If a small team of developers at Laminar Research can provide a feature as essential to serious flight simulation as weather radar, why can’t the army of developers at Asobo get it done?  Because they don’t care,  as it’s “just a game?”.   Missions and careers and giraffes and elephants and ships are more important it seems than core flight simulation functionality.  Seriously, this has been at the top of the most requested features since forever.  In fact, the community seems to have tried to make it easy for them by largely just requesting an API so that 3rd party devs can provide the missing pieces.  Still nothing.

Hat’s off to the X-Plane developers for their new release.  It’s sometimes impressive what a small team of dedicated enthusiasts can accomplish compared to a corporate bureaucracy.  If I wasn’t tied to Pro-Sim and some other tools for a full A320 hardware cockpit I’d be all-in with them.

I know I should be happy for all the good things we have in flight simulation, and MSFS certsinly has much to offer. We are all spoiled.   It’s just frustrating that something so basic and so critical is completely neglected for so long, especially when a vastly smaller team with far fewer resources is able to show how it’s done.

 

Edited September 5, 2025Sep 5 by kholt

Two words: Different priorities.

I wish we could combine the functionality (and GUI) of XP12 with the eye-candy of MSFS 2024!

7 minutes ago, Adamski_NZ said:

I wish we could combine the functionality (and GUI) of XP12 with the eye-candy of MSFS 2024!

I always said the gameplay of Sensible Soccer plus the management system of (then) Championship Manager and it would've been an utterly incredible game, same thing here with flight Sims, AeroFly FS4s VR performance with MSFS24 🤤

A great XP feature indeed. On the other hand, MSFS and MSFS 2024 have highly advanced default avionics. Why can't XP have that? 😉 I bet weather readar may very well be on the horizon for MSFS as well.

Since the weather is not dangerous in MSFS there is no need for a weather radar. That's why.

They go hand in hand. When they finally get around into making storm cells dangerous to fly through, then we'll going to need a functional weather radar, that can be tilted.

Until then it's pointless anyway.

40 minutes ago, Rimshot said:

A great XP feature indeed. On the other hand, MSFS and MSFS 2024 have highly advanced default avionics. Why can't XP have that? 😉 I bet weather readar may very well be on the horizon for MSFS as well.

Yeah, the avionics in XP 12 are so far behind MSFS 2024. MSFS 2024 (and MSFS 2020) have the best software G1000 (NXi), G3000, G5000, and G3X that you can get for a flight simulator - you can't even buy a better version in the payware market.  And the GNS 530 and GNS 430 for MSFS 2020/2024 are also extremely good.  And with MSFS 2024, Working Title did the Honeywell Primus Epic 2 and Universal UNS-1 as well.

XP 12 has miles and miles to catch up with MSFS 2024 avionics.

58 minutes ago, kholt said:

Missions and careers and giraffes and elephants and ships are more important it seems than core flight simulation functionality.

Who cares when you have this?

Tested it
very nice feature indeed.

1 hour ago, kholt said:

Missions and careers and giraffes and elephants and ships are more important it seems than core flight simulation functionality.

That's pretty disingenuous don't you think? Considering the advancements in flight modelling, ground modelling, lighting etc. that we've seen in FS24? Among all the others stuff I missed.

I agree with you we should have a weather radar but you can atleast be objective about it and no need to unnecessarily bring down MSFS to do it. There's plenty that xplane should have that they don't but its commendable that they have weather radar now and that's worth celebrating.

Because meteoblue is obviously the wrong pick for partnering up, other examples clearly show this (snow coverage anyone? 😉 ). I bet if Asobo would open up the weather api, we would have already had a 3rd party addon providing all those gimmicks. But I guess the contract they have with meteoblue doesnt allow this...

 

26 minutes ago, AnkH said:

Because meteoblue is obviously the wrong pick for partnering up, other examples clearly show this (snow coverage anyone? 😉 ).

I'm not sure Meteoblue is the wrong pick... For the snow coverage specifically, do you know if it is Meteoblue that provides wrong data, or is it Asobo that reads it incorrectly ? We all know by now that the snow coverage mode comes in several resolution, and Asobo is getting the lowest one which is plainly wrong. How comes, in 4 years, Asobo has not solved it yet ? Maybe meteoblue doesn't cooperate. Maybe Asobo doesn't care. I'm thinking Asobo is at fault here...

43 minutes ago, Lucky38i said:

That's pretty disingenuous don't you think? Considering the advancements in flight modelling, ground modelling, lighting etc. that we've seen in FS24? Among all the others stuff I missed.

I agree with you we should have a weather radar but you can atleast be objective about it and no need to unnecessarily bring down MSFS to do it. There's plenty that xplane should have that they don't but its commendable that they have weather radar now and that's worth celebrating.

Also, my understanding is that the main feature missing from the weather radar in MSFS 2024 is the "tilt" function.  Since you are knowledgeable about the MSFS SDK, aside from "tilt," may I ask what else is missing from the weather radar in MSFS 2024?

1 hour ago, MarcG said:

Sensible Soccer

What a game! Plus CM too. Mid nineties heaven for me with both of them. 

6 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

main feature missing from the weather radar in MSFS 2024 is the "tilt"

That's just one symptom of the issue. In the real world planes fly (obviously!) in 3d space and weather radar supplies 3d data for that space. So you can divert your plane via horizontal and vertical path alterations safely to avoid weather systems. MSFS doesn't have 3d weather at all and won't allow 3rd parties to access the sdk to write their own. So what you have instead is a 2d snapshot of ONE altitude OR (much worse) a compression of a few thousand feet(whatever the msfs weather bubble is I don't know sorry) into a flat layer to provide nothing else but a pretty picture on your radar screen. 

Of course sometimes what you see on the radar screen (and thru window) randomly matches up with what you see ahead depending on how the plane dev manipulates the 2d snapshot but you can NOT increase or decrease altitude to avoid it. 

I'm not sure I explained that clearly except the 2d data being useless and highly dangerous in a 3d airspace. 

This is the MSFS forum ....

I see the point of the original post, and I am too very glad with 12.3 and the new weather radar, and with Xp12 overall which is just as GREAT as FS 2024, but....