I've been using Active Sky for MSFS since it was released. I didn't particularly like the weather built into the sim. It seemed dark and foreboding always, and not that accurate in my opinion. So, I continued to use Active Sky and felt the accuracy of that program was quite excellent. Active Sky's CLOUDS (and I use AS Cloud Art as well), however, never impressed me, and are not all that great when you consider the beautiful formations present in MSFS when on the ULTRA setting.

However, today, I turned off Active Sky during a flight...and turned on the Real Weather in the sim. I believe this real weather has been improved with past updates in the months (and years) that I've been using the sim, and that I wasn't aware of it! I really enjoyed using the REAL Weather in the sim in today's flight.

Is it my imagination or is the weather in the sim significantly improved to the point that it rivals and even EXCEEDS the reality and visuals of Active Sky? I'm interested in your opinions on this.

Edited May 23May 23 by spilok

Is it my imagination or is the weather in the sim significantly improved to the point that it rivals and even EXCEEDS the reality and visuals of Active Sky? I'm interested in your opinions on this.

I think it could be the imagination...as I actually think Live WX keeps getting downgraded. It can certainly look good at times and be very dramatic but it generally does not display the weather properly. The problem is that Live WX favors cumulus clouds everywhere so you see tiny, overly white, transparent cumulus clouds when there should be a stratiform overcast. I still constantly see tiny popcorn clouds at FL 350 and above as well. There are some really odd wavy high clouds at times, not sure if that is their way of doing Cirrus clouds but it does not look very good. Live WX used to be so much better in early 2020 days but seems to have been downgraded around console release and when they started 'Metar blending'. There are also zero CB clouds when there are Thunderstorms...at most they are reaching up to 20k but zero structure of a Thunderstorm (do you recall the release trailer 6 years ago and the snippet of the amazing thunderstorm? Well, I have never seen anything close to that in the sim). Not to mention, Live WX still gives us near unlimited visibility...the only time I notice viz reduction is in reported fog or in rain. ActiveSky can be OK at times and I have noticed that it will actually give you more stratus clouds instead of the Cumulus. I do hope there will be a big SU with a weather/atmosphere/clouds focus but I will not hold my breath...especially after watching the latest Dev stream where they don't seem to even acknowledge there are problems....😐

Edited May 23May 23 by Flic1

Every flight it seems default weather is improving. Also holds true for ATC.

And with the FSReborn Phenom, my flight simulation life is very good.

dd

This afternoon after leaving KBWI:

Just venture outside and take note how uninteresting real weather certainly can be. The same is true in Live Weather and as the saying goes in Colorado if you don't like the weather just wait 15 minutes. IOW, you can't expect to fly our favorite sim and have the 'weather' impress you heavily every time up--it shouldn't, and when it does, it's pretty great. We're still very hamstrung w/ the current volumetric cloud architecture which is very constrained due to the heavy processing cost of voxel-based rendering. Without a quantum leap in processing power we're a bit stuck unless perhaps we'll see a new way to render 3D volumes in a much more efficient way. Or a dedicated section of the GPU dedicated to just this type of rendering.

1 hour ago, CFIJose said:

This afternoon after leaving KBWI:

WOW!

1 hour ago, CFIJose said:

Perhaps we should consider a few facts.

Active Sky's weakness, what I noticed, is that it does not display WX returns well on the radar, and they are heavily limited by the underlying Microsoft Flight Simulator weather radar API. 

MSFS 2020/2024 suffers from this unrealistic "volcanic ash" cloud color, which has nothing to do with the meteorology. It's just their wrong interpretation. In reality, clouds are much whiter and have more contrast, not this pronounced gray as in post-volcanic-eruption skies. See the pictures, such a difference.

Another issue is the variations in cloud formations.

Something to be taken into account and vehiculated around is this wrong impression/expectation that "I don't see this out of my window" compared to a METAR or ATIS. 

Many times, when taxiing out or during the approach, WX conditions are not quite 100% compared to the WX report; slight variations occur. 

I think the weather visuals are great in MSFS2024 now. I read a lot of posts where people are disatisfied with it but to me it usually looks great.

What I think is weak at the moment is the depiction of wind and the heavily exaggerated affect it has on airframes. I'm not suggesting that wind doesn't affect an aircraft - of course it does - but the current interpretation in the sim is one of ground handling being utterly decimated when there's any surface wind, and aircraft being jerked around when there's even a 8kt wind.

I’ve also started enjoying the weather a bit more recently. Atmospheric haze was (re)integrated into live weather recently which has a really important effect. I belieeeve cloud density has also had some tweaking, as the percentage of opaque steam puffs seems to be lower, although unfortunately not zero.

Still not the variety we need, still unimpressive lighting regimes, but I genuinely do get the sense that something is moving behind the scenes.

It looks better to me, but some details need the help of ASFS and RealTurb, and I use both to enhance my experience.

Winds for instance are sometimes rather incionsistent with rw data, probably because the merge between METAR and forecasts isn't yet fine tuned.

There seem to be discrepancies between official live data and the sim too, although not all of the time. Sometimes METAR data is well aligned with rw data sometimes it doesn't.

The older I get the better the Sim looks. 😄

This is certainly very true. I do have noticed improvements in live weather. The cloudscapes are now consistently looking good. Getting solid overcasts aswell. I am also seeing multiple layered clouds which was completely missing before. Still alot to be desired because the clouds still have wrong absorption values of light and they look bad in certain light conditions. We still need more cloud types and proper simulation of haze & visibility.

Edited May 24May 24 by Baber20

5 minutes ago, Baber20 said:

We still need more cloud types and proper simulation of haze & visibility.

100% 👍

In my experience and opinion, default weather can be very accurate, or way, way off. It is very hit or miss. When it is right, it can be amazing. The problem is, too often I'll fly in conditions that are IFR with low ceilings in real life, only to find scattered, puffy clouds in the sim.

I remember a weekend where we had super low ceilings. I was out walking my dog, watching planes break out just a few hundred feet from the ground. I could hear the jets but not see them. In the sim? Partly cloudy, actually nice flying weather.

Not to say it was always wrong, sometimes it could be very accurate. Too often though, it would moderate bad conditions.

That's what prompted me to switch to ActiveSky and I haven't gone back.

Weather presets, for instance for the simulation of soaring flight , but even some realmworld weather scenarios há e improved the experience of soaring on MSFS 2024 a d nowadays while aí almost never simulate soaring on a desktop when Indo 80-90% of the time I pick MSFS 2024 instead of Condorsoaring 3.

My experience with soaring on MSFS 2024 os the best I have ever had on desktop flight simulator since I started using soaring somultors starting with SFS v2 and v3 many years ago then Condorsoaring v1, Silentwings...

One of the main advantages is the extremely close to real scenery, but soaring weather themes are also very enjoyable.