Still no historical weather options for MSFS?

[lwt1971 8,077]

7 hours ago, Damian Clark said:

Despite the denial of such, there is a pretty big campaign against us or other wx developers EVER being allowed to participate in MSFS again.  It's a huge problem for this very small, very vocal group of people. 

 

6 hours ago, Damian Clark said:

I think it's pretty clear that weather write access will not be coming any time soon.  I do think they considered it quite a bit at different points, but public sentiment is so vocally against it, I would not blame them for dismissing this.  Of course contractual issues may be the reason as has been suspected.  Who knows.  

I very much doubt that this supposed vocal minority of MSFS users are the driving force behind MS/Asobo's current plans to not open up write access to their weather. If you're trying to imply that if the wishlist item/request had a greater # of votes then MS/Asobo might be more inclined to, sure that maybe is a possibility.. but I certainly don't think there's been a "campaign" by MSFS users to "disallow" wx developers to participate in MSFS 🙂 Very likely the reasons are technical and/or contractual in nature as already discussed many times, given the server/client nature of MSFS and whatever agreements they have in place with their weather data providers, etc.

MS/Asobo have increased the fidelity of various other aspects of the default sim compared to previous sims, from world/terrain representation to aircraft to avionics etc etc.. going by your logic there'd be pushback against add-on developers for all those areas by these users too right? (since they'd rather MS/Asobo give it all to them for free in the default sim).. but obviously the sim has been opened up for development by MS/Asobo in all those areas, even going to the extent of providing the Working Title developed avionics core framework free for use by other developers.
 

Edited January 29 by lwt1971

[Noel 4,649]

6 hours ago, jcomm said:

The whole MFS user community would be thankful if they could get what AS gives his users in P3D and somehow in XP11 and 12 too....

Is it possible to capture something/anything that could convey something meaningful coming out of AS in P3D now, post volumetric cloud, in a screenshot or three?  That is, that would make it clear it's ultimately better than what we see now in MSFS?  I ask for two reasons:  1, I don't use P3D anymore, and 2, cloud depiction with the current low resolution, low detail, voxel-basis in MSFS seems to me to be a major obstacle to creating various distinct cloud morphologies, as could be done in the former 2D sprite models we used in P3D 4.x.  IOW, I wonder what if anything HiFi could do in this cloud environment.  When I've seen some shots of current P3D's volumetric clouds what I recall was that it was significantly worse looking, perhaps even lower resolution than what we have now in MSFS, but maybe they weren't very current.  As someone who is not interested in historical weather, and someone who would love to see distinct cloud morphologies more than anything else, I would be interested to see what HiFi has done in P3D that might address this area.

I have been one that would prefer to have it all under one MSFS roof, weather/lighting/cloud depiction.  This has nothing with "wanting it for free" and all to do with the fact this is a huge component in the sim and to have that depend in a 3rd party isn't attractive to me.   Rather than have HiFi do things to the weather I'd rather see MS/A hire HiFi as a contractor/consultant. 

[Mace 2,014]

4 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

MS/Asobo have increased the fidelity of various other aspects of the default sim compared to previous sims, from world/terrain representation to aircraft to avionics etc etc.. going by your logic there'd be pushback against add-on developers for all those areas by these users too right? (since they'd rather MS/Asobo give it all to them for free in the default sim).. but obviously the sim has been opened up for development by MS/Asobo in all those areas, even going to the extent of providing the Working Title developed avionics core framework free for use by other developers.
 

Remember the interview with the MS folks (Jorg et al) when they were talking about MSFS2024?  They said there were certain things that the MSFS(2020) architecture didn't allow them to do, hence they decided to make a new version.  Perhaps this (historical weather) is one of those things.

Tying the weather depiction to the time of day slider...just like the light level/sun position currently is tied to it in MSFS(2020)...could be a way to do it.  To do that, they'd have to store/access the previous 24 hours of weather data.   Tying wx depiction to the time-of-day slider would be VERY realistic and solve 95% of use-cases I would think.

[Dominique_K 10,157]

1 minute ago, Mace said:

 

Tying the weather depiction to the time of day slider...just like the light level/sun position currently is tied to it in MSFS(2020)...could be a way to do it.  To do that, they'd have to store/access the previous 24 hours of weather data.   Tying wx depiction to the time-of-day slider would be VERY realistic and solve 95% of use-cases I would think.

This is exactly what is needed ! 

I have never believed in the technical constraints or absence of data. The data is available with Meteo Blue in a hourly resolution (since 1940 !). I suspect that MS would have of course to pay for the added service and the new data may also strain the Azure servers which seem  to be up to their nose in the water already.

 history+ | Weather History & Archive - meteoblue

[RALF9636 2,047]

13 hours ago, Damian Clark said:

If we were allowed to control weather using SDK/API, we could easily implement such. ... The only reason we can't is because we have no access to wx writes ....  Now, we can in theory provide preset weather control, like some others have, with historical weather, and we might.  But that's globalized weather, without regional variation as per live weather, and of course many don't want that.  The very negative criticism of that approach that we witnessed has prevented us from it thus far.  But we are still considering it.

Please go ahead and do so! Anything you can provide for MSFS is better than nothing. I am sure you will be able to add a few nice things to enhance MSFS weather even if it is only globalized.

Historical weather alone would make your product a must-have for many simmers. Even it was only globalized weather it would still be a lot better than not having any historical weather option at all. For me it would be a gamechanger!

And I guess having a product for MSFS would make you more prominent in the current market and maybe some more users would realize that 3rd party weather addons can only be a win for any sim, eventually pushing MS/Asobo to allow access to the weather system.

 

Edited January 29 by RALF9636

[Rune-ENHD 83]

Hi, Damian and Hifi-sim 😃, Love your addons! 👍

would there be *a possible different route to walk/run* ? to the Weather-gate fixings ??

What if you Joined Forces with REX , and as a joint effort  🤝 you guys Team up, to HELP Microsoft/Asobo/Meteoblue with the weather consulting and improvements/ implementation?? 🤔🤔

You would then of course sign a NDA/contract to NOT share OR use any of Meteoblue data/property outside of MSFS!

You would of course still be able to make addons "outside" of MSFS and then go back to beeing competitors(or not??) as previous times in both Xplane/Prepare3D/(Aerofly??)

 Could this be a possible solution? 🙂 Would love to hear your opinion of it, if that could be solution that work out positively? for all partys involved.

I would gladly pay 10-15$ EVERY Year going forward in the near MSFS-future.. there are soo many potential customers avaliable for you guys(Hifi-sim/Rex) that you could probably live with that situation? 🙂 as a joint effort TEAM I mean, at least you get "a bit" of the cake 🍰 instead of no cake at all 😢😦 this would also probably give you a large chunk of the XBOX-market "users" at the same time.

This could be a WIN-WIN situation? Microsoft gets Highly skilled partners and many outside ideas, also a fantastic and dedicated ALPHA/BETA/ team of Testers.. 

 

Thanks, for listening

Best regards Rune-ENHD 

From Norway!

Edited January 29 by Rune-ENHD
Added info

[OneOfMany 323]

If historical weather, or say the last 24hrs were streamable, how would this impact multi-player? From my understanding, all players see and play in the same conditions. Would this require players to set their times the same to encounter the same storms, squall etc? 

[Noel 4,649]

4 hours ago, Mace said:

Tying the weather depiction to the time of day slider...just like the light level/sun position currently is tied to it in MSFS(2020)...could be a way to do it

Definitely--very cool idea ;o)

[Noel 4,649]

31 minutes ago, OneOfMany said:

From my understanding, all players see and play in the same conditions.

They could create a chat-room applet where you invite others to join, and the host sets the time of day, which could be auto-synced by design per Rhett's idea above, to correct retro, or real time weather.

[Maxis 2,011]

1 minute ago, Noel said:

They could create a chat-room applet where you invite others to join, and the host sets the time of day, which could be auto-synced by design per Rhett's idea above, to correct retro, or real time weather.

Or at the bare minimum. Multiplayer sessions would be locked out to only occur in real time presently synced wx only . The moment you access historical wx you're pretty much in your own wx environment so you go it solo unless they try to adopt a solution similar to Noel's.

[VHOJT 202]

Without Damian and Activesky, I can't imagine what simming would be like! 

[DD_Arthur 1,182]

46 minutes ago, VHOJT said:

Without Damian and Activesky, I can't imagine what simming would be 

Really?  At the moment,  without Damien or Activesky, it's like this....

 

 

Edited January 30 by DD_Arthur

[Noel 4,649]

Here's what MS/A might do, and what a cool way to showcase AI in this domain:  utilize AI to create distinct cloud morphologies basically utilizing the current engine, with the addition of a slider to increase voxel density past current low levels for those users who have the hardware to support it.  I already do with my 3 y/o RTX 3080Ti which rarely goes over 65% if that utilization.

The basic approach might look like this: expose AI to all online photographs of the Basic Ten cloud types, including data about the range of altitudes and conditions these clouds form within.  After full on exposure AI would then deduce what qualifies a particular cloud type as a Cirrus, Cirrostratus, Stratus, Cumulus, Nimbostratus, etc.

Given this, the AI would then be fully exposed to the current cloud generation engine employed by MSFS 2020/2024.  It would do its best to create the Basic Ten out of that engine, and be given the freedom to create an infinite variety of each example, influenced by local conditions as they form.  It would become apparent the farther you can crank up the voxel density, the more distinct cloud forms become.  This approach will happen at some point in the future and it seems like it's potentially not that far off.  Maybe by the time the next Xbox debuts in 2028.

 

[omarsmak30 4,069]

22 hours ago, jcomm said:

The whole MFS user community would be thankful if they could get what AS gives his users in P3D and somehow in XP11 and 12 too....

What is that? I seriously don't want cloud disappear and appear in front of my eyes like how AS did it for P3D and XP. I think we are over that, thanks to MSFS. 

Though i myself wouldn't use any weather add-one with MSFS as I am super happy with the current default weather, I think is fair if they expose an API to allow weather developers to access the weather. Let's wait for MSFS2024 if this would be any different 

[scotchegg 4,362]

1 hour ago, Noel said:

After full on exposure AI would then deduce what qualifies a particular cloud type as a Cirrus, Cirrostratus, Stratus, Cumulus, Nimbostratus, etc

They could have captcha style mini games in the loading screen where we could help train the AI…