KERNEL32

So cool - THANK YOU very much!! 😁

I doubted myself some time after all the changes, "have I just gotten used to the clouds and lighting engine?" But after 3,300+ hours in the sim, I can say without a doubt, that from release up to around SU5 we had much better clouds, lighting and cloud variety/immersion. I recall FULL overcast for hundreds of miles in the USA Midwest (and Europe) wintertime that you see sometimes; lines of late summer / early fall thunderstorms in France, Spain, east of Albuquerque that had (YES!) lightning, rain, with cloud tops as one would expect. it was quite incredible. And there were isolated storms too, also lines of T-Storm "cells". I had to divert around them. Did they match up to the real world radar exactly where the thunderstorms actually were? No most of the time not - but it was in the vicinity of where the CAPE index was showing they could be. Good enough for me. The point was that the immersion was there, and storms were happening in the plausible area of where the real world was experiencing them. The live weather was an organic, plausible Worldwide system capable of simulating some really neat weather conditions, all tied together seamlessly without weather "pop in / pop-out" like we see now - or generic cumulus junk everywhere. I wish I could find the older you tube videos that showed the time acceleration of the live weather system in action in a given city.. What we were missing was a METAR reporting system in-game that would give us the conditions that the game was experiencing at the airports. No one knew what conditions to expect at the destination airport, or otherwise. This opened all of the complaints to bring in METAR, but doing this. along with the X-Box integration adjustments (as already said earlier here), ruined the release live weather experience. I do not think MSFS2024 will have any real improvement to the weather - maybe some fancy overdone tornadoes or something (like rainbows all over), but I guess time will tell. The point is, IMO was the MSFS 2020 release live weather perfect? NO. Not even close. I recall those strange low to the ground cloud banks that were ugly and not realistic looking either. Glad they got rid of those, but not at the expense of everything else we "lost" 😞

METAR and Xbox.

This is so awesome THANK YOU!!

I didn't say they needed to die off IRL (and even if I did say that, who cares? like the FAA would listen to me LOL) I only asked for us to have a possible option to turn them off in Active Sky. That's all. OPTION to turn off, you can still have your METARS in FS - I just want to turn it off. I never requested Asobo to put them in MSFS and completely screw up the weather system (turn it into never ending cumulus puffs and METAR circles). I'd rather do without and enjoy the live weather as is was in MSFS at launch; a natural flowing weather biome with fronts and realistic wx features. I do not care if it is accurate outside my window to the sim - as long as it is plausible and has natural weather systems like it had at launch, then I'm a happy sim pilot. I will add though that I get your point and MSFS always lacked a good way to know what the weather would be when enroute or at destination so they would need to fix that - it's 2024 surely there's ways... but perhaps a detailed weather map we could view and observe in game such as a windy.com map. Just dreaming - Anyway - this is another discussion topic, but with all the tablets and weather data out there that most pilots use - ARE real world METARS really that usable anymore?

@Damian Clark earlier in the thread you asked for possible features, could one such feature be that we could have Active Sky "omit" the METARS and only use the global forecast system? METARS are like dinosaurs, or in aviation - VOR's. They just need to die off. Usually out of date and I don't give a rats word not allowed about VATSIM/.

Yah, typically and sadly. MSFS Live weather has a very hard time "detecting" isolated thunderstorms. It USED to be able to do this much better PRE-SU5 and this is what I've been talking about because they borked it when adding in METAR and it never recovered. The live weather depicts weather systems pretty good - but not the typical pop up thunderstorms or even clusters of them. I still say the live weather accuracy is much better now than ever though - just needs to be "turned up" a few notches. If MSFS somehow incorporated real-time lightning into their engine they could 1) Display lightning as it happens which would be cool! and 2) They could most certainly utilize the lightning data to know that cumulonimbus and very likely a thunderstorm is present in said area. https://www.lightningmaps.org/#m=oss;t=3;s=0;o=0;b=;ts=0;y=0.0879;x=0.0879;z=3;

Transitions? Mehh, this is going backwards IMO. We need the fluid, natural weather we had pre-SU5 (to include the original more opaque clouds and variations). I and many others from what I can tell are actually quite pleased with the accuracy of the live weather as of lately (rain and weather systems are where they should be, wind is also more accurate now), but the cloud types and lack thereof along with the absence of any kind of consequences of flying in or near bad weather are really annoying. It's like all Asobo need to do is "turn up the severity meter some" so the clouds are opaque again (more sure of themselves), thunderstorms and towering cumulus build up like they did PRE SU5. And speaking of cumulus, for goodness sake ditch the cumulus everywhere syndrome and bring in cloud variations and OPAQUE clouds again like PRE SU5. I cannot put my finger on it, but if Asobo just spent some time "turning up the live weather" I think it would be wonderful! For example, I'll go to a place where there is a thunderstorm in real world. MSFS will have some rain shafts and a cloud top that is pathetic (like 10,000 feet instead of 40,000 feet) and no thunder, maybe some rain bands in spotty areas, etc. Its as if they just have the "severity" set too low or not sensitive enough? Pre SU5 we used to get some really good isolated thunderstorms and fronts - I remember it!

Oh okay I see now, thank you for explaining in detail! But unfortunately no, there were no other folders within that community folder. When the AIG program deleted all my aircraft, it was done during the "verify setup" process. I know this because I actually had the folder open in another window in file explorer, and watched the files "disappear" as the program worked through the progress bar. I was like "what!?". Checked the recycle bin and anywhere else I could think of and they were just gone. There were three aircraft that remained and did NOT get deleted if this helps anyone diagnose this bug. The aircraft that remained after pressing the "verify setup" button were "AIGAIM_DFAI_C525B_CitationJetCJ3", "AIGAIM_DFAI_C550_CitationII" and "AIGAIM_RFSL_CRJ-900_OW". I was able to verify this as those folder dates were older than all of the ones I just installed and I knew that a few folders remained.

Hi @Bernard Ducret, I apologize but my old brain is not quite understanding what you're asking me to check for. I also need to explain that all of my aircraft were removed by the program and from what I can see no new folders were created (but I also have a default community folder install which appears to be a difference to your install). I have since reinstalled all flight plans and aircraft, so I'm all set now; everything is working again!

One of the flightplan downloads stalled at 0% - meanwhile I came back here and noticed a PM, a very kind soul shared their backup with me! Thank you so much to the person who did that!

Thanks, logs seem to have been deleted and started a new log or overwrites it - so at least the program "reset" itself. I restarted my PC after work today then opened the AIG program. It prompted to install an update (which it did not do earlier) then it recognized that I didn't have the aircraft files anymore and is currently downloading 1,018 of them 🤪 Could be worse stuff in life I suppose! Just be sure to backup once in a while - lesson learned.

SO I ran the AIG AI Manager this morning to just run some updates for flightplans etc. and it removed ALL of my flightplans and AI aircraft installed! OMG! I had a TON of airlines installed. All gone. And now the AI manager is acting very strange - it will not download any plans? BE CAREFUL and back up your aircraft in the AIG folder before opening that manager again! Now I'm not sure what I can do to get them back 😞

Hmm, strange as I *did* have the issue but then it just stopped and went back to normal "remembering" my full screen setting. Trying to think if I did anything out of the norm...

I've not seen this issue in the past few days, did they fix this on server side?

I had this happen as well earlier this week, thought it was just a fluke. Restarted the sim and it was fine then (same airport no other changes) and yes using the same aircraft Fenix B2 (both when the error happened and on reset of sim). Strange!

Ohhh ok got it now! I simply made MSFS into a window and moved it over some so I can see the AutoFPS window and now see where it triggers over to "FG Mode Active" when I put MSFS into focus. Thank you again! This is so awesome!

Hi and thank you so much @Reset XPDR for this wonderful app! Question: I have FG (in MSFS settings) turned on, however in the app it says: DX 12 | FG Mode Inactive | Trigger Alt: 2000 Primed: False Active: False The only thing I do not understand is why the message in the app says "FG Mode Inactive" when in reality, it is? Thank you.

Hmm, was that using the MSFS live weather? Or was it a preset or using REX Weather Force? Sure wish some screenshots were shared. Seeing a thunderstorm in MSFS live weather anymore is like seeing a ghost!

https://air-source.us/

Seemingly like the live weather itself, snow coverage in MSFS is also more accurate in Europe. Maybe it is just a side effect of using a service (MeteoBlue) that is not based in the USA.

I've not touched a thing since install of the X3D chip and love it!

I am glad more people are finally noticing this and agree with me 🙂 Since SU4/Su5 timeframe I've written posts here, on the MSFS forums, opened numerous tickets, shared screenshots, you name it. The clouds basically suck and are just repetitive semi-transparent sprites. And the clouds got even worse when they tried to implement METAR into the live weather. The sad thing is, IMO the clouds were great at release of MSFS, until the stupid changes they made around SU4 or SU5 - and the clouds have been borked since. They looked fabulous on release; yes the live weather matches up much better now, but the clouds are not even volumetric anymore and are just see-through puffs of wispy blobs and are always cumulus puffs everywhere. We used to be able to get higher level opaque and thin cloud layers (true overcast, broken, scattered too), fronts, thunderstorms, towering cumulus, stratus, and so on. They might sometimes still look "pretty" good from far away - but the closer you get to them, the worse they are (they melt away like cotton candy and are very transparent 95% of the time). I'm not talking about the pixelation, this is all about the excessive transparency once approaching a cloud, or going up through or down into the cloud deck - if there is one.. If a person ever gets to actually go "into" the clouds in MSFS live weather, you can look one way maybe up, down left or right and almost always see outside of the cloud (ground, sky etc). It is like there is a shade of gray that is transparent because flying over city areas at night you can see all the ground lights - then pause and change the time of day to daylight and all the sudden you see that there is a layer of "overcast" there! And when you get to an area where thunderstorms should be, you usually see the high anvil type part of the storm (a high layer of transparent puff), but there's like nothing below it, almost like the system is just not generating the storm cloud and rain shafts under it, like it should. This has also been broken since SU4/SU5'ish.

coming from a pure troll....

What is most important is that it makes you work with the controls as warranted by the live weather / wind conditions. I've had a few smooth landings too, so this is not just a "baked in / random" effect (at least I don't think it is?)