One word :METEOBLUE

https://content.meteoblue.com/en/business-solutions/weather-apis

Their contract with Asobe is locked in for the foreseeable future and the licensed product does not allow the necessary access to the weather data to provide weather radar or even full accurate visible weather. (that would be an incredibly expensive project btw for a consumer sim /game) 

Previous sims didn't have real weather either, you had to purchase addons that mimicked weather and injected it in various compromised ways into the sim, some better than others. 

If you like, Asobe licenced weather LITE for their sims and are now stuck with the limitations for a long time. Can't blame them for wanting keep costs down at least they gave us SOMETHING resembling visible weather rather than a bunch of preset themes. 

6 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

From what I read and also the streams/videos I have watched, crosswind, stalling, and spinning has improved in MSFS 2024.  There is also wake turbulence modeled now in MSFS 2024.  The lack of turbulence when flying through clouds has always been an issue, for both MSFS 2024 and MSFS 2020.  But I think the flight dynamics have made significant improvements.

You’re being, as always, far too forgiving of MSFS.

I totally agree that flight dynamics (at least as far as my amateur behind can assess them and others’ feedback of them) have improved greatly. I felt it from my very first flight.

But the topic at hand is weather, and it’s not in a good state. The platform has been running for 5 years, they made ONE fundamental change in SU5 which made the Vatsim people happy but for most it just made the clouds look crappy, and since then, practically nothing!
- We STILL get unlimited visibility outside of metar reports (and often inside them when there shouldn’t be), so, most of the time.
- We STILL get snow on the ground in 20°c weather because some reporting station at the top of a nearby mountain reported some.
- We STILL get, essentially, one cloud type (cumo-puffs)with some extrapolated high level cirrus from time to time (which does look good when it’s there).
- We STILL get absolutely no peril from flying into clouds barring the occasional exaggerated / very unrealistic icing effects. 

I get that everyone has their personal focuses / wants, but weather should be a factor for ALL flights. MS/Asobo have put so much money and time into scenery (still spending (I assume) millions on sending planes up to get photogrammetry of tier two and three German cities), addon planes, career mode, even VR is getting some attention, yet weather? This thing that is all around EVERY flight? Practically nothing! Just the lazy post-SU5 mess with some (admittedly nice) atmosphere colouring.

MS / Asobo or whoever is making the decision on resource allocations deserve every bit of criticism they get over this lack of attention. What’s even more frustrating is that, and to get back to the OP’s question, the engine itself seems very capable of doing everything we need, as evidenced by some of the crazy-real presets people have produced.

TLDR: scotchegg is grumpy about weather in MSFS😅

Edited September 5, 2025Sep 5 by scotchegg

1 hour ago, Sonosusto said:

The OP posted that XP has weather radar but MSFS doesn't? I'm confused. I don't fly default planes in msfs so maybe thats the reason? Fenix, Avro, 777, Dukes..... 

I know its fairly basic but to say/imply it doesn't have any weather radar is incorrect. Its just basic. It needs work, of course. But not at all? Thats not true. Maybes its because I use activesky and have the tdi gtn? 

ding ding ding we have a winner after 4 pages of posts.   OP ought to change the thread title, it doesn't seem accurate.

Well that just means Asobo or one of their support studios needs to be the one to improve the weather radar since third parties can't. They made the original, so they should be able to give it more functions.

  

13 hours ago, sloppysmusic said:

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

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. 

The Asobo Weather Radar is 3D and not a single snapshot, someone already posted video proof earlier in the thread.

The problem is just the lack of tilt.

Edited September 5, 2025Sep 5 by Tuskin38

29 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

One word :METEOBLUE

https://content.meteoblue.com/en/business-solutions/weather-apis

Their contract with Asobe is locked in for the foreseeable future and the licensed product does not allow the necessary access to the weather data to provide weather radar or even full accurate visible weather. (that would be an incredibly expensive project btw for a consumer sim /game) 

Previous sims didn't have real weather either, you had to purchase addons that mimicked weather and injected it in various compromised ways into the sim, some better than others. 

If you like, Asobe licenced weather LITE for their sims and are now stuck with the limitations for a long time. Can't blame them for wanting keep costs down at least they gave us SOMETHING resembling visible weather rather than a bunch of preset themes. 

I can. Don't give us a half-asked product. Alot of people using the sim the most regulary I would say are people who are highly enthusiatic about realism, a large majority are wanna-be pilots and others are actual pilots. Once I started flying commerically, I realised how poor the wx system is. I don't care if it costs them more money, do better. Make us pay more initally. Design a product thats intended for flight simulation, not some stupid game with challenges. I've always questioned why large scale developers do not directly team with well-known developers so we don't have to wait months even years for a realistic aircraft simulation, probably some greedy developer saying no... Imagine if off the bat you load into the game all PMDG aircraft available, all fenix available etc etc. Im going on a rant that probably has an answer that I haven't thought about. The wx simulation is frankly word not allowed and asobo need to listen to the people who actually use the sim regually, not bill bo bagins who pays for it once to yank the plane into a stall then slam a F18 into the water then log off and never open it again.  Stop trying to be orginal and have everything as "we created the best XXX system", suck it up and give credit to people who know what they are doing and let an actual team (who know what they are doing) develop it. 

42 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

Their contract with Asobe is locked in for the foreseeable future

Do we know the contract term?

4 hours ago, SayAgain said:

Good old AI (seems accurate):

No one cares about your AI slop. Next time just keep it to yourself. Thanks. 

9 hours ago, scotchegg said:

Do we know the contract term?

https://content.meteoblue.com/en/about-us/references/business-partners/microsoft/

No mention of contract length here except that they think it's amazing, boastworthy and from the looks of it here to stay. 

I expect the contract itself is available from some state archive unless restricted by some NDA.

9 hours ago, ols500 said:

I can. Don't give us a half-asked product

I'm in agreement except my comment was made assuming Asobo planned to make a GAME not a SIM. It has never been a serious simulator imo but it sure as heck has attempted to take over and dominate the serious sim MARKET. 

Once we can move on (it's finally starting to happen now) from the frankly childish opinion that there is only one sim worth using since the release of msfs 2020 and anyone using xp or p3d are dinosaurs then we can get back to a shared competitive market. 

I was hoping that since Meteoblue got bought out my windy.com that we'd see a better collaboration between MS and the provider, hard to know from this side of the fence if anythings changed with that respect. All we could do is flood the Q&A Question Form in the hope that it gets answered during one of those, otherwise it's all guesswork as to what is actually going on with regards to a weather provider and future improvements.

I rather my sim not look like minecraft and have a basic weather radar.

I do hope we get to see improvements to what we do have in MSFS such as tilt at some point. It's been a heavily requested feature/request for some time. 

It's always puzzled me why professional airline pilots would want to come home after a long shift and fire up a £100 gaming simulator on their PC? And then complain because the weather radar isn't exactly like their experience at work? One would think it might be more healthy for them if they could forget about work for a while and play with something else?

20 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

MSFS before SU5 was a joy to behold and despite updates the weather has not regained its majesty from the early days. 

This is urban legend.  Weather now in 2024 is vastly better and the stuck on pre-SU5 verges on a hallucination, propagated by saying this over and over.

13 hours ago, chapstick said:

Next time just keep it to yourself

No.

I use AI daily and actually understand what it can and can’t do and the LLMs involved.  Try out JetBrains ReSharper sometime when coding a web app (or any app) and it’s been very impressive in code generation and optimization.

But you haven’t demonstrated any inaccuracy in the AI generate information on weather radars?