an airport that is socked in is hard too when only the last 500' vertical is socked in and poor visibility, this takes a lot of concentration and often use of an alternate airport until the fog clears.