I'm not an experts in WX radar. But for purpose of simulation and to some degree of fidelity in my opinion it actually does what is suppose to. Some airplanes like Leonardo MD80, FSS ERJ do implemented them without fuss. And in my understanding WX radar are useful to avoid big bad cells (if simmer wants of course 🙂 ) Here is an example of me flying thorough the opening 

 

i can't understand why fenix or pdmg doesn't want to implement it like leonardo did

33 minutes ago, motishow said:

i can't understand why fenix or pdmg doesn't want to implement it like leonardo did

Fenix is unable to based on how they designed their plane. To do, so would severely degrade their performance. My guess is that it has to do with them running their displays externally or something like that. (I'm not a programmer)

No idea why PMDG doesn't implement it. Could be that they think it's too rudimentary to bother implementing it. Could be for similar reasons as Fenix, but given Leonardo was able to, I'm not sure if that is the reason. Of course they both are designed differently, so hard to say.

I think Asobo WX radar is certainly useful and I am firmly in the camp of better to have it than not. However, their returns though vertically conical are pretty wide so you can still get returns reflected pretty close to you on the radar (like 20 nm out) even though you are sufficiently above the precip. layer, so that makes it harder to tell if you are actually going to run into that precipitation until you are very close to it. Not sure if you can change that, but I believe it's fixed.

 Isn't the weather radar in ALL MSFS aircraft that have it using the same info? It is just a top down overhead view with zero depth and is just made to look like more than it is. Iirc, PMDG chose not to implement it as it is more of just a gimmick in it's current state.  

Edited October 18, 20232 yr by Dave_YVR

1 hour ago, motishow said:

i can't understand why fenix or pdmg doesn't want to implement it like leonardo did

There is a good mod on .to for the FBW A320 to implement the stock WX Radar. Works pretty well.

7 minutes ago, Dave_YVR said:

 Isn't the weather radar in ALL MSFS aircraft that have it using the same info? It is just a top down overhead view with zero depth and is just made to look like more than it is. Iirc, PMDG chose not to implement it as it is more of just a gimmick in it's current state.  

No, if you check the NEXRAD equipped aircraft they use horizontal and vertical projection.

the Maddog uses horizontal projection iirc.

That viral video that NgDriver put out wasn’t really well researched and portrayed this idea that only one form of projection is available, when there’s 3. There’s horizontal and vertical with configurable conical projection. The only slight problem is that the “radar” isn’t great at filtering ground returns at times.

59 minutes ago, Lucky38i said:

No, if you check the NEXRAD equipped aircraft they use horizontal and vertical projection.

the Maddog uses horizontal projection iirc.

That viral video that NgDriver put out wasn’t really well researched and portrayed this idea that only one form of projection is available, when there’s 3. There’s horizontal and vertical with configurable conical projection. The only slight problem is that the “radar” isn’t great at filtering ground returns at times.

Quick question, when you say configurable conical projection, do you mean that you can modify the dispersion angle of the vertical returns?

1 hour ago, Dave_YVR said:

 Isn't the weather radar in ALL MSFS aircraft that have it using the same info? It is just a top down overhead view with zero depth and is just made to look like more than it is. Iirc, PMDG chose not to implement it as it is more of just a gimmick in it's current state.  

The Default weather radar is 3D
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/official-discussion-september-29-2022-development-update/546318/24

 

Edited October 18, 20232 yr by Tuskin38

19 minutes ago, Kevin_28 said:

Quick question, when you say configurable conical projection, do you mean that you can modify the dispersion angle of the vertical returns?

It refers to the angle of the cone in vertical or horizontal modes. I was wrong there as the actual size of the cone doesn’t seem to be configurable

One things for sure; if you want to see RSR flip out on his own forums - ask about weather radar…..🙃

The WXR is pretty subpar compared to the real thing. Fortunately it's also not really necessary in MSFS because the sim doesn't currently have hazardous weather: There is no hail to shatter your windshield, no ice to clog your intake, no vertical winds to overstress the airframe, and no microbursts to throw you into the dirt. By that measure there's also no reason to have anything more than the default WXR: Because it wouldn't be able to depict half of the hazards it's programmed to detect. The default WXR is entirely sufficient for all MSFS flying, in that regards.

1 hour ago, WestAir said:

The WXR is pretty subpar compared to the real thing. Fortunately it's also not really necessary in MSFS because the sim doesn't currently have hazardous weather: There is no hail to shatter your windshield, no ice to clog your intake, no vertical winds to overstress the airframe, and no microbursts to throw you into the dirt. By that measure there's also no reason to have anything more than the default WXR: Because it wouldn't be able to depict half of the hazards it's programmed to detect. The default WXR is entirely sufficient for all MSFS flying, in that regards.

Yes, a glorified google Bing earth viewer. I am a huge believer that a flight simulator should have challenge such as bad weather, or even true opaque clouds at the very least. The atmosphere to a pilot is as water is to a fish. It's where we "live". The weather was more "dangerous" at release than now. We used to have clouds that actually blocked your vision, thunderstorms, etc.

Now, we do not even get volumetric clouds anymore. There are just large blobs of a transparent like fog that we can almost always see outside of (just smoke in mirrors effects now that trick us into thinking were flying through a volumetric cloud).

7 minutes ago, KERNEL32 said:

Yes, a glorified google Bing earth viewer. I am a huge believer that a flight simulator should have challenge such as bad weather, or even true opaque clouds at the very least. The atmosphere to a pilot is as water is to a fish. It's where we "live". The weather was more "dangerous" at release than now. We used to have clouds that actually blocked your vision, thunderstorms, etc.

Now, we do not even get volumetric clouds anymore. There are just large blobs of a transparent like fog that we can almost always see outside of (just smoke in mirrors effects now that trick us into thinking were flying through a volumetric cloud).

I share your frustration that in 2023 we don't have a robust weather simulation that gets anywhere remotely close to the environment pilots face. Ironically, however, the same problem that makes the MSFS default WXR a sufficient tool is also the same problem that makes a robust weather simulation unnecessary: You don't fly in those environments.

I understand why Asobo did what it did. They could spend 16,000 dev hours modeling everything from freezing rain during temperature inversions to rime and clear ice all the way down to violent lenticular cloud roll-over events, but the only time you'd ever see the fruit of that labor is when you are doing something wrong, and so 99.9% of flights will experience the same boring, safe weather we have now. From a dev perspective, you might prioritize simulating things your users will experience more often.

Hopefully, though, true hazardous WX and true high fidelity WXR are priorities we'll see in the coming decade.

Clouds are like art to most.  Cirrus are my favorites and usually indicate some incoming weather.

If ASOBO gets this right I will send them cookies for XMAS. 😊

sp

Did not mean to derail this into a cloud discussion, back to radar. I do think it serves its purpose but we have a long way to go! Hopefully we can see radar in more sophisticated aircraft to at least have something to avoid... or at least have the OPTION to add in the generic MSFS radar into the likes of the PMDG, Fenix, etc.

Edited October 18, 20232 yr by KERNEL32