So what was largely missing for the weather radar for MSFS 2024 was the tilt function. My understanding was that it was Asobo who upgraded the weather radar capabilities a few years ago so that it was 3D, but they didn’t add the tilt feature. Anyways, it looks like Working Title picked up the slack and there will be a tilt feature in SU5:

With the tilt function, I think that is the last major missing feature for the weather radar in MSFS 2024?

There's a lot more in a wxr... 

5 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

So what was largely missing for the weather radar for MSFS 2024 was the tilt function. My understanding was that it was Asobo who upgraded the weather radar capabilities a few years ago so that it was 3D, but they didn’t add the tilt feature. Anyways, it looks like Working Title picked up the slack and there will be a tilt feature in SU5:

With the tilt function, I think that is the last major missing feature for the weather radar in MSFS 2024?

Still need developers of current aircraft to integrate it into their products, so I'd image that it's going to be a long time before we see it on our flight decks. 

5 hours ago, Epikk said:

There's a lot more in a wxr... 

True but this is certainly much, much better than the status quo. 

24 minutes ago, 11bee said:

True but this is certainly much, much better than the status quo.

Absolutely. 

That post is in error.

Asobo did the work on this. We (WT) merely added the JS API. Credit should go to them.

Additionally, the weather radar was always 3D, going back to 2020 launch. Just some nonsense rumour and misunderstanding that became internet lore that for some reason will simply not die.

Edited April 18Apr 18 by MattNischan

23 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

That post is in error.

Asobo did the work on this. We (WT) merely added the JS API. Credit should go to them.

Additionally, the weather radar was always 3D, going back to 2020 launch. Just some nonsense rumour and misunderstanding that became internet lore that for some reason will simply not die.

Thanks for the reply Matt! 

6 hours ago, Epikk said:

There's a lot more in a wxr... 

Well, from the API perspective, what else is missing from the API after tilt has been added? 

31 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Well, from the API perspective, what else is missing from the API after tilt has been added? 

I think from a pilot perspective, ground returns would be interesting next, along with Ground Clutter Suppression (GCS) and a ground mapping mode (I always assume, this is what people are talking about whenever they are requesting a terrain radar).

1 hour ago, falcon71 said:

I think from a pilot perspective, ground returns would be interesting next, along with Ground Clutter Suppression (GCS) and a ground mapping mode (I always assume, this is what people are talking about whenever they are requesting a terrain radar).

Modelling ground returns completely changes the capabilities of a weather radar and how you need to interact with it in flight.
Getting to see this with the X-Plane implementation was a revelation.

This also has the related question of whether the horizontal mode will still just display a slice through the weather at the chosen tilt or models a beam spreading out from your plane with things like limitations on what you can see close to you and shadowing caused by high terrain or heavy precipitation or rain at low levels being indistinguishable from ground clutter when at high altitude.

This is a slideshow that goes into what a pilot needs to know about how weather radar works and how to interpret what it's telling you
https://www.airpilots.org/ruth-documents/study-papers/Weather Radar.pdf
(In short it's not the infallible all-seeing eye that MSFS has tended to present it as so far)

Edited April 18Apr 18 by Matchstick

What good is this with no vertical development to thunderstorms???

9 hours ago, Matchstick said:

This also has the related question of whether the horizontal mode will still just display a slice through the weather at the chosen tilt or models a beam spreading out from your plane

It is already modeling a 3D beam (not a slice), and has always.

9 hours ago, Matchstick said:

things like limitations on what you can see close to you and shadowing caused by high terrain or heavy precipitation or rain at low levels being indistinguishable from ground clutter when at high altitude.

It is not doing that, no.

15 hours ago, James Driscoll said:

What good is this with no vertical development to thunderstorms???

Exactly.

21 hours ago, James Driscoll said:

What good is this with no vertical development to thunderstorms???

Well, the good is rather simple isn't it... weather radar with a tiltable 3D cone is always better than weather radar with a fixed 3D cone, period. Whatever Asobo can do to advance the ball to an eventual more complete solution is what we obviously want.

The second aspect as you say is better aircraft reactions to dangerous weather, and actual dangerous consequences. Sounds like SU5 is shaping up to improve on that: 

The remaining situation to fix/improve is the live weather depiction of proper dense clouds, t-storms, cells and other dangerous weather (and also more varied clouds, etc). This all stems back to MSFS 2020 SU7 when they started doing METAR blending with global Meteoblue weather. That was a poor first implementation but it's also clear they've improved it a lot since then and in 2024 (but not enough to match pre SU7 live weather, albeit based purely on Meteoblue global data).

As of now, either a) the Meteoblue data is not enough or not good as it was, or b) the METAR blending process is still not good enough and is causing the resulting live weather to lose out in terms of what it depicts (some times, or most the time). I have a feeling it's more a case of b) than a), since pre SU7 before METAR blending we had varied weather, and dangerous weather with dangerous consequences. There is also the turbulence settings they introduced in response to a large portion of the user base complaining about turbulence, so guess that has a part to play in all this too.

Let's see... MSFS 2024's current core weather engine can depict varied weather, dangerous weather, and dangerous consequences to such weather. It's a matter of live weather being able to depict all what manually configured weather can (given the right data). But I'll take progress on whatever front they're able to make it happen. And in that sense, tiltable weather radar is most welcome, as are the turbulence and airflow modelling improvements in SU5.
 

Edited April 19Apr 19 by lwt1971

21 hours ago, James Driscoll said:

What good is this with no vertical development to thunderstorms???

James, it does feel better in SU5.

I started testing with manually defined weather because yesterday when I searched there were no good spots, and indeed I felt, for the first time after a long while (I'd risk saying since early FS 2020) much more activity, including wing rocking and not only yawing, due to the wings crossing areas of updraft / downdraft.

Then today I tested with real weather and, again, the effects were there and while graphically the clouds in MSFS still pixelated, there are now some shapes that pretty much resemble TCu s, something that I hadn't seen before.

So, based on these tests and on what I heard from last week's Devs Update, I am confident that not only they did make progress but they're also up to even more fine tuning in the future.

Well, at least one thing is for sure, both MSFS 2020 and 2024 continue to get support, new features, fine tuning, etc... This is great ! 

On 4/18/2026 at 2:52 PM, MattNischan said:

Additionally, the weather radar was always 3D, going back to 2020 launch. Just some nonsense rumour and misunderstanding that became internet lore that for some reason will simply not die.

What is still unclear is what “always 3D” actually means in the current WXR implementation. The published API documents the display controls, but I have not seen any public documentation defining the underlying sampling model: whether the radar is sampling a true volumetric beam, a slice through a volume, or some other projection. The documented cone angle appears to be display coverage; I have not seen any documentation describing beam width or sampling geometry. 

There is also a more basic limitation. DevSupport (https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/t/allow-reading-environment-simvars-from-non-aircraft-simobjects/4976) previously stated that accurate weather information can only be returned at the ownship position, plus a small radius around the aircraft when needed, and that this is why there is no general Weather API for arbitrary world positions. That creates a direct problem for WXR developers trying to reason about forward sampling, cell structure, or any radar-derived hazard logic. 

The current official API also appears to be display-oriented, not data-oriented. Publicly, it gives a rendered MapView texture and display controls, but no official way to query cells or extract structured weather/radar information from the return. That matters because placing symbology at a given position requires access to the underlying radar/weather data at that position; merely displaying the rendered MapView texture does not provide that.

The useful SDK clarification would be:

- whether the WXR return is a true volumetric beam or a slice/projection
- whether any beam width / beam broadening with range is modeled
- whether attenuation, occlusion, or shadowing are modeled
- whether structured weather/radar data is planned beyond the bitmap output
- whether any structured Doppler / cell-motion data is planned for turbulence and predictive windshear logic

Goes without saying we all massively appreciate the work being done, and look forward to further improvements!