Many of you might be aware of my weather website which includes a map supplied by Meteo. Select the satellite option then With Radar. Bingo! Rainfall.

This service is free to people like myself. So the info is there.

5 hours ago, SAS443 said:

you described a typical warmfront. they do not have CU. So in that case the MSFS rendition was inaccurate.
remember that warmfront is basically an inversion the way it is skewed. Promoting horizontally extensive clouds (such as various types of stratus), not vertical. The convective energy is simply not there.

(unless we talk about occluded fronts, but those are a different animal)

Good grief, Nimbostratus then!

The point is, pre SU5 MSFS showed the cirrus and stratus layers far off in the distance. One could watch a very good representation of an approaching warm front. In the current version not so good.

13 hours ago, Noel said:

Sure, as long as you ignore the fugly volcanic ash clouds that thankfully are largely gone now.  I have to disagree that 'every cloud type in a real front' was represented.  Maybe in a rare, by accident occurrence that might have been the case but I'll stand by my original statement:  largely, myth.  What I see now is vastly closer to reality.  

No, not in rare cases.  I used to load up MSFS at an airport ahead of a warm front and watch the developing weather while I was busy with something else.

I agree there have been improvements with default weather, including far less volcanic ash clouds. The weather is very good, but not back to pre SU5 levels imho.

On 9/6/2025 at 3:02 PM, sloppysmusic said:

Maybe they're a bit bored flying the same bus on the same route day in and day out from one boring urban landscape to another 700 miles away? 

Maybe they want to have FUN with their skills and fly an older or bigger aircraft on a more challenging route over the Andes? Or maybe shuttle a bizjet into short fields from their home town to favorite travel destination? 

Maybe this fun is ruined by a completely unrealistic weather simulation compared to what they see and HAVE to work with in their day job?

Lol youre right about that, it blows my mind watching people punch in SIDs and STARs, clicking and unlicking auto pilot on a glass pit.

 

Flying fast movers with steam gauges, old school liners, turbo props is infinitely more fun and challenging. Flying on VOR, trusting it, and having the reward of reaching your destination is a thrill.

This thread—which actually started with the weather radar and now revolves around the visual aspects of weather rendering, which can be highly subjective and certainly depends on the specific situation (such as a spectacular sunset)— misses the point once again.

• The standard aircraft were mediocre at best initially, and MS responded by bringing in third-party developers.
• The avionics were mediocre, and MS responded by bringing in the Working Title team.
• The autogen scenery was basically okay, yet MS is striving for improvements with the move away from Blackshark.
• The scenery received a significant boost with the improved 3D terrain features.
• The walk-around feature as an introduction to first-person view suggests further development plans.

I could list many more examples, but the text is getting already too long...

What about Live Weather?

It was a key feature at the launch of MSFS 2020, and Jorg Neumann couldn't promise enough fantastic developments in this area. That changed radically with SU7. No more visions in this direction, just tweaks. Yes, it looks spectacular at times, but it still carries many known shortcomings, not least the unfulfilled promise of being able to render all types of clouds. A thread like this would be an opportunity to address an imbalance in development effort, but instead, mediocrity is being celebrated.

TL;DR:  A first step in the right direction would be to acknowledge that weather and atmosphere should be a core focus in a flight simulator, and that this has no longer been the case in MSFS since SU7. Everything else would probably follow from that.

2 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I used to load up MSFS at an airport ahead of a warm front and watch the developing weather while I was busy with something else.

Hmm, must have been weather pre-sets which I never used nor ever will otherwise there is no way you'd be able to FIND an 'airport ahead of a warm front' except by accident or luck considering this statement which I see you agreed with:

On 9/7/2025 at 3:35 AM, Franz007 said:

But the main reason was that while looking absolutely fantastic***, the « live weather » was nowhere like it was supposed to be in real. The weather-conditions at airports where fully wrong and often the winds in the complete opposite direction. And the pressure and temperature like fantasy-numbers compared to what the metar was telling.

 ***this is how the myth perpetuates.

No can have it both ways, and fake pre-set weather is just that, fake.  What I see now, in toto, is a vast improvement over Round One weather.  And it matches local conditions far better. 
 

7 minutes ago, Tom_L said:

Yes, it looks spectacular at times, but it still carries many known shortcomings, not least the unfulfilled promise of being able to render all types of clouds.

This is largely a function of the current state of using voxel grid technology to create volumetric clouds and P3D and XP suffer from the same basic issues and that has to do w/ the huge performance burden involved, not the amount of dedication by developers.  All devs are faced with trying to make this:

out of this:

2 hours ago, Tom_L said:

TL;DR:  A first step in the right direction would be to acknowledge that weather and atmosphere should be a core focus in a flight simulator, and that this has no longer been the case in MSFS since SU7. Everything else would probably follow from that.

Agree completely.  Weather should be the subject of a deep dive by the devs spread over one or perhaps two dedicated sim updates.

3 hours ago, Noel said:

And it matches local conditions far better. 

That’s exactly what I said. The cloud-variety looks way poorer and there are these metar-bubbles interrupting the general weather (based on forecast). But the win is that locally seen the conditions are close to the real ones.

17 hours ago, Noel said:

Hmm, must have been weather pre-sets which I never used nor ever will otherwise there is no way you'd be able to FIND an 'airport ahead of a warm front' except by accident or luck

Eh?  It is quite simple to look on a weather radar app, find an airport ahead of a weather front and load the SIM at an appropriate airport.

I never used presets, always live weather.

On 9/6/2025 at 6:21 PM, MarcG said:

All we could do is flood the Q&A Question Form in the hope that it gets answered during one of those,

The next devstream question form is out, so let’s get flooding:

https://forms.microsoft.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=v4j5cvGGr0GRqy180BHbR1r3nNQ_40JBjVeCHjmDms9UNUNCVlhKVTVDWVgyNDFQN1Q5Q0gyMlRETi4u&route=shorturl

On 9/5/2025 at 3:32 AM, kholt said:

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?”.

As an X-Plane and MSFS player, there are tradeoffs with every product, right? Microsoft Flight Simulator uses real maps and has better graphics out of the box. Why doesn't X-Plane have that? They charge a similar price for X-Plane as MSFS 24. Why not incorporate that into their product to compete graphically with MSFS 20/24?

1 hour ago, scotchegg said:

The next devstream question form is out, so let’s get flooding:

https://forms.microsoft.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=v4j5cvGGr0GRqy180BHbR1r3nNQ_40JBjVeCHjmDms9UNUNCVlhKVTVDWVgyNDFQN1Q5Q0gyMlRETi4u&route=shorturl

Nice one👍

Weather question asked. Let's keep 'em coming. 

Another cool feature would be if the radar couldn't see through mountains.

2 hours ago, WestAir said:

if the radar couldn't see through mountains.

Yes please.