MSFS Weather Engine

[Weatherman 193]

9 hours ago, aktorsyl said:

Very interesting. Almost as if the models refresh around that time and then just use AI to "guess" what they need to do until the next daily refresh the next morning. (Totally just a guess here, though)

It makes me even wonder if this is something in the data feed coming from MeteoBlue and not a bug within the sim at all? Maybe they do some sort of interpolation or AI between the full hours and there is something wrong with that server side? Anyway, I will try to reproduce that with my setup the next days or so. This is really interesting.

[aktorsyl 93]

36 minutes ago, Weatherman said:

It makes me even wonder if this is something in the data feed coming from MeteoBlue and not a bug within the sim at all? Maybe they do some sort of interpolation or AI between the full hours and there is something wrong with that server side? Anyway, I will try to reproduce that with my setup the next days or so. This is really interesting.

We should start invoicing Asobo for the kind of weird testing we have to do for them 😅

[jcomm 5,889]

2 hours ago, aktorsyl said:

We should start invoicing Asobo for the kind of weird testing we have to do for them 😅

🤣

[Weatherman 193]

6 hours ago, UAL4life said:

Why can Active Sky do it with less resources than MS/Asobo? Please. The weather in this sim gets worse and worse. And it’s the number one thing that ruins it for me 😞

Same here, but actually it is more or less the fact that I know it could be much better because it has been in the past. That is what drives me crazy about this. If it had been like today from the start I probably would not even think about it.

[aktorsyl 93]

7 hours ago, UAL4life said:

Why can Active Sky do it with less resources than MS/Asobo? Please. The weather in this sim gets worse and worse. And it’s the number one thing that ruins it for me 😞

The thing is, I'm not entirely convinced that would be better. ActiveSky has always used METAR interpolation and (as far as I know) not weather models to depict weather outside of METAR zones.

[abrams_tank 7,387]

48 minutes ago, aktorsyl said:

The thing is, I'm not entirely convinced that would be better. ActiveSky has always used METAR interpolation and (as far as I know) not weather models to depict weather outside of METAR zones.

My understanding is that METAR only covers a small zone around the airport.  So outside the airport zones, what does Active Sky do for weather?  And how is Active Sky outside the METAR zones (ie. outside the airport zones) better than MSFS live weather?

[aktorsyl 93]

9 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

My understanding is that METAR only covers a small zone around the airport.  So outside the airport zones, what does Active Sky do for weather?  And how is Active Sky outside the METAR zones (ie. outside the airport zones) better than MSFS live weather?

Well that's what I'm saying 😛 ActiveSky only interpolates between METAR stations and while this was fine in P3D, I don't think it'd be nearly as good as MSFS live weather in that regard. Even with MSFS's live weather failings.

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by aktorsyl

[abrams_tank 7,387]

2 minutes ago, aktorsyl said:

Well that's what I'm saying 😛 ActiveSky only interpolates between METAR stations and while this was fine in P3D, I don't think it'd be nearly as good as MSFS live weather in that regard. Even with MSFS's live weather failings.

 

Thanks. I have seen so many discussions here in the MSFS forum of P3D users telling me how Active Sky is superior to MSFS live weather.  But that's sounds inferior to MSFS live weather, if Active Sky doesn't do a good job of covering the area outside of METAR zones.

[jcomm 5,889]

If I weight all of the pros & cons of MFS online weather, I have to admit it is so far the best weather experience I have had in any of the flight simulators I used in the last 26+ years...

Now, XP12 hasn't been relesased yet, so my verdict about the best weather model can still shift... Although MFS weather isn't finished and Sébastien has mentioned additional features that can make it even better...

Edited September 1, 2022 by jcomm

[B777ER 2,484]

50 minutes ago, jcomm said:

Sébastien has mentioned additional features that can make it even better...

A while ago, it was him or Jorg (sp?) that mentioned something about how they can do things with satellites and live weather. I would surmise he is talking about a near real time cloud cover in the sim to mimic what it actually looks like outside by way of visible and IR satellite data feed. 

Edited September 1, 2022 by B777ER

[lwt1971 7,342]

Details from recent Q&A on additional weather engine enhancements coming in SU11 (also impacting flight dynamics engine):

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/live-dev-q-a-may-25th-2022/521293/2
 

Forums question – Could you explain what factors are currently taken into account in the thermal updraft model, and what are the future plans for realistic soaring weather? - Timestamp

Seb – In Sim Update 9, it computes the number of watts of energy received by the sun, which will depend on whether it’s day or night, how high the sun is in the sky, how thick of an atmosphere is crossed by the sunlight, if it’s humid, if there’s haze, if there are clouds. So there’s an amount of watts remaining that hits the ground at a certain angle. Then you know how much energy you get. Then, it calculates all sorts of things like how much energy is reflected, how much is kept. This transforms into heat. And then you know how much your ground is heating up. When your ground is significantly warmer than the air, it builds up hot air, which then wants to go up. And here, you have your thermals. Right now, this is Sim Update 9. What we are adding with Sim Update 10 is to make this a little bit more comfortable. We are blending in the wind factor, so that when you have absolutely zero wind, you will get fewer thermals. I know there have been a lot of requests when we added thermals, “Hey, I’m putting wind to 0 or just 1. How come I get so many thermals?” When you have low wind speeds, the thermals are going to be much less than before. If you want strong thermals, put at least 5 knots of wind or something. You don’t have to put a lot, just not close to zero. We also make the turbulence a little weaker at high altitudes (20,000 feet and above). You will see fewer thermals in Sim update 10. You will see more gusts, however, so be careful!

Something we are currently working on that will not be for Sim Update 10: The problem with this system is that it works very locally and generates local thermals that don’t combine when they go up. The air that goes up somewhere else needs to go back down. It doesn’t create any vortices, turbulence on the side of thermals, anything like that yet. So there’s research work going on that took the CFD of the airplanes and expanded that 20-ish km around the plane. So that’s a really, very, very, very big CFD running and it goes pretty high as well. And we hope that sometime this year, we’ll to get that to simulate the airflows in the atmosphere to get nicer updrafts that can combine so that only bigger fields get updrafts when you go higher up, that you get vortices with air going back down, and all sorts of different local wind effects that we don’t really get from live weather. Live weather gives us wind gusts and direction, but it’s something a bit more for the area.

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by lwt1971

[ckyliu 1,749]

17 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

METARS are normally updated r/w once per hour, but will be taken more often if conditions are rapidly changing. The standard observations are normally transmitted at about 53 minutes past the hour, and are available within a few minutes on the WMO data feed.

That just isn't true, METARs are more commonly issued half hourly xx20 and xx50 (sometimes xx00 and xx30). Here's some from around the globe, only Abu Dhabi, Harare and Calgary were doing hourly out of my random sample of 11, everyone else was 30 minutes:

 

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by ckyliu

[Krakin 5,728]

41 minutes ago, B777ER said:

A while ago, it was him or Jorg (sp?) that mentioned something about how they can do things with satellites and live weather. I would surmise he is talking about a near real time cloud cover in the sim to mimic what it actually looks like outside by way of visible and IR satellite data feed. 

I'm pretty sure is was Jorg speaking in that instance. He mentioned something about high resolutions and I think that had to do with how accurate and true to life the weather will be, as you mentioned.

[abrams_tank 7,387]

1 hour ago, lwt1971 said:

Something we are currently working on that will not be for Sim Update 10: The problem with this system is that it works very locally and generates local thermals that don’t combine when they go up. The air that goes up somewhere else needs to go back down. It doesn’t create any vortices, turbulence on the side of thermals, anything like that yet. So there’s research work going on that took the CFD of the airplanes and expanded that 20-ish km around the plane. So that’s a really, very, very, very big CFD running and it goes pretty high as well. And we hope that sometime this year, we’ll to get that to simulate the airflows in the atmosphere to get nicer updrafts that can combine so that only bigger fields get updrafts when you go higher up, that you get vortices with air going back down, and all sorts of different local wind effects that we don’t really get from live weather. Live weather gives us wind gusts and direction, but it’s something a bit more for the area.

Does anybody know if any of the other competing simulators does this, or if there is an add-on in the competing simulators that does this?  Or will this be a first for a home market flight simulator when MSFS implements this 20 kilometer CFD around the aircraft?

I want to say this looks like ground breaking technology for a flight simulator, but maybe it has been done before.  If anybody know more about this, please post your answer in this thread.  Thanks!

Edited September 1, 2022 by abrams_tank

[Krakin 5,728]

So um....I just saw a 10hr time lapse video of a certain unreleased sim and all I'm gonna say is some of you need to apologize to Asobo because bruhhhhhhhhh lol