Ok, we already know the great strides XP12 has been making in weather depiction and simulation. But I'm also excited about the improvements in weather features in the upcoming releases. Finally, weather has been given the development priority it deserves!

The new complex weather radar is going to be the perfect accompaniment for the improved weather simulation and improved weather visuals that we're already enjoying in current release.

"But what does it effectively translate to?", you might ask. Well, someone compared the accuracy of real weather in the current release of XP12 with the competition, and I think the screenshots speaks for themselves: X-Plane 12 simply blows everything out of the water!

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/live-weather-how-accurate-is-it-in-msfs-2024-a-comparison/686675

 

Thank you for that link @Murmur!

Indeed, way ahead not only in the visuals but also on the effects...

Edited January 5, 20251 yr by jcomm

Thanks for sharing, @Murmur - I find it hard to fly anything BUT XP12 lately, it’s just getting better and better.

It’s all I’m flying these days. The constant development by LR and devs is a breath of fresh air.

Parkes Western NSW Australia this am. Good to see it gets this good best there is really. Early on lots of issues particularly with inflight precipitation and block clouds etc good to see they have managed to correctly represent thin high cloud as well as low level all from real time data from NOAA via LR. Good for me. Still some precip issues to resolve in flight. 

Another note lighting is superb and accurate. This is how this part of the world looks to me and I see it daily! 

XP12 is also the king of night lighting

Quite remarkable LR have achieved this level of representation. Think they can leave this as done now. Airports are remarkably good some superb but all more than reasonable and representative. Not sure why they are so tardy with updates out of the Scenery Gateway. They have to address the road display issue, they do it ok for railway lines so why roads are so poorly done escapes me. Hills and Mountains are very good also, surprisingly, still think their general coastal meshes needs a makeover a la ORBX Vector, particularly with islands. Paradoxically almost - airport slopes and bumps are good as well.  Water appears very well done with good effects - not seen if it cranks up to Hurricane force and big rolling swells ala P3D yet but then nothing to realistically float about on such a big sea either. NVIDIA worked that one out some time ago so not sure why it cannot be implemented. 

To think that they can get this level of flight simulator to run on 3 different operating systems is even more remarkable - MS, Apple and Linux. 

1 hour ago, coastaldriver said:

They have to address the road display issue, they do it ok for railway lines so why roads are so poorly done escapes me. Hills and Mountains are very good also, surprisingly, still think their general coastal meshes needs a makeover a la ORBX Vector, particularly with islands.

I would say, stay tuned.

What you see in the weather improvements that has taken place over time is what you will see in the conversion from old DSF scenery file format  currently use to a newer file format allow for better display of the autogen at a higher density with real data driven results to bring the imaging a lot closer to a realistic appearance over time based on what Ben talked about in his interview on the future of Xplane. By added a little at a time allows for backward compatibility of scenery using the old standard but over time the change will be most profound as we saw it with the weather until the old system is phase out and the developers start using the new standards. Also they are not done with the weather with more things to come that is going improve the flight experience even more. But so far they had made some great progress after looking at the comparison photos and are very compelling indeed.

Edited January 6, 20251 yr by BobFS88

X-Plane 12 is THE KING OF EVERYTHING 😍😁

21 minutes ago, jcomm said:

X-Plane 12 is THE KING OF EVERYTHING 😍😁

and the 744 is the queen 😛

Filed under Based Facts.

Edited January 6, 20251 yr by mSparks

I honestly expected MSFS to do better. Looks like updating the weather rendering fell a bit to the wayside for FS 2024 in favor of other features.

And it was very good already from the beginning - e.g. implementation of visibilty, if you observe my respective thread from back then. 0.25 nm visibility according to badbadweather.com and also in XP12.

16 hours ago, Bjoern said:

I honestly expected MSFS to do better. Looks like updating the weather rendering fell a bit to the wayside for FS 2024 in favor of other features.

Not about rendering, but braking distance on slippery runways (also an aspect of weather). As I haven't installed MSFS 2024 (yet?) due to the problems it brings with it even on Windows - as I'm on Linux and would need to install it via Steam: did anyone (eying  at @jcomm 😉) test braking in MSFS 2024 in "bad weather"?

On 1/5/2025 at 10:34 PM, Murmur said:

The new complex weather radar is going to be the perfect accompaniment for the improved weather simulation and improved weather visuals that we're already enjoying in current release.

Is that big weather radar update now coming with terrain radar echoes that was praised in all YouTube videos a few months ago? Lovely - I hope that means the Hotstart Challenger and the TorqueSim CitationJet 525 will get that soon too?

 

11 hours ago, JetCat said:

Is that big weather radar update now coming with terrain radar echoes that was praised in all YouTube videos a few months ago? Lovely - I hope that means the Hotstart Challenger and the TorqueSim CitationJet 525 will get that soon too?

 

As soon as it is released the weather-Api will be fully opened and every dev can chose if he wants to implement parts of or all functions available we see in that demonstration or not. It’s up to them. Knowing the aim for fidelity of the CL650-devs, it’s likely they will implement it but as close as possible to the real counterpart. Not sure if every weather-radar in real also has automatically terrain-returns.

I quite agree with the analysis on the MSFS forum.
The current XP12 can render good cloud formations, they are not always perfect (sometimes it gets the shapes completely wrong), but generally they are pleasant.

However, before singing victory I would not underestimate the potential of Asobo and the new FS2024, which at the moment is still plagued by several bugs and various old and new problems, but during its development it could reserve us several unexpected surprises.
Furthermore, never forget that in the ten-year history of each Flight Simulator series the meteorological aspect has never been fully considered and has never been the object of default perfection.
All the Flight Simulators series of the past (FS9, FSX, P3D) have used external addons to increase realism.
REX and Activesky for example are products that have made the history of meteorology for all these years, nothing was on par in terms of meteorological precision and meteorological graphic representation.
For 20 years these addons have dominated unchallenged and envied by the old XPlanes that could not afford them.
Just as Xenviro today tries to enhance the graphic and physical qualities of XPlane, we must expect that Activesky and REX will do (again) the same for FS2024, and in a few months they could (maybe, who knows) be winners if they will be able to propose innovative addons as they have done in the past.

So... yes... I agree with the analysis of the MSFS forum... currently between FS2024 (by default) and XP12 (by default) XP12 wins in the accuracy of the weather representation.
But in the future with the new addons on the horizon everything could change in favor of one or the other.

Now it is too early to shout "XP12 victory, king of meteorology!.
It's just a temporary victory that could last a long time, or a short time, depending on the opponent's moves and the effort they will put in to fill that big meteorological gap that all MSFS pilots complain about.
Underestimating the real Asobo potential (and its addon's partners) is premature.
That team knows very well that it is behind in that particular sector (meteorology), and it knows very well that the discontent of users is palpable and worrying.
And this situation represents (sometimes) the ideal ground for the "mandatory resolution" in which a development team stops joking with consumers, seriously bows its head, rolls up its sleeves, and dives headlong into achieving the miracle that everyone expects.
They are behind and consequently they must advance and catch up.
I'm really curious to see what FS2024 will stage in the coming months to counter XP12's meteorology.