Any 3rd party weather addon is going to have downfalls and limitations as the weather API simply isn't open enough or at all for them to do what they could do in P3D or X-Plane 11. As MSFS/Asobo have no intentions of opening it up then I don't think these programs are going to be that amazing I'm afraid. Unless you really hated the way MSFS does weather then maybe this is an option. 

As long as the MSFS weather system is closed for 3rd party devs it is impossible for a weather addon to improve what we already have. The weather will look a bit different at best but since the weather looks a bit different automatically every day already, or even every hour, I see no use in spending money on any of the current weather addons, including this one. All of the currently available weather addons in fact make things look or work worse imho. Add the bad rep of this dev and the high price and the choice extremely easy. I seriously wonder if this addon actually does something at all apart from simply changing what's there already.

I myself would never buy an addon that makes things look a bit different and that's it. If it doesn't come with new or improved functionality I see no reason why U would spend money on it.

 

3 minutes ago, Zangoose said:

Any 3rd party weather addon is going to have downfalls and limitations as the weather API simply isn't open enough or at all for them to do what they could do in P3D or X-Plane 11. As MSFS/Asobo have no intentions of opening it up then I don't think these programs are going to be that amazing I'm afraid. Unless you really hated the way MSFS does weather then maybe this is an option. 

You beat me to it. I am a slow typer. 😉

Edited October 26, 20223 yr by tup61

4 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

I would guess global or maybe in radius, just like what we had in P3D and XP 

Thanks for the answer.  I also saw this response, which appears to be coming from an XEnviro dev (I am not 100% sure if it's an XEnviro dev, but it appears to be, based on how the answer is worded):

Quote

That is a very good question.  As you know, there are vast areas of the earth on which there are no nearby METAR stations such as over open oceans, large deserts, the interior of Africa and S. America, China, Australia, Russia, etc.  There are also areas in which METAR data is either unavailable for political reasons (N. Korea) or areas in which METAR data is outdated or inactive part of the year due to weather (northern Canada, Russia, China) or because data is not broadcast in a regular time increment such as military bases that only operate during active operation or training sessions.  That makes it very tricky to maintain current and accurate coverage over all routes that we fly in our virtual world.

There are a couple of things that we do to maintain the best possible accuracy and realism.  Outdated or inactive stations are ignored if they fall behind or are silent.  We check every international METAR station update cycle (3-4 times a year) and update the METAR station access list, adding new stations, removing old ones.  We try to maintain appropriate distances and averages between active stations, and xEnviro blends the transitions between them.  If we have several very close stations, we may give priority to the dominant station (i.e. large commercial airports may overwrite smaller airports on an approach path for example.)  There are a number of other techniques that are used to smooth boundaries, especially when "nearest" weather conditions may be hundreds of miles away and very different.  The real world is analog, X-Plane world is digital and blending and smoothing is necessary to avoid sudden "jerk" changes.

So to answer your question directly (this may be more information than you wanted) if you are flying over dense population areas such as Europe, the U.S, etc. then your weather should be very close to real world even though the airport at which you are flying may be using a very near station.  KJFK, KLGA, KEWR are all on top of one another, for example, so you may be seeing slight differences depending on your flight path but they will be very very close if not the same.  Real world weather has boundaries and edges as well.  We constantly fine tune these transitions and boundaries as we receive information to help us.

If you are comparing xEnviro weather with some other virtual online weather source, be aware that the other source may be using different computer algorithms to guess or transition between weather areas so there may be occasional discrepancies between sources.  xEnviro weather is always current date/time cycle.  Other weather sources, X-Plane included, may often be one cycle late.  You can tell which is most current by the METAR data string heading..

Finally, if you are in an area in which weather does not seem appropriate, send us a ticket at the xenviro.net web site and we will check it out.  Often when a stations goes "dark" and out of date, users are the first to find it before the METAR station update comes out and we will fix it very quickly.  We value this feedback.  Our METAR data coverage is dynamic and downloaded at appropriate intervals automatically to all users when the new update is loaded on the servers. 

So add-ons that are based on METAR like XEnviro, will interpolate the weather between METAR stations?

That sounds doesn't sound like as good of a solution that MSFS live weather is using. Of course, using MeteoBlue weather data outside the METAR radius, would be more accurate than trying to interpolate the weather between METAR stations.

4 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

That sounds doesn't sound like as good of a solution that MSFS live weather is using. Of course, using MeteoBlue weather data outside the METAR radius, would be more accurate than trying to interpolate the weather between METAR stations.

That is what we are saying, those kind of applications are bringing the sim backward to the age of the garbage injection weather. It doesn't need further science and hence that is why many of us are saying, such an addon is pure money grab.

Edited October 26, 20223 yr by omarsmak30

It's an obvious cash grab, people will buy it nonetheless. 42 bucks cash grab for devs whose market is falling apart.

45 minutes ago, Zangoose said:

Any 3rd party weather addon is going to have downfalls and limitations as the weather API simply isn't open enough or at all ...

I don't think Asobo could release a weather API even if they wanted to.

The simple fact is that they are still working on the base atmospherics as evidenced by the changes in SU10 and 11. They can't possibly release an API for anything being changed as frequently as the weather system in MSFS. The minute they release it, it would be obsolete. 

I think they're going in the right direction, so I'll live with what they give us and see where it goes.

I've flown every version ever released. I can say for sure that this version has the best default weather engine. Overall, I'm happy. And patient. 

42 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

That is what we are saying, those kind of applications are bringing the sim backward to the age of the garbage injection weather. It doesn't need further science and hence that is why many of us are saying, such an addon is pure money grab.

Ahh, thanks. Yeah, I think using MeteoBlue outside of the METAR areas is a very good solution that the MSFS team has come up with (plus, it's not cheap too because they gotta pay MeteoBlue).

Tup61 and rka state what I would say. I just don’t see the benefit of modifying the weather that looks pretty darn immersive in my eyes!

I used xE in XP-11

Pro's in XP-11
Better than default wx or SkyMaxx Pro (more realistic with clouds thouching the horizon which default or skymax never does/did)

Con's in XP-11
approx 70 euros
dramatic FPS drop
did not work in VR
No cirrus clouds
Repetitive cloudshapes
incompatible with FlyWithLua

 

Edited October 26, 20223 yr by avhpilot

XEnviro is bringing old tech to a new platform = epic fail.

Even Mr Kok is telling (https://fselite.net/content/xenviro-2020-released-for-msfs/?nsl_bypass_cache=f7e4d867b57ea6aaf42f6db6d29f9929) Magnus his product is a cash grab 😆

 

Quote

Mathijs Kok

3 hours ago

 

Magnus, I respect that but I don't think your words were twisted very much. Your statement was very clear, there were financial problems and thus you were forced to release a product that you would not have done if there were no financial problems. So you spend two weeks to create a product and are asking a very serious amount of money for it. 

That is your choice. Telling potential customers has also been your choice. Now you seem surprised potential customers actually have read the comment. 

I would love to know how you can develop and test a complex product like this in such a short period. We need seriously more time for even a simple airfield DLC that is just loaded and not 'plugged' into the simulator. 

You call it 'echo chambers of haters'. I call it people who like to know how you managed it. I am one of those. I have close to three decades of experience in doing FS DLC, and while many people disagree, I think I know what I am talking about. Setting up a serious beta test for a project like this would take us around 4 days (getting the right testers, link them to the coms channels, insert them in the bug tracking system), letting them do some serious test would take a few weeks while you gather the comments and fix issues. Then you make a RC and have that tested on at least 10 systems so you know it does not crash on a system where the user name includes an umlaut (urghhh).  

For a release like this I would demand 6 weeks of testing and would not sign of on it if I do not get that period. And I would still expect pretty serious issues. 

So when you say you created a product worth 42 dollar in two weeks (even if you are recycling code), I am one of the people who wonder how that could be done. How it can be worth that money. How many people really want 12 days of historical weather. 

Mathijs

 

15 minutes ago, omarsmak30 said:

Even Mr Kok is telling (https://fselite.net/content/xenviro-2020-released-for-msfs/?nsl_bypass_cache=f7e4d867b57ea6aaf42f6db6d29f9929) Magnus his product is a cash grab 😆

 

 

Kok: Pot to Kettle, come in, Kettle.

 

Still wouldn't buy xE for any platform.

Edited October 27, 20223 yr by cmorg

Wow!
This is a phrase for the books:

”The Echo Chambers of Haters”

 

 

I read these posts and I read the posts at FSElite.  Wow is right.

I've decided not to purchase the product.

Thank you everyone for keeping this thread on track 🙂

44 minutes ago, cmorg said:

Kok: Pot to Kettle, come in Kettle.

Mathijs isn't wrong though...