Over the last 2 weeks or so, I've been noticing some crazy wind shifts. Last night for example, It went from a 100+ knot headwind to a 50 knot tailwind and then back to 100 knot headwind again within around 30 seconds. I've also noticed it during approaches too with 20 to 30 knot sudden shifts not uncommon. I've been using MSFS full time for just over a year and for me, the last 2 weeks has been the worst when using live weather. Anyone else been noticing the same thing?

What I notice almost all the time is that with live weather winds are 5-10 knots higher then what the METAR says...sometimes even 20 knots.

Just landed on an airport that i looked the METAR up shortly before final and it said no wind at all but in MSFS i had 25 knots!

If you are talking about winds aloft, I generally get abrupt wind changes when the flight is around or more than 3hours long. Don't know why. It happens 100% of the time. 

5 hours ago, james42 said:

Anyone else been noticing the same thing?

Yes, I have noticed this but I have only been flying high the last two weeks in this sim since I bought my beloved 737 again and considering this behavior has been in every sim I have ever used I have not thought much of it. Also, because I have not been flying high until now in this sim I have no idea if it was better before.

 

5 hours ago, wiggum said:

What I notice almost all the time is that with live weather winds are 5-10 knots higher then what the METAR says...sometimes even 20 knots.

This I have noticed the last couple days.

2 hours ago, Jeeeno said:

If you are talking about winds aloft, I generally get abrupt wind changes when the flight is around or more than 3hours long. Don't know why. It happens 100% of the time. 

Seems to be closer to the 90 minute mark for me. Once it starts, its relentless. Constantly going from overspeed then back into the stick shaker isn't much fun at all!

 

1 hour ago, Jazz said:

Yes, I have noticed this but I have only been flying high the last two weeks in this sim since I bought my beloved 737 again and considering this behavior has been in every sim I have ever used I have not thought much of it. Also, because I have not been flying high until now in this sim I have no idea if it was better before.

 

I've been flying the 737 too after spending a lot of time in the A310. I'm noticing the PMDG 737 seems to be more susceptible to severe wind shifts than the default A310. I've never really had any problems with winds in any sim apart from MSFS. 

flying below 8,000' in the 172 G1000 I consistently see winds >25 knots from directions that are >90° off from what I specified, prior to takeoff but with the plane on the runway. In the Weather pull down I see 8 knots gusting to 12 knots at 5,000' AGL.  I pull down the Wx tab and verify the settings remain the same as previously specified.  I then make a very small change in the Wx tab and subsequent winds in the Sim flight are as I specified. 

Well I see I'm not alone -- recently on approach to EYVI (Vilnius, Lithuania) I had the high-altitude winds follow me down to low level -- I was getting 51 knots from 270 on approach, which was ridiculous, and these were the same winds I was getting around top-of-descent.   Then a couple of nm out winds started rapidly switching back and forth from 51 kts/270 to 8 knots at 190 which is pretty close to what was reported.

Needless to say I had to go around.  

On my second approach it still shifted, but not in a rapid-fire manner as it had before.  I was able to get the airplane down, but I wasn't pleased with the sim.  Hopefully this is a temporary phenomenon...

Also, I had the same happen at high altitude a couple of days before this.  At least at high alt it wasn't as critical.  On approach is a really bad time.

Is there any talk of them fixing the winds in the next update?

2 hours ago, wiggum said:

Is there any talk of them fixing the winds in the next update?

hope so its getting a little annoying now 

There is a large area of high pressure over Spain. Locate to Madrid - LEMD - and check winds there. Central pressure at 11:00 GMT is 1035hPa.

Winds should be light and variable. METAR: LEMD 041130Z 32001KT CAVOK 08/02 Q1035 NOSIG

Posting here about it gets zero visibility from Asobo. You all need to be on the official forums saying this or don’t expect anything done about them.

I have not seen “crazy” wind shifts near the ground, but I have seen them in upper winds. For me, it is not time-dependent but location dependent. I was flying from Austin, TX to San Diego last Sunday, ( New Year’s Day), and it happened over western Arizona. I was just south of Phoenix at the time. Not only wind direction and velocity. but air pressure and temperature also instantly changed

I was level at FL360, and the wind changed from 233 at 49 to 280 at 90, the air temperature went up 10 degrees and my altitude instantly dropped almost 1000 feet, indicating a substantial change in ambient pressure.

I was flying on Vatsim, and was in contact with Albuquerque center. There were three other aircraft on the network about 50 miles north of me, all flying from KPHX to KLAX, and all evidently using MSFS. Shortly after I experienced the shift, I heard two of the other flights calling the VATSIM controller to report that they had just hit a big wind/altitude shift and were working their way back to their assigned altitudes.

Right around the time I crossed the Colorado river, the wind, temperature and pressure suddenly shifted back to what they were before.

I don’t know if this is something that Asobo can easily address, as it appears to be a problem with the MeteoBlue model import into Microsoft’s servers, which (I believe) is handled by Azure. 

As I understand, the simulated atmosphere is divided into discrete “cells” horizontally and vertically, and those cells are filled with temperature, pressure, wind and cloud data from the MeteoBlue model. I suspect that what happened was that the “cell” I was flying in contained old data from a previous model run that, (for whatever reason), did not get updated. I think this is probably the cause of most sudden wind shifts - at least at higher altitudes.

I had printed out my SimBrief flight plan which contained the predicted winds aloft for each waypoint of my route. SimBrief uses the NOAA GFS model. From KAUS all the way to Arizona, the Live Weather winds were very close to the Simbrief prediction. It was only that area in western Arizona where things went sour.

I don’t think it was a case of “corrupt” MeteoBlue data as much as “old” MeteoBlue data (from a previous model run) in that particular location.

Edited January 4, 20233 yr by JRBarrett

All week I have been trying to fly SAT-SEA but every time over Colorado I hit a very violent wind shift and this is somewhat like hitting a brick wall.  It literally breaks the Fenix A320 and I either need to make an emergency landing or just reset it and try it again.  Ironically seems to be almost the same exact same spot every time. 

The violent wind shifts are nothing new but occasionally only haunted your flight every once in a great while but lately its almost every flight.  Probably a bi product of the crazy weather patterns for reals as interpreted by MSFS.  

5 hours ago, B777ER said:

Posting here about it gets zero visibility from Asobo. You all need to be on the official forums saying this or don’t expect anything done about them.

Just checked the official forums, and there is a topic ongoing regarding the erratic wind behavior with many experiencing the same thing. It seems to have picked up a bit more traction over the last few weeks so hopefully Asobo has taken note.

 

9 hours ago, wiggum said:

Is there any talk of them fixing the winds in the next update?

There needs to be a hotfix, it cant wait for for the next sim update. The sim is becoming unflyable at higher altitudes when using live weather.

And this is yet another reason why me and some other simmers wish that MSFS opens itself up to 3rd party developers when it comes to weather. The visuals may be impressive in certain situations, but there are other factors at play that are important for airliner flights, such as high accuracy and smooth transitions for wind, temperature and pressure. The guys at Hifi, who make Active Sky, have been delivering it for almost 10 years since the release of "Active Sky Next" for FSX and P3D!  In terms of visuals, MSFS has surely come a long way, but experiencing a problem like the crazy wind shifts (or abrupt pressure changes) with live weather feels backward. If a 3rd party add-on had this issue, at least you could contact the developers, and they would focus on fixing it without having to bother Microsoft/Asobo.