3 hours ago, efis007 said:

Estoy bastante de acuerdo con el análisis del foro MSFS.
El XP12 actual puede reproducir buenas formaciones de nubes, no siempre son perfectas (a veces las formas son completamente erróneas), pero en general son agradables.

Sin embargo, antes de cantar victoria no subestimaría el potencial de Asobo y el nuevo FS2024, que de momento sigue plagado de varios bugs y varios problemas antiguos y nuevos, pero durante su desarrollo podría reservarnos varias sorpresas inesperadas.
Además, nunca olvidemos que en los diez años de historia de cada serie de Flight Simulator  el aspecto meteorológico nunca ha sido totalmente considerado y nunca ha sido objeto de perfección predeterminada.
Todas las series de Flight Simulators del pasado (FS9, FSX, P3D) han utilizado complementos externos para aumentar el realismo.
REX y Activesky por ejemplo son productos que han hecho la historia de la meteorología durante todos estos años, nada estaba a la par en términos de precisión meteorológica y representación gráfica meteorológica.
Durante 20 años estos complementos han dominado sin oposición y envidiados por los antiguos XPlanes que no podían permitírselos.
De la misma forma que Xenviro hoy intenta mejorar las cualidades gráficas y físicas de XPlane, debemos esperar que Activesky y REX hagan (de nuevo) lo mismo para FS2024, y en unos meses podrían (quizás, quién sabe) ser ganadores si serán capaces de proponer addons innovadores como lo han hecho en el pasado.

Así que... sí... estoy de acuerdo con el análisis del foro MSFS... actualmente entre FS2024 (por defecto) y XP12 (por defecto) XP12 gana en la precisión de la representación del tiempo.
Pero en el futuro con los nuevos addons en el horizonte todo podría cambiar a favor de uno u otro.

Ahora es demasiado pronto para gritar "¡victoria de XP12, rey de la meteorología!" .
Es solo una victoria temporal que podría durar mucho tiempo, o poco tiempo, dependiendo de los movimientos del oponente y del esfuerzo que pongan para llenar ese gran vacío meteorológico del que se quejan todos los pilotos de MSFS.
Subestimar el potencial real de Asobo (y los socios de su complemento) es prematuro.
Ese equipo sabe muy bien que está rezagado en ese sector en particular (meteorología), y sabe muy bien que el descontento de los usuarios es palpable y preocupante.
Y esta situación representa (a veces) el terreno ideal para la "resolución obligatoria" en la que un equipo de desarrollo deja de bromear con los consumidores, inclina seriamente la cabeza, se arremanga y se lanza de cabeza a lograr el milagro que todos esperan.
Están rezagados y, en consecuencia, deben avanzar y ponerse al día.
Tengo mucha curiosidad por ver qué presentará FS2024 en los próximos meses para contrarrestar la meteorología de XP12.

The problem with MFS is that they are tied to an agreement with Meteoblue and cannot open the api or data to third parties.

Yes, but from what I understood reading the MSFS forum article, the problem that users are complaining about is not the meteorological physic accuracy, but the lack of meteorological graphic accuracy.
In short, if the metar reports a certain type of cloudiness, FS2024 is unable to graphically represent the clouds as well as XP12 does.
So there is a discrepancy between "physics of the metar" and "graphical representation of the metar".
Even in the previous XP12 versions there was this discrepancy, the clouds were not very realistic or were represented with ugly or anomalous shapes (do we remember the famous minecraft clouds?).
Then XP12 slowly adjusted its aim, and today its clouds are actually graphically improved compared to before.
What FS2024 users are complaining about is a graphical problem, they would like to see clouds modeled better when the metar data suggests particular cloud formations.
The problem is frankly solvable (if only Asobo decides to solve it once and for all).
If XP12 managed to make beautiful clouds there is no technical reason why Asobo cannot make equally beautiful clouds.
There are no "magic spells" in simulators, it's just programming.

The physics aspect is also inferior to Xp12, IMO.

The way turbulence, and soon wind variability reported in METAR, is represented in XP12 default weather is more plausible.

MSFS 20 and 24 also still poorly model icing effects, effects of runway / taxiway contamination, and although graphical also the precise representation of visibilities in marginal VFR and in VMC or IMC is also inferior to XP!2.

"Good weather" convection / thermals are poorly represented in both simulators...

6 hours ago, efis007 said:

potential of Asobo and the new FS2024

And you then proceed to regale the 3rd parties? I mean...the credit there is fully deserved, but you've missed the mark here. As far as default models go, asobo has had many years to pester meteoblue to tune their ai/ml-based weather system and it's still not improved in '24? That's not a great sign for anyone aside from those 3rd party devs. Meteoblue was bought recently (parent company of windy.com iirc?) and it will be very interesting to see if there are any significant improvements to '24 default weather in the near future. Have they announced any new agreements recently? Maybe letting that dust settle first? This has nothing to do with asobo's "potential". I'd reckon more to do with meteoblue digging in contractually. Not to mention the burden of properly training a ai/ml model that has zero physics modeling. As much as I like the idea of a ai/ml weather model, I'm not sold on it being better at the consumer level than the forced-accuracy of XP's interpolation model. At least not for a few years yet.

Thankfully the worst thing XP has to deal with is NOAA flubbing their file servers now and then. And though there's still a few minecrafty clouds now and then in xp12 😐 , the overall match to metar is much much improved.

 

Edited January 8, 20251 yr by blingthinger

This all being said, I must confess I am getting very good results with xEnviro, from what I have tested sometimes more plausible / consistent with the METAR and model data than default Xp12 weather.

I had never used xEnviro, and:

.) It paints cloud types / diversity and distribution according to METAR and ALOFT forecast data more consistently / plausibly than default weather, most of the time;

.) It corrects the "rain" bug where in default XP12 weather you can still have rain where it doesn't make sense;

.) It creates snow cover more plausibly;

.) It creates turbulence and wind variability and gusts much more consistently than default weather, although with that thread I posted yesterday Austin finally became convinced that the way he was coding variable winds was wrong and will probably fix it in the next XP updt;

1 hour ago, jcomm said:

ou can still have rain where it doesn't make sense;

Just like the real world. Clear skies and it raining. Amazing how far rain can travel when wind blowing hard.

2 hours ago, jcomm said:

This all being said, I must confess I am getting very good results with xEnviro, from what I have tested sometimes more plausible / consistent with the METAR and model data than default Xp12 weather.

I had never used xEnviro, and:

.) It paints cloud types / diversity and distribution according to METAR and ALOFT forecast data more consistently / plausibly than default weather, most of the time;

.) It corrects the "rain" bug where in default XP12 weather you can still have rain where it doesn't make sense;

.) It creates snow cover more plausibly;

.) It creates turbulence and wind variability and gusts much more consistently than default weather, although with that thread I posted yesterday Austin finally became convinced that the way he was coding variable winds was wrong and will probably fix it in the next XP updt;

I am a bit skeptical about xE. I have been using it in XP11 (that had a very limited default weather mostly visually) and have seen some demos from users streaming it since the new version came out. I saw a guy approaching an airport that reported very low distance and very foggy. The airport was visible from miles away like if it was cavok. Clearly wrong. Not sure if that was just an exception but it didn’t convince me. xE also still seems to have that issue with weird artefacts at the mountain-borders and sometimes even inhibits impacts the view inside the cockpit (depending on the addon).

Clouds do sometimes look very pixelated and increasing the resolution impacts the performance a lot.

But the thing that makes me wonder the most is how they can achieve to depict a local and non-global weather like ActiveSky when the Api to XP is still not fully opened. And is it really local and as fined as default? How did that work?

I tested the default weather in many situations and for me it is clearly the most convincing in general. And we also have to keep in mind that for XP 12.2 a big weather-update will be coming that should (hopefully) also get rid of all weird cloud-shapes we still encounter from time to time.

Edited January 9, 20251 yr by Franz007

1 hour ago, mjrhealth said:

Just like the real world. Clear skies and it raining. Amazing how far rain can travel when wind blowing hard.

Eheheh, but that's not the case here 🙂

Not seeing those results on my end. Must depend of location since I do most of my flying up north.

In fact, flying in Scandinavia is really hit and miss in XP vs MSFS.

I work at the airport so I can attest that MSFS24 is actually not bad at all. While XP is unable to create that compact OVC and winter feeling.
(no snow coverage at ESSA, when we have 15-20cm snow for quite some time now)

So if you want to fly at latitudes 60N the throne is still vacant.

XP12 (cloud resolution High, default RW weather enabled, visualFX OFF)

Other angle, some hours earlier (we had OVC with NOSIG the whole morning)

MSFS24

This is why I am so glad with xEnviro 1.34 in Xp12:

https://1drv.ms/i/c/be330b60238cef73/EYWaM9iqQUBLr0L9ZxE6QEsB8702msmrrOqOXc1IHXcUCw?e=oavv8Z

https://1drv.ms/i/c/be330b60238cef73/ESi7I_HhDKNIpYV6fuY45eEB6Hsy856cA-QDHlDYSOPssA?e=TdQ1NN

https://1drv.ms/i/c/be330b60238cef73/ESkkWw3UU15MqzIJvfL05RABsRhQpwbUxyaBb1IxecBsWg?e=Ok1y1c

Edited January 9, 20251 yr by jcomm

1 hour ago, jcomm said:

This is why I am so glad with xEnviro 1.34 in Xp12:

https://1drv.ms/i/c/be330b60238cef73/EYWaM9iqQUBLr0L9ZxE6QEsB8702msmrrOqOXc1IHXcUCw?e=oavv8Z

https://1drv.ms/i/c/be330b60238cef73/ESi7I_HhDKNIpYV6fuY45eEB6Hsy856cA-QDHlDYSOPssA?e=TdQ1NN

https://1drv.ms/i/c/be330b60238cef73/ESkkWw3UU15MqzIJvfL05RABsRhQpwbUxyaBb1IxecBsWg?e=Ok1y1c

I would really be interested to compare with default weather. The snow coverage seems to be an advantage of xE, however I am using the freeware snow-plugin giving me exactly those visuals we see on your pictures.

@SAS443 You can simply set manual weather to put snow on ground than once loaded change to real weather. If its cold enough snow will remain if its not it will melt over time, if the weather is right for it, it should snow.

For snow I have always used this: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/89465-accumulated-snow/

On 1/8/2025 at 9:39 PM, efis007 said:

Then XP12 slowly adjusted its aim, and today its clouds are actually graphically improved compared to before

yeah, slowly, shudder....

XPD-9632

On Nov 12, 2018, at 5:04 PM

Product= XPlane

Version= 11.30 beta 3

OS= Linux

Summary= Clouds unaffected by wind

Description= Clouds formations are not affected by wind.

Steps= manually create a cloud layer containing high winds, for example scattered clouds and 90 knot winds at 6000 feet.

Clouds remain in position

Example video:

 

Consents to storing personal data= Yes <Log.txt>

_____

Really just how long these things take even under optimum conditions, I do have some sympathy for those who expected MS to do better, but given the regressions that are being reported in msfs2024 "not much".

Really, really was worth the wait, but if you asked me to go do it all again I would probably have to resort to violence....

Well, regarding winds and clouds, both FS 2020 and FS 2024 correctly depict clouds moving with the wind.

In some aspects aloft winds can even be more precise than in X-Plane12's default weather, probably due to a more stable and higher resolution grib source than the one used by LR.

Last night I had the chance to test a bad weather scenario in the South Americas, Brasil, where +TSRA and embedded Cb were reported together with variable winds on ground.

I took the Toliss A32N and my first test flight was with xEnviro, which failed to correctly model the winds aloft according to model data (ECMWF). Strangely when I enabled the wind barbs at various levels in the XP12 Map view the winds were acceptably listed ( NOAA based ) comparing to ECMWF grib data.

Then I went flying in XP12 default weather and very strangely while the Map still depicted the wind barbs correctly, the wind detected by the A32N was rather tame at altitude.

I also tested penetrating cells where the most intense activity was visible in the Map, and while there was certainly vertical activity, the expected bouncing was tame, both with xEnviro and default XP12 weather, compared to what I actually got in FS 2024 with default weather and RealTurb 2.

FS 2024 failed in correctly depicting rain, but surface winds, aloft winds and effects while crossing convective areas were actually more plausible in this trial.

Data resolution assimilated by FS 2024 is also probably more higher resolution than the NOAA data used by Xp12.

So, sometimes FS 2024 does it better - of course not feel of flight wise because the aircraft under such adverse weather scenarios still bounce like kites... 

Edited January 11, 20251 yr by jcomm