Historical weather planned for MSFS 2024

[orchestra_nl 947]

2 hours ago, tup61 said:

Nice for daytime-flights-during-nighttime but personally I want historical weather for something like (for instance) summertime-flights-during-wintertime. So it's a start but not what I was hoping for and not something that gets me excited.

I do wonder why that 24 hour limit is there. I suppose that once the sim can handle historical weather (or rather out-of-sync "live weather"), it might also be able to handle 48 hours old weather, or 300 days, as long as the data is there.
It might simply be that their contract with MeteoBlue does not allow them to store weather information on Microsoft servers or perhaps they managed to stretch the way the sim uses weather without actually changing the code to allow for real historical weather.

[Cpt_Piett 4,763]

12 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Myself, only fly with Live Weather…

Same. However I tried it yesterday for the first time in ASFS, but only went back around two hours do do the flight during daylight. So it’s probably something I’ll use more.

Not sure about going back weeks or even months though.

[Antipodeslonghaul 80]

I'm picturing a weather engine that would for example take extensive data from just a few select locations, i.e. Buenos Aires, Cape Town, and Melbourne in the Southern Hemisphere, and say San Francisco, London, and Tokyo in the Northern Hemisphere, just as an example, interpolate for everywhere else, plus add a random element to it, and go back as far as 1903 (Wright Flyer). I'd use such a feature when flying historical planes, say somewhere in the 1950's for the DC6 or 60's-70's in the DC8. 100% accuracy wouldn't be the key, but rather plausibility. It'd probably just be a tiny nook within an already very small niche, but if you can imagine it, it just might be possible.

[abrams_tank 7,430]

2 hours ago, orchestra_nl said:

I do wonder why that 24 hour limit is there. I suppose that once the sim can handle historical weather (or rather out-of-sync "live weather"), it might also be able to handle 48 hours old weather, or 300 days, as long as the data is there.
It might simply be that their contract with MeteoBlue does not allow them to store weather information on Microsoft servers or perhaps they managed to stretch the way the sim uses weather without actually changing the code to allow for real historical weather.

Probably storage for all that data. For example, do they have to store MeteoBlue data every minute, for every location around the world? Then you add in the METAR data they have to store. Since you are storing for the entire world for 24 hours for every minute, that's a lot of data.

If they decrease the frequecy of storing from 1 minute to 10 seconds, that increases the data six fold. If they store for 180 days, thst increases the data by a factor of 180.

I don't know the frequency that the MeteoBlue data runs, but I can imagine if you to store that data for the most discrete location that data covers, for the entire world, that could be a lot of storage space.

Then there may be restrictions from MeteoBlue on how long their data can be stored.

Edited April 25 by abrams_tank

[RALF9636 1,981]

12 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Probably storage for all that data. For example, do they have to store MeteoBlue data every minute, for every location around the world? Then you add in the METAR data they have to store. Since you are storing for the entire world for 24 hours for every minute, that's a lot of data.

If they decrease the frequecy of storing from 1 minute to 10 seconds, that increases the data six fold. If they store for 180 days, thst increases the data by a factor of 180.

I don't know the frequency that the MeteoBlue data runs, but I can imagine if you to store that dsta for the most discrete location that data covers, for the entire world, that could be a lot of storage space.

Then there may be restrictions from MeteoBlue on how long their data can be stored.

Data every minute sounds a bit extreme. They don't even do that with live weather, do they?

And this is where plausability vs accuracy comes into play. Having plausible historic weather for up to one year in the past would be good enough for me.

They could only take and archive 4 worldwide snapshots per day (so every six hours) and interpolate between them. That would already provide plausible weather for the date and time and would be a lot better than being limited to just one day.

 

Edited April 25 by RALF9636

[abrams_tank 7,430]

7 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

Data every minute sounds a bit extreme. They don't even do that with live weather, do they?

And this is where plausability vs accuracy comes into play. Having plausible historic weather for up to one year in the past would be good enough for me.

They could only take and archive 4 worldwide snapshots per day (so every six hours) and interpolate between them. That would already provide plausible weather for the date and time and would be a lot better than being limited to just one day.

 

Technically, they don't need to really store data for live weather.  They can just retrieve the data live from the provider.

But yes, they would need to interpolate if they wanted to save storage space, to store historical weather data. And also reduce the frequency that the data is stored, such as 6 hours in your suggestion, to further reduce storage space.

Edited April 25 by abrams_tank

[vadriver 248]

46 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Technically, they don't need to really store data for live weather.  They can just retrieve the data live from the provider.

indeed they do ...... AWC  & others don't store metar/taf beyond 72 hours

[GSalden 4,686]

3 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Same. However I tried it yesterday for the first time in ASFS, but only went back around two hours do do the flight during daylight. So it’s probably something I’ll use more.

Not sure about going back weeks or even months though.

Hopefully ASFS will be able to show local weather in the future.

So looking around the ac you then can see different weather ,like with the default weather engine.

[Cognita 1,109]

I am not sure the issue is storing data. I don't have the impression that live weather in MSFS is generated by reading a data file and then displaying weather according that file; that sounds like how weather was handled in FSX. In such an approach data is not a big deal. Take all the METAR reporting stations in the world and add some NOAA forecast data and it will probably not be more than a few GB, and that can be stored and served up easily. 

What MSFS seems to do is to interface and read Metroblue's NMM forecast weather model. That model requires a supercomputer, probably several supercomputers, to run. It runs twice a day and produces updated forecasts based on a stream of weather inputs about every 3 hours at different resolutions around the world. Metroblue is not the only weather forecaster but it is one of the biggest; this is where your local TV station is getting its forecast from when it does its weather segment. MSFS takes the forecasted data directly from that model and uses it to generate weather. While MSFS will certainly have data fields they are likely populated directly by Metroblue's servers to Azure servers. And there will be a host of security arrangements and protocols to protect that data transfer and use. This arrangement allows Asobo to sidestep sourcing and maintaining weather data, it just worked out a partnership that would provide its servers with the data needed to generate a evolving live weather scenario in MSFS. It is actually a brilliant idea. But it meant that it cannot allow read access to the data -- as that data is propriety and the source of Metroblue's income -- or to write to those fields as this would open up glaring security vulnerabilities to both Azure and Metroblue. 

They may have taken time to adapt the architecture in MSFS2024. They already expanded it to be able to include METARs -- these may very well come from Metroblue too, as Metroblue collects all of these as part of the input to its data model -- so it is possible Asobo have made further changes to let users access that weather forecast back in time by 24 hours, the life cycle of one model run, which is what is needed to provide forecasts around the world. It will be interesting to see but unless they have made a deep architectural change, I do not see weather read/write access becoming open to third parties. 

Edited April 25 by Cognita

[Cpt_Piett 4,763]

3 hours ago, Cognita said:

But it meant that it cannot allow read access to the data -- as that data is propriety and the source of Metroblue's income -- or to write to those fields as this would open up glaring security vulnerabilities to both Azure and Metroblue

In other words there’s no way to get around that as long as MSFS keeps it partnership with Meteoblue? As they cannot share proprietary data with 3rd party devs?

Btw I’ll get crucified for saying this, but I agree with their decision to move towards a METAR-Meteoblue blend back in the day (SU5?), as otherwise we’d have highly inaccurate airport weather. But I’m beating a dead horse here, the topic has been discussed at great lengths here on Avsim…

Edited April 25 by Cpt_Piett

[tup61 1,591]

1 hour ago, GSalden said:

Hopefully ASFS will be able to show local weather in the future.

So looking around the ac you then can see different weather ,like with the default weather engine.

As long as the AS active mode depends entirely on presets, so weather themes like you would manually create them, there is no way this will be possible. Weather presets can only deal with one type of weather, period. Not much anyone (apart from MS Asobo) can do about this. The AS active mode is 'nothing but' an automated preset generator that generates presets on the fly based on Metar and switches between them (as) smoothly (as possible) because only one weather theme can be the active one at a time.

Now that we know MSFS 2024 won't come with truly historic weather (when someone talks about history I seldom think about the last 24 hours... usually history has to do with things that happened long ago) my only option to fly in different seasons than the current want seems to be AS (active mode). But I don't think I can stand one active weather theme all around me as far as the eye can see... The MSFS default live weather spoiled me.

Who knows MS Asobo will open up the API for 3rd party devs with the release of MSFS 2024 and a truly new and full blown weather engine might appear in the future...

Edited April 25 by tup61

[Cpt_Piett 4,763]

2 minutes ago, tup61 said:

generates presets on the fly based on Metar

…and some other data between METARs?

I still haven’t seen any noticeable transitions, so that’s a good thing.

[KL Oo 704]

Would be interesting to know if they'd consider "historical Live AI Traffic" to go alongside the historical weather. I know it wouldn't be "live" if it was historical, but it would be good if you could sync with the time of day. So if for example I'm taking off 12 hours ago the live traffic beind displayed was also from that time.

I'm guessing since its taken four years for them to understand the point of historical weather, and then implement a 24 hour verison, it will be at least another four years before we get historical live AI!! 

Yes - I know you can do this with PSXT + RT - But the coverage is getting pretty bad.  

[Cognita 1,109]

16 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

In other words there’s no way to get around that as long as MSFS keeps it partnership with Meteoblue? As they cannot share proprietary data with 3rd party devs?

I suppose a way around it is to give others an SKD of all the data fields related to weather that are on the client side -- so that a company like REX or Active Sky can easily insert data to your particular installation of MSFS. These companies have now figured out how to do this in a preset, likely to a limited degree, but then have to turn off live weather -- as live weather and a preset are mutually exclusive. An SKD of client weather might help, although what can be done in a preset is likely more circumscribed so it may also entail building out data fields related to those presets. Maybe Asobo will do this, but it does it at its own expense.

But it is hard for me to visualize how Asobo can give access to the live weather client fields without creating a security threat that a client installation could be used or configured to be used to access and attack Azure servers. When you run Active Sky r Rex you are giving those companies access to your computer; MS does not really care about this as you are taking all the risk. But opening live weather, even providing a detailed SKD of it, opens potential vectors to attack, and there are bad actors out there always looking for attack vectors. I just don't see a way around that given the current design.

Edited April 25 by Cognita

[tup61 1,591]

5 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

…and some other data between METARs?

Don't really know. The main point is that AS Active mode works with weather themes, so one weather type for the entire globe. How they do that (just metar or also other data) isn't that important to me.

5 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

I still haven’t seen any noticeable transitions, so that’s a good thing.

That sounds good but I suppose you also didn't see a thunderstorm or any other type of weather (different than the one you are flying in) somewhere on the horizon... It's great seeing different types of weather in the distance and to fly towards it or to evade it. AS active mode can't do that. It's all the same everywhere.

Edited April 25 by tup61