Historical weather is absolutely a must

[Stearmandriver 2,333]

11 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

Just use a weather preset 👍

/sarcasm

Sarcasm noted and appreciated, and in fact I've created them to represent various visibilities, but the annoying thing is that the sim is very - I mean VERY - capable of taking a vis value from a metar and rendering it accurately.  So..  why can't it accept a user entered value lol?  But yes, there are functional workarounds... That's just one thing that actually SHOULD be easy to add...

[ShawnG 1,823]

43 minutes ago, Mace said:

@ShawnG and @scotchegg I think the OP using the "absolute must" title is taken directly from Asobo's own list of improvements, they used that exact phrase.

I mean, surely, the OP couldn't have somehow randomly matched that phrase word-for-word, right?

Anyway, maybe that explains the thread title. Asobo's words.  Not the OP's. (?)

It’s a common enough phrase, so not sure you could draw that conclusion, but the op went on to say that he won’t use the sim because of it, and in the end it was “unacceptable”. So the strident tone remained.  Wasn’t just the title.  And it doesn’t matter.  Nobody is mad at the op in any sort of personal sense.  This is a discussion forum, not a “either agree or stay out of it” forum.  Portraying personal opinions and preferences as anything other than that will invite these sorts of responses.  If you want to build consensus around this, which is, I’m sure the point.  It’s not the way to go about it.

[Mace 1,964]

5 minutes ago, ShawnG said:

It’s a common enough phrase, so not sure you could draw that conclusion, but the op went on to say that he won’t use the sim because of it, and in the end it was “unacceptable”. So the strident tone remained.  Wasn’t just the title.  And it doesn’t matter.  Nobody is mad at the op in any sort of personal sense.  This is a discussion forum, not a “either agree or stay out of it” forum.  Portraying personal opinions and preferences as anything other than that will invite these sorts of responses.  If you want to build consensus around this, which is, I’m sure the point.  It’s not the way to go about it.

Oh I know.   I was just pointing out the possible origin of the thread title.  I'm sure the OP read the MSFS list of stuff.

[Abriael 952]

On 6/20/2023 at 10:29 PM, cepact said:

I stopped flight simming because of lack of historical weather in MSFS.

This feature was the one that provided me the most joy previously in P3D with ActiveSky

Being able to fly any route at any time, being able to accelerate the simulator and the weather would follow up.

Now I'm restricted to fly only with the real time, and without sim acceleration. Otherwise weather won't match time of the day. If I accelerate a long flight I may end up with daytime weather during night and vice versa. Imagine you arrive at a location during the middle of the night with typical summer daytime temperatures such as 90 °F and with lots of wind while it should be calm. It's unacceptable.

No. It really isn't. "unacceptable" doesn't mean what you think it means. It most definitely doesn't mean "I can't accept it" and you're confusing the two.

If you stopped flight simming because you don't have historical weather, perhaps your interest in flight simulation wasn't that big to begin with. 

"Historical" weather is an extreme approximation that absolutely does not match real or even realistic weather. If you think what you describe is "unacceptable" what certain developers marketed as "historical" weather is even less acceptable. It doesn't actually reproduce any realistic representation of weather at any point in history. It just gives you a surrogate of it.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Abriael

[Bob Scott 7,759]

15 hours ago, Abriael said:

"Historical" weather is an extreme approximation that absolutely does not match real or even realistic weather. If you think what you describe is "unacceptable" what certain developers marketed as "historical" weather is even less acceptable. It doesn't actually reproduce any realistic representation of weather at any point in history. It just gives you a surrogate of it.

I'm not buying what you're peddling here.  Properly done historical weather injection is most certainly not an "extreme approximation"...the ability of ActiveSky in several other sim platforms to fuse current and historical NOAA grib and METAR datasets gives a much better approximation of the weather at a given time/place than what I fairly often see in MSFS, where the real-time actual weather I observe looking out my window in no way comes close to what I see locally real-time in the simulation.

For some of us, the ability to create reproducible, realistic weather scenarios, including those based on historical weather is important...maybe even very important.  Taking a snapshot (or a time-series) of the weather produced in nature and injecting that into the sim is far less tedious (and more likely to capture critical detail) than trying to manually build a scenario from the ground to the stratosphere and over a wide area, especially on a platform where there's no capability to set something as basic and critical to flying operations as visibility.  I can accept that there are lots of folks that don't care about that, just as I can accept that there are people that are fine with paying for and operating a pretty Captain Sim 777 model fitted with a Frankensteined default 4-engine 747 panel.  What's important to me--a retired pilot with lots of turbine time in complex acft--is different than what's important to a 21-year-old with an X-Box and a couple hours of free time on his hands.  I fully get that the center of the bell curve is closer to that 21-year-old than me...OTOH, I'm not going to pretend that's not the case, either.  So I have high hopes but very low expectations on the historical weather issue in MSFS.  That approach will serve me well, I think.

Personally, it would be unacceptable (and yes, that actually does mean "I couldn't accept it") to have no options for reproducible and/or historical challenging weather scenarios in my flight sim universe.  Luckily, that universe is not restricted to what just one sim platform offers...or clearly lacks.  If I'm interested in repeatedly flying a Cat II ILS to mins to sharpen my skills, well, I'm not going to see the ground until I'm almost in the flare, and there are few benefits of pretty streaming scenery and photogrammetry in that scenario, anyway.  So rather than pretending that setting up low-vis approach scenarios is (or likely ever will be) within the capability of a platform where I can't properly set the weather, manually or otherwise, I do that on another platform (and there are several) where I most certainly can.  And if I want to fly a C-172 on a VFR flight using ground references, pilotage and dead reckoning, then streaming scenery becomes more important and takes a front seat to historical weather. 

I can do everything I want--but not if I restrict myself to just one platform.  And so it has been since I started simming in 1995.  Back then it was Elite vs FS95/98/2000, then FS9 vs FSX, FSX vs P3D, P3D vs XPlane, and now P3D/XPlane vs MSFS.  I've never been able to settle on just one, as none have ever completely answered the mail.  Asobo's enduring intransigence w/r/t allowing 3rd-party access to the weather engine strongly suggests that trend will continue.

 

[F737MAX 5,750]

  

6 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

I'm not buying what you're peddling here. [...]

Ah Bob, don't feed the 'JoUrNaLiSt'.

A known peddler of sub-par products (check just how much of his total posting history here is in support of the early access FSS E-175) and other nonsense.

[SN737 142]

5 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

I'm not buying what you're peddling here.  Properly done historical weather injection is most certainly not an "extreme approximation"...the ability of ActiveSky in several other sim platforms to fuse current and historical NOAA grib and METAR datasets gives a much better approximation of the weather at a given time/place than what I fairly often see in MSFS, where the real-time actual weather I observe looking out my window in no way comes close to what I see locally real-time in the simulation.

For some of us, the ability to create reproducible, realistic weather scenarios, including those based on historical weather is important...maybe even very important.  Taking a snapshot (or a time-series) of the weather produced in nature and injecting that into the sim is far less tedious (and more likely to capture critical detail) than trying to manually build a scenario from the ground to the stratosphere and over a wide area, especially on a platform where there's no capability to set something as basic and critical to flying operations as visibility.  I can accept that there are lots of folks that don't care about that, just as I can accept that there are people that are fine with paying for and operating a pretty Captain Sim 777 model fitted with a Frankensteined default 4-engine 747 panel.  What's important to me--a retired pilot with lots of turbine time in complex acft--is different than what's important to a 21-year-old with an X-Box and a couple hours of free time on his hands.  I fully get that the center of the bell curve is closer to that 21-year-old than me...OTOH, I'm not going to pretend that's not the case, either.  So I have high hopes but very low expectations on the historical weather issue in MSFS.  That approach will serve me well, I think.

Personally, it would be unacceptable (and yes, that actually does mean "I couldn't accept it") to have no options for reproducible and/or historical challenging weather scenarios in my flight sim universe.  Luckily, that universe is not restricted to what just one sim platform offers...or clearly lacks.  If I'm interested in repeatedly flying a Cat II ILS to mins to sharpen my skills, well, I'm not going to see the ground until I'm almost in the flare, and there are few benefits of pretty streaming scenery and photogrammetry in that scenario, anyway.  So rather than pretending that setting up low-vis approach scenarios is (or likely ever will be) within the capability of a platform where I can't properly set the weather, manually or otherwise, I do that on another platform (and there are several) where I most certainly can.  And if I want to fly a C-172 on a VFR flight using ground references, pilotage and dead reckoning, then streaming scenery becomes more important and takes a front seat to historical weather. 

I can do everything I want--but not if I restrict myself to just one platform.  And so it has been since I started simming in 1995.  Back then it was Elite vs FS95/98/2000, then FS9 vs FSX, FSX vs P3D, P3D vs XPlane, and now P3D/XPlane vs MSFS.  I've never been able to settle on just one, as none have ever completely answered the mail.  Asobo's enduring intransigence w/r/t allowing 3rd-party access to the weather engine strongly suggests that trend will continue.

 

Couldn't agree more.

[Abriael 952]

7 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

I'm not buying what you're peddling here.  Properly done historical weather injection is most certainly not an "extreme approximation"...the ability of ActiveSky in several other sim platforms to fuse current and historical NOAA grib and METAR datasets gives a much better approximation of the weather at a given time/place than what I fairly often see in MSFS, where the real-time actual weather I observe looking out my window in no way comes close to what I see locally real-time in the simulation.

For some of us, the ability to create reproducible, realistic weather scenarios, including those based on historical weather is important...maybe even very important.  Taking a snapshot (or a time-series) of the weather produced in nature and injecting that into the sim is far less tedious (and more likely to capture critical detail) than trying to manually build a scenario from the ground to the stratosphere and over a wide area, especially on a platform where there's no capability to set something as basic and critical to flying operations as visibility.  I can accept that there are lots of folks that don't care about that, just as I can accept that there are people that are fine with paying for and operating a pretty Captain Sim 777 model fitted with a Frankensteined default 4-engine 747 panel.  What's important to me--a retired pilot with lots of turbine time in complex acft--is different than what's important to a 21-year-old with an X-Box and a couple hours of free time on his hands.  I fully get that the center of the bell curve is closer to that 21-year-old than me...OTOH, I'm not going to pretend that's not the case, either.  So I have high hopes but very low expectations on the historical weather issue in MSFS.  That approach will serve me well, I think.

Personally, it would be unacceptable (and yes, that actually does mean "I couldn't accept it") to have no options for reproducible and/or historical challenging weather scenarios in my flight sim universe.  Luckily, that universe is not restricted to what just one sim platform offers...or clearly lacks.  If I'm interested in repeatedly flying a Cat II ILS to mins to sharpen my skills, well, I'm not going to see the ground until I'm almost in the flare, and there are few benefits of pretty streaming scenery and photogrammetry in that scenario, anyway.  So rather than pretending that setting up low-vis approach scenarios is (or likely ever will be) within the capability of a platform where I can't properly set the weather, manually or otherwise, I do that on another platform (and there are several) where I most certainly can.  And if I want to fly a C-172 on a VFR flight using ground references, pilotage and dead reckoning, then streaming scenery becomes more important and takes a front seat to historical weather. 

I can do everything I want--but not if I restrict myself to just one platform.  And so it has been since I started simming in 1995.  Back then it was Elite vs FS95/98/2000, then FS9 vs FSX, FSX vs P3D, P3D vs XPlane, and now P3D/XPlane vs MSFS.  I've never been able to settle on just one, as none have ever completely answered the mail.  Asobo's enduring intransigence w/r/t allowing 3rd-party access to the weather engine strongly suggests that trend will continue.

 

You can do pretty much whatever you want indeed. But "unacceptable" doesn't mean "I can't accept it." The difference between absolute and subjective wording is pretty clear. If someone uses the term interchangeably, they shouldn't be surprised if people take issue with it.

If you're speaking for yourself, that's fine. Feel free to accept or not accept whatever makes you happy and use the product or products you prefer. But when you call something "unacceptable" you make it sound like you're speaking for me as well, and that I do not appreciate. 

But your point of view is extremely different from what I responded to, someone who alleges they have "stopped simming because MSFS does something unacceptable." That's an extreme stance that's pretty cringeworthy (or strident, as someone else appropriately defined it), to be completely honest, which I and others recognized. 

As for the weather itself, one of its most important aspects is how dynamic it is, which Microsoft Flight Simulator reproduces better (far better) than any competitor, with or without add-ons considered in the picture. What's marketed as "historical weather" does a terrible job at that and it always did by its very nature, making it intrinsecally unrealistic. You may enjoy it, but that doesn't make it realistic.

As  for me, I'm absolutely happy to give up historical weather to have that dynamic, only partly predictable simulation, which is what you encounter in real flight. Hence, since *a lot* of people accept it, it's by definition not unacceptable.  

Using multiple simulators is all nice and good if one can (or is willing to) afford it. The problem is that that also means having to multiply the addons you need to purchase, and simulators that aren't MSFS do a really terrible job at qualiftying as decent, usable simulation products without a healthy complement of add-ons. Great for you if you can and want to keep up with three lines of add-on purchases, but I don't expect many to be in that camp. Not when MSFS has been sprinting so far ahead in terms of nearly everything and continues to improve at a pace that other developers simply cannot match. 

Incidentally, I wouldn't really generalize about what's important for a 21 year old with an Xbox. They're much more diverse in their interests and degrees of seriousness about their entertainment than many around here gives them credit for. 

7 hours ago, F737MAX said:

  

Ah Bob, don't feed the 'JoUrNaLiSt'.

A known peddler of sub-par products (check just how much of his total posting history here is in support of the early access FSS E-175) and other nonsense.

You're being extremely disingenuous. I never peddled the E-175 (which I clearly said wasn't gonna buy yet and haven't bought yet to this day). What I did, and definitely stand behind, is show that its developer has been treated in an absolutely toxic way, which parts of this community absolutely should not be proud of. The fact that they have been working very hard to improve that product, with quite good results (albeit not yet good enough for me to make the purchase. I've been keeping an eye on it and it's getting there slowly, but I'm not in any hurry), proves my point.

Nice strawman, by the way. Peddling means encouraging people to buy something. Feel free to look for one post in which I encouraged anyone to buy the E-175. Take your time. We're gonna be here a while. What I "peddled" and will always advocate is treating a developer with civility and respect, which I'm fairly amazed someone believes is a negative, really. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Abriael

[MrBitstFlyer 3,901]

On 6/29/2023 at 7:37 AM, Abriael said:

If you stopped flight simming because you don't have historical weather, perhaps your interest in flight simulation wasn't that big to begin with

I find that a rather strange comment.

Aircraft are included in flight simulators, but I buy addon aircraft for added functionality and realism.  Flight simulators come with scenery, but I buy scenery addons for the same reason. This also applies to things like instrumentation.

I could be at work all day and see showers, gusty winds and variable visibilty.  By the time I get home, the winds could have died down, the showers gone and the visibility good.  The desire to fly in that days weather is partly due to planning a flight for the changeable conditions and then flying through those conditions.  Setting up a weather scenario manually takes away the challenge of planning and flying through it.

[MrBitstFlyer 3,901]

19 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

I've never been able to settle on just one, as none have ever completely answered the mail.

XP12 and MSFS are on my system.  I used XP12 exclusevly for 8 months, but have recently started using MSFS again.  As you say, one sim is unlikely to do it all, but one, two or three will cover all the bases.

[Bob Scott 7,759]

14 hours ago, Abriael said:

You can do pretty much whatever you want indeed. But "unacceptable" doesn't mean "I can't accept it." The difference between absolute and subjective wording is pretty clear. If someone uses the term interchangeably, they shouldn't be surprised if people take issue with it.

If you're speaking for yourself, that's fine. Feel free to accept or not accept whatever makes you happy and use the product or products you prefer. But when you call something "unacceptable" you make it sound like you're speaking for me as well, and that I do not appreciate.

OK, so now you're a professor of language?  Well no, you're not, or at least not a very good one.

Unacceptable is defined in the Merriam Webster dictionary as not being acceptable...acceptable is defined as capable of being accepted.  In other words, unacceptable means not capable of being accepted.  And when I preface the remark with "Personally", as I most certainly did, it clearly establishes the scope of the remark as referring to my personal viewpoint.  So if you're interpreting what I've written as somehow attempting to speak for you, it's a result of reading comprehension problems on your end.

I've logged many thousands of hours flying aircraft ranging from sailplanes to heavy four-engine jet transports.  I'm quite certain I have a pretty well-developed sense of what real-world weather effects look and feel like in a wide variety of aircraft.  Suffice it to say that, based on my experience as a pilot for over 50 years, I disagree with your assessment of the comparative realism of simulated weather and its effects across the various flight sim platforms.

 

[Abriael 952]

33 minutes ago, Bob Scott said:

OK, so now you're a professor of language?  Well no, you're not, or at least not a very good one.

Unacceptable is defined in the Merriam Webster dictionary as not being acceptable...acceptable is defined as capable of being accepted.  In other words, unacceptable means not capable of being accepted.  And when I preface the remark with "Personally", as I most certainly did, it clearly establishes the scope of the remark as referring to my personal viewpoint.  So if you're interpreting what I've written as somehow attempting to speak for you, it's a result of reading comprehension problems on your end.

I've logged many thousands of hours flying aircraft ranging from sailplanes to heavy four-engine jet transports.  I'm quite certain I have a pretty well-developed sense of what real-world weather effects look and feel like in a wide variety of aircraft.  Suffice it to say that, based on my experience as a pilot for over 50 years, I disagree with your assessment of the comparative realism of simulated weather and its effects across the various flight sim platforms.

 

Then we'll have to agree to disagree. It's great that you can rely on your experience as a pilot for over 50 years. I'm relying on my experience of someone who has been in the weather in a wide variety of situations for over 40, and my assessment of it and its characteristic of changinging unpredictalbly is very different. Incidentally, my father who is a retired lieutnant colonel and test pilot for of the Italian air force (tested pretty much everything in his time from F-104s to G-91s) and then captain for various airlines, agrees with my assessment and is quite impressed with the weather in MSFS, so there's that. I respect your opinion, but with all due respect, I'll stick closer to home.

Happy you enjoy the products you think are best. I'll do the same. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Abriael

[lwt1971 7,483]

On 6/20/2023 at 4:29 PM, cepact said:

It's unacceptable.

There is no need to dive into dictionary definitions to understand the key point here... to *some* it appears that historic weather is an absolute must in a sim, and unacceptable if not there. To others (a great many more it appears, given how many are using MSFS without fainting or calling it quits due to lack of historic weather), it is not a must.  Given the OP's wording without the qualifier that they were speaking just for themselves, I guess this heated debate ensued.

In any case, I don' think anyone here is actively *against* historic weather in MSFS... if it comes that sure would be great, and/or if MSFS opens up access for 3rd parties to inject weather that would be great too... but by no means are these an "absolute must" for a great many of us.
 

Edited June 30, 2023 by lwt1971

[Abriael 952]

6 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

There is no need to dive into dictionary definitions to understand the key point here... to *some* it appears that historic weather is an absolute must in a sim, and unacceptable if not there. To others (a great many more it appears, given how many are using MSFS without fainting or calling it quits due to lack of historic weather), it is not a must.  Given that the OP's wording without the qualifier that they were speaking just for themselves, I guess this heated debate ensued.

In any case, I don' think anyone here is actively *against* historic weather in MSFS... if it comes that sure would be great, and/or if MSFS opens up access for 3rd parties to inject weather that would be great too... but by no means are these an "absolute must" for a great many of us.
 

I'm by no means against it. But as far as we know, MSFS' team doesn't think they have enough available data to model it to a level that satisfies them (it was mentioned in one of the livestreams), and opening the weather model likely infringes on their contract with their partners, as it likely makes the proprietary data visible to the end user.

If it's either or, I'll pick dynamic weather every day of the week and twice on Sundays. If someone ever achieves it, hey, great. 

Edited June 30, 2023 by Abriael

[wim123 765]

On 6/28/2023 at 7:29 PM, MrBitstFlyer said:

I'm at work for 12 hours, get up at 4am, and I get home around 8pm. My total day is around 16 hours.  By the time I settle down to fly GA, any showers have gone and the wind has dropped.  RealTraffic/PSXT allows me to see historical traffic, but MSFS desn't allow historical weather to match.  Sometimes I'm too tired to use MSFS for a few days, so when I load it up it would be good to pick an interesting day of weather that matches the live traffic I see.

 

you know you can fly everywhere , i just find a good spot to fly in daytime, i dont need to fly at a specific place, the world is big.

every day there is some interesting weather somewhere, whatever the hour.

i really doubt it will be implemented. too few users, its not commercially viable.