It's been half a year since 5.3 came out

[Juliett Alfa Romeo 540]

I think that 24 or... idk, 36/48 hours of data enough.

[BlueStar 323]

19 hours ago, Multisim said:

So you, the serious flight sim guys who are all about procedures and system realism rather than visuals, base your opinion that MSFS is a toy for kids on the fact that it looks toy plane like on Youtube. Alright then.

From a post I made earlier on this thread.

" Having played "you bet your job" in Level-D simulators, I can assure you that MSFS is just a toy.  😉"

Bode

[neilhewitt 493]

37 minutes ago, Juliet Alpha said:

I think that 24 or... idk, 36/48 hours of data enough.

Honestly, I disagree. I'd like 365 days. If it's the depths of winter in the UK where I live, I would like to be able to fly out of EGLC in realistic mid-summer weather. I want to fly specific scenarios including weather and static weather isn't good enough for that. ActiveSky can do it in P3D.

Edited June 20, 2022 by neilhewitt

[dave2013 1,130]

8 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

So I want to correct some misinformation in this thread.

You left out an important fact: Asobo will not allow 3rd party devs access to the MSFS weather system.  Have they explained the reason for this?  This kind of protectionist attitude is not healthy for development and improvement of the simulator.  If anything, allowing 3rd party devs to take care of things like this would actually relieve Asobo of the burden of doing it themselves. 

 

3 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

Historical METAR is interesting but I wonder where that data is stored and how much storage space this requires, for the entire world in MSFS.

The data are text or xml files containing metar data.  The storage space required is negligible.

Dave

Edited June 20, 2022 by dave2013

[JesC 88]

6 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

No one has mentioned them yet but I wonder if Hi-Fi can continue to exist when they’re denied access into the MSFS weather engine. Sales of AS must have plummeted. It would be a huge shame were they to go out of business.

Interesting. I have been wondering pretty much the same. Maybe we would some day see a subscription based ActiveSky?? Some other developers have already begun dropping support for P3D; who is next and how soon?

I think ASP3D is probably my most essential add on and I have always wondered how they can maintain suc high levels of development and not be charging more for updates, etc.

I'm just hoping P3D does something that rejuvenates interest and future add on development.

Jesse

[abrams_tank 7,417]

34 minutes ago, dave2013 said:

You left out an important fact: Asobo will not allow 3rd party devs access to the MSFS weather system.  Have they explained the reason for this?  This kind of protectionist attitude is not healthy for development and improvement of the simulator.  If anything, allowing 3rd party devs to take care of things like this would actually relieve Asobo of the burden of doing it themselves. 

Access to the weather system in the SDK is a different topic, and I don't really want to get sucked into that topic.  My reply, from the beginning to the end, was about why historical weather is not a widely sought feature and to shed light on why Jorg asked that question.

[lwt1971 7,411]

Can't help but to chime in here 🙂... I think it's fair to say that the "Overall though, MSFS is a game, a toy and P3D a flight simulator with all its flaws" comment livened up this thread and brought about some response, understandably so since that's a farcical thing to say in June 2022 about MSFS. It's right up there with the other used and abused talking point "it's just all about eye candy!".

I really don't think those who actually call themselves serious simmers can dismiss or trash someone for wanting historical weather. That's all perfectly fine. Any feature or set of features can be make-or-break for simmers, and why should anyone else judge or downplay that. Also, if current needs are met with existing sim setups then no one is out here trying to drag you into the MSFS world 🙂

I did *not* know that the 3rd party add-on in P3D that provides historical weather is only METAR based (unless I read that post wrong earlier in the thread), and that makes sense since that sort of data won't take up so much storage space and can be served up on demand, as opposed to the world-wide live weather and the granularity at which it is processed and served up in MSFS via Meteoblue/etc. And something like that is surely possible technically within MSFS as long as Asobo deems it a high enough priority (although blending that in with live global weather might be challenging). What does P3D + ActiveSky do for outside-METAR areas' historical weather? For whatever reasons including licensing/legal issues, MS/Asobo don't want to open up their weather for writing/modifying by 3rd parties, so that in itself should raise their internal priorities in providing at least METAR-based historical weather. Anyways, just added my vote on that one.

While I'm here and looking at the original topic of this thread, allow me to think out loud that for V6 or some future version of P3D that there could be some sort of a partnership with MS (given their history), and with both MS/Asobo and LM teaming up, a next-gen sim catering to "pro" needs is all the more possible. I wouldn't be at all surprised if MS/Asobo and LM are already discussing.

[dave2013 1,130]

6 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

as opposed to the world-wide live weather and the granularity at which it is processed and served up in MSFS via Meteoblue/etc.

I'm curious as to how else Meteoblue or anyone else could get greater granularity than metar weather station reports?

ActiveSky takes the weather data and does some interpolation and modeling to inject weather for areas where exact weather station data doesn't exist.  It also combines data from multiple weather stations to more accurately render weather conditions for a given location.

Maybe MSFS/Meteoblue do the same thing, but their data is likely not any better than that used by ActiveSky.

Dave

[Ray Proudfoot 8,954]

1 hour ago, BlueStar said:

From a post I made earlier on this thread.

" Having played "you bet your job" in Level-D simulators, I can assure you that MSFS is just a toy.  😉"

Bode

If you want respect from MSFS owners it really isn’t helpful to use such terms. What does it achieve other than annoy them?

If they respond by derailing sensible discussion you can hardly blame them.

Any more mention of a toy will result in the post being hidden as an absolute minimum.

[lwt1971 7,411]

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

I'm curious as to how else Meteoblue or anyone else could get greater granularity than metar weather station reports?

Maybe MSFS/Meteoblue do the same thing, but their data is likely not any better than that used by ActiveSky.

Meteoblue gets data at greater granularity at the global level, so all the areas *outside* METAR coverage have real-world weather data at a more detailed/fine-grained level.. more details: https://content.meteoblue.com/en/specifications/data-sources/weather-simulation-data ... as stated there: "Official and reliable weather stations are scarce, and most of the weather station measurement data is useful only for a radius of 3 to 12 km surrounding the station. This means that less than 1% of the worlds surface is covered by measured data. For the atmosphere, much less measurement data exists. Since weather stations are located unevenly on land surfaces, you will find just a few places with weather stations in the vicinity."

So serving up such fine-grained level of weather data at a global level for previous dates/time-periods will be surely require gobbes of data on a server farm. But that said, Meteoblue seem to suggest they have historical data at their granularity on a global scale ("meteoblue weather simulations, however, cover the whole Earth surface, including the sea and mountainous areas. Therefore, meteoblue can offer forecast and historical data for any place in the world, including the atmosphere above us"), so might be easy for MSFS to access this if licensing can be worked out.
 

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

ActiveSky takes the weather data and does some interpolation and modeling to inject weather for areas where exact weather station data doesn't exist.  It also combines data from multiple weather stations to more accurately render weather conditions for a given location.

I see, so ActiveSky goes by METAR data only and then interpolates dynamically for non-METAR areas? For MSFS to do historical weather based purely on METAR it would have to do the same thing, but due to its client/server based technology they'd have to do something to "exclude" the Meteoblue data that's outside the METAR areas. For now what they do with live weather is to do METAR-based for those specific areas, and then Meteoblue for the rest and do a live blending-in for the transition areas.
 

Edited June 20, 2022 by lwt1971

[d.tsakiris 418]

6 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

so ActiveSky goes by METAR data only

I'd verify that, before a innocent guess turns into a “fact“. Happens all the time.

[lwt1971 7,411]

7 minutes ago, d.tsakiris said:

I'd verify that, before a innocent guess turns into a “fact“. Happens all the time.

That's why I asked it as a question above: "so ActiveSky goes by METAR data only and then interpolates dynamically for non-METAR areas?" 🙂

Based on what @dave2013 says above ("ActiveSky takes the weather data and does some interpolation and modeling to inject weather for areas where exact weather station data doesn't exist.  It also combines data from multiple weather stations to more accurately render weather conditions for a given location"), and what @neilhewitt said before that, it seems to be that the only measured data that ActiveSky uses is METAR/weather-station data? Genuinely curious to know.

[d.tsakiris 418]

Me too, but a quick search and a scan of the first part of the manual didn't reveal anything...

[BlueStar 323]

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

If you want respect from MSFS owners it really isn’t helpful to use such terms. What does it achieve other than annoy them?

Ray,

All I want is reciprocity.  When I visit this forum my only concern is P3d.  🙂  

[bofhlusr 453]

2 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

...both MS/Asobo and LM teaming up, a next-gen sim catering to "pro" needs is all the more possible. I wouldn't be at all surprised if MS/Asobo and LM are already discussing.

Yep. I wouldn't be surprised too if it ended up like so... MS/Asobo/LM vs XP/Google.   Let the "games" begin.

Unfortunately, us older simmers will probably be all dead by then. Only the Xbox generation will get to enjoy the competition between the two teams.