For those of you in the Beta, have you noticed any improvements in weather depiction/accuracy? As you all know, the changelog was pretty vague about what was actually done but on my end, after a couple of flights, the only thing I've noticed so far is a possible bump in the resolution of clouds. They didn't look bad before but they seem to be a little sharper now. Anying you guys have seen that I missed?

Tried it today and it was spot on based on local METAR and ecmwf grib data .

When possible I want to test again the thermals.

Edited March 5, 20233 yr by cagarini

Have they fixed the METAR "bubbles" in the beta? Does my nut in that issue!

12 hours ago, Krakin said:

the only thing I've noticed so far is a possible bump in the resolution of clouds.

If so that is very good news.  To me the primary problem w/ cloud depiction is low resolution, over and above anything else.  We have the hardware now to easily cope with more resolution so I hope you're right, even if it's a modest change it may be showing they're starting to experiment with higher resolution.   2.5y ago my older RTX 2070 Super could almost always manage Ultra clouds at 3440x1440 so yes, there is now room more than ever for high resolution clouds.

From the forums under beta discussion per Jane:

Hello! I was able to get addition information. I added them to the release notes but here are the weather changes:

General Live Weather improvements

Live Weather now uses server time instead of local time to avoid inconsistent or no live weather

Date of METAR files is now checked before ingesting the data to avoid replacing current METARs with out of date METARs in case of CDN issues, this also reduces bandwidth usage

Fixed an issue that would potentially stop the game from retrieving clouds

Fixed an issue where incorrect weather was injected while retrieving new data, potentially causing abrupt wind and pressure changes as well as cloud popping

IMO no actual cloud improvement as far as looks / resolution IMO - but the clouds are seemingly where they should be (perhaps not correct height, thickness or type just like past SU's). Just the same old cumulus puffs everywhere though. No variety, but accuracy is better.

The grid look of the clouds is still horrible, only visible flying high altitude, nobody bothers with that?

32 minutes ago, highflyerbel said:

The grid look of the clouds is still horrible, only visible flying high altitude, nobody bothers with that?

I have seen solid cloud cover from high altitude many times in Live Weather that has no hint of a gridded pattern - but sometimes it does.

Why would you assume that if the clouds have a “grid” look that it is a bug? Grid patterns happen all the time in r/w weather - especially in unstable air behind a cold front. Here are a couple of examples taken just minutes ago from the GOES EAST weather satellite. One is over Colorado, the other over Pennsylvania.

Gridded patterns can appear in FSX and P3D because both sims use “canned” textures to create clouds, and those textures can definitely form repeated patterns when trying to create an overcast.

MSFS does not use textures. The clouds are dynamically created from data in the weather model. If it appears to form a pattern (which does not happen all the time), it is probably because the model data calls for it.

1 hour ago, JRBarrett said:

I have seen solid cloud cover from high altitude many times in Live Weather that has no hint of a gridded pattern - but sometimes it does.

Why would you assume that if the clouds have a “grid” look that it is a bug? Grid patterns happen all the time in r/w weather - especially in unstable air behind a cold front. Here are a couple of examples taken just minutes ago from the GOES EAST weather satellite. One is over Colorado, the other over Pennsylvania.

Gridded patterns can appear in FSX and P3D because both sims use “canned” textures to create clouds, and those textures can definitely form repeated patterns when trying to create an overcast.

MSFS does not use textures. The clouds are dynamically created from data in the weather model. If it appears to form a pattern (which does not happen all the time), it is probably because the model data calls for it.

The difference being in MSFS it is actually a grid (or reflective of) that looks computerised, as opposed to what it could and perhaps should look like in those pics you posted.

 

Edit: this thread has pictures that illustrate my post perfectly, the repeated pattern is what's discernable from real life here

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/repeating-cloud-shapes-in-live-weather/533054

Edited March 5, 20233 yr by MarcG