39 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

I would help me to understand what I am missing out on if you would kindly specify exactly what you could bring to the party?

We have hundreds wish list items received from customers regarding MSFS2020, dozens of really good ones, of which we have accomplished many, and feel we can accomplish most of the rest of them, if we had a weather SDK.  We also have thousands, literally thousands of requests in our backlog that we were never able to get to due to limitations in the internal weather system which MSFS2020 eliminated.  We can't discuss our specific feature list for a potential future AS for FS2020 product, but we've been working on quite a lot and have so much we'd love to do if given the chance.

Straight out of the gate with our portable tech simply blocked right now in MSFS2020 due to no weather extensibility, that could be enable on day one if basic weather reading/setting functions were enabled like they were before, and in every other simulator, like being enabled in XP12 right now: we bring mapping, planning, briefing, voice features, historical weather, customized weather areas, comprehensive API for aircraft developer integration, weather data lookup, networked multi-computer capability, mobile companion app, instructor-station usage capability, our weather network with global data collection and modeling, scenarios, comprehensive weather filters including minimums and maximums, weather searching, microbursts, air effects, wake turbulence, advanced precipitation logic and radar modeling, just to name a few things.  There are plenty more.  I'm sure SOMEONE could benefit from at least ONE of these items and I don't see how this harms the simulator or the experience for anyone.

I think it's very obvious there is a demand and request out there, quite a big one, for weather SDK access.  The business/contract/partnership considerations seem to make quite a bit of sense, but the idea that a weather SDK or anything other than an open system is bad for the community and hurts the simulator is something I guess I'll never get my head around.  It's like saying Aircraft add-ons should be banned from SDK because MS/Asobo will stop improving the flight modeling.  That's just absurd IMO.

Edited March 10, 20233 yr by Damian Clark

59 minutes ago, Damian Clark said:

After all this time, it still seems there is a small yet vocal part of the community that remains of the opinion that there is nothing but negatives if a proper weather API is allowed...  that despite any other add-on being the same kind of opportunity, extending one or several aspects of the simulation or content (aircraft, scenery, any other utility), only weather should be "banned".

There's also this belief that having ANY weather add-on allowed would compromise and ruin the weather experience for everyone in the long run.  That somehow allowing an API would prevent any further weather improvement in the default experience.  

It's my opinion that these ideas are misguided, and absolutely hurting the long run experience in many areas, not only weather.  Of course, it's been very hard for us, to be at the top of weather technology in every sim platform including MSFS (I'd say at least part of what we did was actually earned over 20+ years of efforts) to be suddenly shut out and not allowed to participate while nearly the entire market embraced a new platform that we didn't have access to.  While it seemed the general community supported this and wanted us gone, under the guise of the risk that we pose to enabling a decent default weather experience.  All very hard for a very small development team that got in this business, and only stays in this business, because of the reward that making great software and getting great results and hearing about great customer experiences gives us.  Until MSFS2020, every sim engine developer we've worked with has been great, we've had a great relationship built on trust and mutual benefit, and they truly WANTED US on that platform.  MSFS2020 and at least a very vocal part of the community clearly DOES NOT WANT US and that is the main reason we aren't on the platform.  Maybe things will change.  We're open to reconsidering and actively still working on MSFS2020 for quite some time now.

Today, we focus where we're wanted, and where we're encouraged to innovate new features and technologies.  Speaking of which, several things that are in MSFS2020, we debuted many of them, many years ago.  Perhaps, some of our efforts, innovations, and offerings, all enabled by having an open API, isn't really a bad thing.  

 

Very well said.  I've always questioned why people need to be so vocal/textual about "not needing" something.  

I've told people before, no one is holding a gun to anyone's head.  If an individual doesn't want/like it, don't buy it.  If there's a free demo, try it.  

One of the simplest concepts in the world to grasp.  

The fact some people are willing to discard HiFi and AS, like a piece of trash, after building a reputation over 2 decades, along with contributions to add on weather, is even more disrespectful.

Personally, I hope you score sales through the roof.  In XP AND MSFS, if Asobo ever open up the door for 3rd party weather add ons.  

5 minutes ago, GoranM said:

Very well said.  I've always questioned why people need to be so vocal/textual about "not needing" something.  

I've told people before, no one is holding a gun to anyone's head.  If an individual doesn't want/like it, don't buy it.  If there's a free demo, try it.  

One of the simplest concepts in the world to grasp.  

The fact some people are willing to discard HiFi and AS, like a piece of trash, after building a reputation over 2 decades, along with contributions to add on weather, is even more disrespectful.

Personally, I hope you score sales through the roof.  In XP AND MSFS, if Asobo ever open up the door for 3rd party weather add ons.  

It's not a matter of discarding Active Sky like trash. In XP it was a necessary and essential game changer. In MSFS it may be a nice to have addon but it won't be essential. From what Ive read historical weather seems to be the most requested missing weather feature in MSFS.

Just now, jarmstro said:

It's not a matter of discarding Active Sky like trash. In XP it was a necessary and essential game changer. In MSFS it may be a nice to have addon but it won't be essential. From what Ive read historical weather seems to be the most requested missing weather feature in MSFS.

In my entire time of owning X-Plane.  From XP9 to XP12, I've never used a 3rd party weather add on.  Was it necessary for you?  Apparently, yes.  Was it necessary for me?  Not at all.  Is it necessary for MSFS?  You say no.  Others say yes.  

Historical weather isn't the only thing needed. 

You can have your opinion.  I'll have mine.  

31 minutes ago, Noel said:

Damian, can you speak to challenges you have in working w/ the voxel-based cloud structures vis a vis what we had w/ ASN in P3D/FSX?  My sense is the volumetric clouds in MSFS and XP12 are too low in density to afford the kind of complexity needed to depict a large variety of distinct cloud types we would love to see.  Is it even possible at current density levels of what you have to work w/ in XP12 to get the kind of high definition clouds we had in the prior 2D sprite world?  Instead you get this general blurriness,  sometimes like they're out of focus, especially the closer you get to cloud structures, at least in MSFS haven't tried XP12 yet.  Here are two examples of cloud.  XP's not bad, but doesn't hold a candle to the RW clouds below.  What needs to change to get much closer to RW quality cloud depiction, that would almost pass the Cloud Turing Test?  My sense is the base tool you have to work with just isn't capable and that alot of that has to do with density/resolution.

 

Sure.  The problem is performance.  To get the resolution we want at those closer ranges, it will bring the sim to a slide show.  Thus resolution must be kept at a reasonable level (fairly low).  So these procedural volumetric/voxel-based clouds look great at longer ranges and not so great up close.  A hybrid approach where in the near-range distances a 2d rotating billboard sprite of a volumetric cloud structure (ala http://niniane.org/clouds/ from FS9) is utilized, synchronized with and complementary to the longer range clouds, is one way things can improve, increasing near resolution while keeping performance and full 3d volumetric appearance.  We dabbled in this a bit a few years ago with mixed results that did not make it to market.  Our strengths were with data, delivery and depiction curation vs. actual graphics/drawing, so we left this to the sim platforms.  They are all doing fantastic here, with MSFS2020 really raising the bar.  It's really a shame we can't join in on the fun there.  But XP is really catching up, improving fast, and who knows what else is around the corner?  There's plenty to be excited about all around, and I'm sure we'll see some of this hybrid cloud methodology or other new solutions soon enough.

Edited March 10, 20233 yr by Damian Clark

10 minutes ago, mmcmah said:

I really don't see why there are so many people hell bent on keeping the sim at its purest form and not allow #3.

If I had my druthers I'd prefer to have a turnkey built-in solution to such a huge component of the simulator, the "weather" as it were, provided the solution was excellent.  That is the big if, of course.   If MS/A were relatively small, then it becomes more attractive to farm out huge components.  But that's just it--it's relatively large and its not unreasonable to believe the likely will improve weather and cloud depiction.  I believe a lot of that hinges on increasing the density of voxel based cloud structures that we don't have now--and I think it's only MS/A that can change that, not the 3rd party developer.  But nice if that were not true and maybe it isn't.  As a practical matter, all else being equal, having the sim stay pure as it were is the better choice:  installs and updates all in-home.

And then there is the matter of historical weather, and even the demand by some to have METAR match RW METAR.  For me, neither matters, at all.  I do 12-15 flights/wk using APLv2 and fly for score, and to see the world using APL's pilot career structure.  Flying for Air New Zealand currently.  I could care less if the METAR is off by 30 minutes, it just doesn't matter.  Historical weather even less.  I'm sure I'm not alone.

So...give it some more time before calling in 3rd parties for this very basic element of the sim.  I feel most of the problems come down to low resolution cloud depiction.  There is headroom now in the hardware to afford a bump up in density.

5 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

It's not a matter of discarding Active Sky like trash. In XP it was a necessary and essential game changer. In MSFS it may be a nice to have addon but it won't be essential. From what Ive read historical weather seems to be the most requested missing weather feature in MSFS.

Essential is in the eye of the beholder. Why limit people's choice?

Fortunately there are other more mature and capable platforms for HiFi Simulation Technologies and other weather engine developers to share their talent and skills.  There are many SDK MSFS limitations, weather is just one in a long long list.

Unfortunately the consumer market favors visuals over anything else as demonstrated in this thread and some of the comments ... predictable unfortunately ("default state", good grief, seriously?).  Over 2.5 (3+ for some of us) years and Asobo are restricted by whatever can be accomplished on the current Xbox platform (the real reason we don't see more is due to performance considerations of the Xbox hardware).  Microsoft's business perspective that's good for their ROI, from someone who's more interested in all the complexity of flight, MSFS is a dead end road with little hope of graduating (it still hovers around a 2.5-3 star rating among users in MS Store ... strictly "average").

But Microsoft/Asobo have left the door of opportunity wide open and I guarantee another vendors/developers will step in and step up ... UE5 is a significant leap forward and BlackShark.Ai is now available to all ... put the pieces together watch this space.

Edited March 10, 20233 yr by CO2Neutral

Speaking of historical weather, I would be completely satisfied with the Meteoblue/MSFS weather simulation without the METAR infusion. The consistency of the atmosphere would be as awesome as it was in MSFS before SU7, and for flying 12 hours ago the exact weather (I.e. AVSIM) does not matter.

6 minutes ago, GoranM said:

In my entire time of owning X-Plane.  From XP9 to XP12, I've never used a 3rd party weather add on.  Was it necessary for you?  Apparently, yes.  Was it necessary for me?  Not at all.  Is it necessary for MSFS?  You say no.  Others say yes.  

Historical weather isn't the only thing needed. 

You can have your opinion.  I'll have mine.  

Jeez! That's me told.😁

10 minutes ago, CO2Neutral said:

Fortunately there are other more mature and capable platforms for HiFi Simulation Technologies and other weather engine developers to share their talent and skills.  There are many SDK MSFS limitations, weather is just one in a long long list.

Unfortunately the consumer market favors visuals over anything else as demonstrated in this thread and some of the comments ... predictable unfortunately ("default state", good grief, seriously?).  Over 2.5 (3+ for some of us) years and Asobo are restricted by whatever can be accomplished on the current Xbox platform (the real reason we don't see more is due to performance considerations of the Xbox hardware).  Microsoft's business perspective that's good for their ROI, from someone who's more interested in all the complexity of flight, MSFS is a dead end road with little hope of graduating (it still hovers around a 2.5-3 star rating among users in MS Store ... strictly "average").

But Microsoft/Asobo have left the door of opportunity wide open and I guarantee another vendors/developers will step in and step up ... UE5 is a significant leap forward and BlackShark.Ai is now available to all ... put the pieces together watch this space.

Of course, in time, something better than MSFS is going to come along so what's your point? We are where we are.

25 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Jeez! That's me told.😁

Do you not realize how, for want of a better word, "arrogant" you come across.  You're telling the President of HiFi, someone who has made a career out of weather add on development, who was revered among everyone in flight simming, along with letting everyone else here know, "You're software is not needed in MSFS.  Please take your software elsewhere.  Take it to a platform that uses (in your own words) legacy code".  

First, are we really STILL engaging in sim wars?

Second, I certainly wouldn't appreciate being told, as a customer, what to spend my own money on.  And as a developer, I would simply tell you, "Hey, you're 100% entitled to not purchase anything I make.  But please don't assume you have some kind of influence or authority in telling me where I think my products could or could not be used."

It's not me "telling you" as you put it.  I'm very to the point, because I respect everyone enough to not beat around the bush.

It's just me letting you know, that in my own personal opinion, you should respect other peoples decisions, as much as they should respect yours.  I'm almost 100% certain, that THAT opinion is valid and shared by most people, if not everyone.

 

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

What sim, in its default state, has better weather in your opinion?

Sorry, I don't follow you.  I'm not sure what your position is.  But to answer your question, none.  That's why I've always purchased Active Sky to make the WX better.

It's interesting how many MSFS "lovers" feel MSFS is the best thing since sliced bread, yet there still many obvious, embarrassing bugs - plain and simple.  

The other day, I was landing at UIO - high elevation airport.  The default wind was blowing at over 100kts on a 2NM final.  The real METAR was reporting light winds.

Also, what does another MSFS user care if/what WX tool/software I use/don't use?  Why can't I buy software with my own money to enjoy the sim I bought with my own money the way I want to fly?  I don't care what they want or don't want to spend their money on.  Just let me have my options.

I encourage simmers NOT to buy Aerosoft products.  That's simply my thoughts, but if they want to fly the CRJ, cool for them.

As good as the devs intentions may be, the main reason I totally gave up on MFS is the amalgamated type of modelling it does of pretty much every important stuff for me as a simmer, starting with the FM, going through the ATC and Weather...

While it has visually incredible positives, it's negatives on the overall flight and ground physics, weather and ATC have eventually dropped my interest in it to bellow zero levels...

ASXP12 is just in early beta but already being able to provide some really interesting results while, at the same time the base platform is growing in complexity and detail in this area.

As a glider pilot I am seeing in XP12 a much better base of operations. Weather (soaring weather) and gliders (their flight dynamics) are so poorly and inconsistently modelled in MFS that I couldn't get any joy from it, as much as I tried hard, and yet it offers nat features like the "wing man" on takeoff, etc... and a unique rendering of the terrain which is great  for debrief of RW tasks. Problem is, you can't use the sim to really "feel a glider"...

Edited March 10, 20233 yr by cagarini

5 hours ago, jarmstro said:

Is it? It's using real time Information. Are you referring to the effect of the sun or what? I've not seen much grumbling from folks from Aus on here re the terribly bad weather depiction? (Cue hundreds of people from Aus grumbling about the weather!😃.)

You live in England. Australia is 8-10 hours ahead of us. New Zealand is 11-12 hours ahead. There is one set of weather data. If you start MSFS at 11:00 your time the local time in Sydney is 21:00. That’s well after dark. Hence nighttime weather for your daytime flight.

The only way to get matching weather is to keep the aircraft clock to Zulu time irrespective of where you are in the world. So if you want to fly around Sydney in daylight you need to fly between 21:00 - 09:00.