Tom_L

The revolutionary and in my opinion most outstanding feature of MSFS was (yes, past tense!) LIVE WEATHER: a simulation based on a forecast model. Granted, it was not matching exactly what we see outside of our windows (it did so on a larger scale, but it took some basic meteorolgical knowledge to notice). Instead you could see clouds forming leewards of the mountains of the carribean islands in an otherwise clear sky, just as in real life! It should probably have been named "Dynamic Weather" to avoid the situation we are facing now: "The community" not only disliked the night lighting, "we" also disliked the weather for not being "accurate" to the METAR reports. And "we" all know that a good flight simulator has to display a ceiling with exactly 6/8th coverage in exactly 2300ft AGL if some momentary report from 25 minutes ago says so - because it has always been that way in FSX and P3D. And "we" obviously expect a robotic wind also matching exactly the report, not taking any gusts or magnetic variation into account. Consquential ASOBO and Meteoblue have made an attempt with SU7 to synthesize weather according to METAR reports around the reporting stations as in the old days (that's how Active Sky and REX generate their weather and yet they are kept out because MS considered their weather simulation different - is it still?) and integrate that into their dynamic, forecast based simulation. And they failed big time! Remember the TRON-like night lighting after their first attempt of "fixing" the issues outlined by "the community"? It took more than a year to get to the state we have now. We are still within a year since SU7 and I hope they will get the weather right some day, but unfortunately they also sacrificied rendering and lighting for performance, so some things will be gone for ever. And I'm also not so sure what "right" means in this context. I am under the impression that they are way over their head at the moment, as the best they seem to be able to do is some tweaking to get an incremental better, yet still inconsistent weather depiction displaying mostly cumulus clouds. And they have been very unspecific not only in terms of a timeline, but also about their objective, which seems to be reduced to incremental "improvements" over an unspecified period of time ("several sim updates"). Thus many users will probably get the impression that the weather is indeed getting better although it may never be as lifelike again as it was until SU5 (that's when changes to the lighting and cloud rendering started). Why can MS/ASOBO get away with it? Because the truth is that the weather related threads on the MS forums don't get much attention, let alone votes, as most gamers seem to be satisfied with the mediocre weather depiction introduced with SU7 or are too complacent to take the effort to participate. Take a look at the screenshot threads over there, where since SU7 you can see the same boring cloud patterns in every single post, and nobody seems to care. And then there are the subscription-driven Youtubers/Twitchers, who could make a difference by calling a spade a spade, but continue to "aaaah" and "ooooh", although they must realize the loss of fidelity in the sim. But who subscribes to a channel pointing out flaws in the product? I hope they sometimes give honest feedback to MS, at least when asked. Unfortunately, I think we have seen the best of MSFS Live Weather, if there's not a much broader user base demanding to deliver what the engine is capable of.

I have nearly the same specs as you and I have a buttery smooth sim. Here is how I achieved that: My monitor is natively running at 60Hz. In the Nvidia Control panel I have set a custom resolution with the same values as the default settings, but with a refresh rate of 30 Hz. I am lucky that my monitor supports that, but you may give it a try too: Go to Nvidia Control panel - Display/change resolution - beneath the list box of standard resolutions select "Adjust" - in the dialog box select "create user defined resolution" - change refresh rate to "30 Hz" - then "Test". If your monitor can handle the refresh rate, save these settings. And everytime you run MSFS, change to this custom resolution in NVidia Control panel first, then start the simulator. Inside MSFS, make sure to activate "Vsync" and adjust your settings so that you achieve more than 30fps in all conditions - and there you are: smooth as silk! I am running a non-english system, so maybe the menu items are named a bit differently, but youl'll figure it out...

I am 100% sure that the "one size fits all" approach is the reason for the huge regression we have seen with Live weather since SU5. And the size that has to fit us all is obviously defined by what the XBox can handle. Before SU5 (that's the XBox sim update last summer) they promised huge performance gains, and it has to be conceded that they delivered on that promise. They didn't talk much about the costs - naturally - but instead promised there would be "headroom" for high-end pc users, indicating more options in the settings - at least that was my impression. Sadly that has not come to fruition yet in regards to lighting and weather depiction. It must also be noted how mum Jorg Neumann has become regarding the weather, when before SU7 (the METAR sim update) he promised to "blow us away" until the end of this year. Go figure....

As I see it, after SU5 and SU7 THAT feature video is obsolete in large parts, as - SU5 changed large aspects of the lighting covered in the first part of the video for performance reasons (and to squeeze into XBox) - 3D volumetric fog has never been properly implemented, all I have seen was low cloud layers instead of fog - 32 layers of clouds were never present in the sim, at least the most I have seen was around 3 - "natural forming and dissipating" of the clouds is definitely gone after METAR implementation, otherwise we would not encounter sudden weather changes. And as that is being presented as a prerequisite for the "native support of all cloud types", it is probably one of the reasons for the "cumulus only" generic skies since SU7. - "evolving density inside the clouds" has been sacrificed for performance with SU5, now it's more or less a uniform grey. The sun bleeding through cloud layers is also caused by those changes they made. - Humidity has never been properly implemented with Live weather, as the sim struggles with the correct depiction of visibility from the beginning - cold fronts are not discernable anymore, as locally applied METAR synthesis interferes with the globally simulated weather (if that is still present in the first place) - Wind gusts have been totally cancelled in Live weather due to user complaints in favour of a robotic, always steady wind blowing exactly as reported in the METAR (but not taking MagVar into account) The way I see it, MSFS started promising with a revolutionary Live weather system based on weather simulation data, which was very accurate on a large scale but unfortunately failed to meet the expectation of many users to be exactly as they would see outside their windows. The result was ASOBO trying to "integrate" METAR data into their weather simulation. This integration failed, so that today we more or less have locally synthesized weather based on METAR reports and thus are back to where we were since the old days - with the difference of expierienced third parties having done so for a long time being shut out by Microsoft. SU10 is said to bring some improvements, but unfortunately all we can expect is some tweaking here and there of a capable, but obviously crippled system.

That they don't look like this anymore (in short: SU5 killed lighting and rendering, since SU7 the devs struggle with the METAR integration. If you're really interested: follow the link)

Known issue, maybe you should consider participating in this thread. According to the tag "feedback logged" they are still - as it is quite a long exisiting issue - in need for detailed information to identify the bug.

Yep, I'm glad they improved Live weather, so I'm not forced to look at something like THAT* anymore: * Screenshot taken with Live weather pre-SU5, not representative of current simulator capabilities

While all - or most - what's written in this thread is true, the most troublesome aspect for me is how often Jorg Neumann emphasized how important the weather is for the simulator (and rightfully so, because it is an essential part of real world flying), and yet the best they seem to be able to accomplish is small improvements (although those popcorn puffies don't really count as improvement, do they?) with several sim updates over an unknown period of time with an unknown outcome. "Improve" is their most used word in that context, a pretty unspecific goal for a key feature imho. If Neumanns statements weren't just promo talk this should be the most prioritised task on their development schedule and have a definitive timeline and a clear objective, e.g. matching the promises of their weather feature (promo) video.

Yep, there's quite a few feeling the same way. Someone (ZodiaLight) over at the MS forums posted a collage of what we have lost with their "improvements" in SU7. I was all in for their concept of live weather based on forecast model data and had full understanding for their refusal of opening it up for third parties. But man, did they fail making it METAR based! If Live weather basically means synthesizing METAR reports, their arguments for not letting third parties in have turned moot, as for this approach there are experts on the market who don't need to invent the wheel from scratch.

There seems to be a selective attention that I can't understand from my consumers perspective: on one hand they were very supportive for groups like Working Title to the point of hiring those guys, others seem to get along okay. And then there are some who are completely ignored despite their expressed willingness to support the platform, like Robert. Jean-Luc ( @RXP ) comes to mind as another prime example. Maybe involving some 3rd parties with tons of experience in developing METAR based weather addons would have spared us and them the embarrassing attempt to "improve" Live Weather with SU7 - but they seem determined to invent the wheel from scratch and leave the customer for a prolonged time with a product that doesn't live up to the shiny promo videos we were shown.

Yeah, I've had enough after SU5 and SU7 already! Looks like RSR has the same reservations: "I must be honest though and say that we are very concerned about continued disruptions to forward progress because of problems introduced by updates in this manner."

I think MS has a very clear picture of the usage of MSFS at any given time (just think of the disclosure in one of the recent Q&A’s that they have data for every CTD happening) and thus is aware what bug is causing how much reduction in usage of the sim. That doesn’t stop me from using my “customer-powers”, but I fear the relatively few people caring for the actual bugs don’t have much impact on the business as a whole.

Here's my 2 cents: I think it is fair to assume that TG holidays are no explanation for the silence any more, and I also think MS is aware of the negative feedback regarding the weather "improvements" in SU7. So the silence could very well mean that there's no easy fix for the current mess and as reportedly the weather data they receive from Meteoblue have changed, a simple rollback to the "old" system might not be possible either. Best case scenario: it takes a few more days and hard labour for ASOBO to fix the weather implementation. Worst case scenario: it takes a few more days to design a communication strategy to sell yet another Update desaster to the customers.

This probably would have looked "good" from above too: clouds emerging from the ground, and no resemblance with the METAR (Live weather yesterday evening after the servers were back, time changed to daylight):

Yep, it's been this way since SU5. I don't see further regression with SU7 though, and maybe - just maybe - we'll get a hotfix for the Live weather mess they introduced with SU7 and they'll sneak in the "16-bit Matrix-whatever-glitch" fix.

I have hope that there's something wrong server side as I think it is remotely possible that we are currently only seeing the METAR side of the weather and the interpolation algorithm between the METAR stations filling in the rest, but the overlying forecast model data are missing. So I am willing to give them a few more days. If this is what they intended: déja vu! I was appalled by ASOBOs first "improvement" of the night lighting, and after only one year 🥴 it's pretty decent imho. There were two major factors that blew me away when first using MSFS: the lighting and the weather. Although it was not perfect it was so advanced, and I still think the forecast model driven weather generation is the way to go. So I hope they'll get it right. But if there's developers out there capable of taking it on where ASOBO has started - let them come!

No! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1208240572?t=01h07m49s METAR implementation is in SU7 (Twitch link), late 2022 is something vague that "will blow us away" (YT embedded link). I think it would be best if we stay realistic.

From my understanding as to what has been said in two Q&A's is that the toggle option is obsolete with SU7, as METAR data now are "integrated" (don't ask me for technical details) into the weather model by Meteoblue, meaning the weather as we see it in MSFS now (awful!) is delivered as a package from Meteoblue. Imho this is to appease those who have asked for opening the weather system for "old" METAR based weather programs and have been denied. Therefore we will probably have to live with the chimera we are seeing now and can only hope that there's enough qualified input by the community (Zendesk and the official forums that is) to get it better. Mind you, the night lighting, which is now pretty decent imho, was awful after the first attempt by Asobo" to "improve" it. It took thousands of posts and a year to get it to the current state. Participate, is all I can say: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/weather-transition-is-not-smooth-after-su7/472467 https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/sim-update-7-live-weather-degradation/472486 and more...

Recheck your community folder for liveries or mods (e.g. the CJ4 cockpit Texture mod is updated for SU7)! From the WT Release notes, section "Note about liveries": You will notice a bad livery or other mods interferring by having all white screens in the cockpit.

It's likely they've mixed MSL with AGL, so the higher your airport, the lower the cloud base.

What has been key for me is to check the Microsoft Store for updates before the MSFS update hits. I just did so, and sure enough I encountered a failure message with a Gaming Services Update, which rectified itself after restarting said update. Had I not checked, it probably could have caused trouble later on.

Sorry folks, I just had to bring this up again. Is this the graphics quality to expect from any game today? MSFS Homepage: Please (re)consider voting here. Thanks!

When there's no discernable difference in cloud quality between a 300$ gaming console and some High-End PC, someone got screwed. Oh wait: there's no purple fringes on XBox-S, maybe I should get one?

Something very strange: A game, celebrated for it's outstanding visuals while lacking on the simulation side, gets deprived of the "outstanding" part of the visuals, and the majority of customers doesn't seem to care. You can see thousands of screenshots all over the internet with purple fringes, rasterized color gradients, mushy clouds and lighting, all screaming "post-SU5 MSFS". And let's not forget that it was said in the Q&A's disscussing the XBox adaption of MSFS that it would result in more headroom on PC to enhance the graphics even further. Was that a misunderstanding or limited solely to draw distance? Considering there seemed to be a consensus that what set MSFS apart from its competition was mainly the outstanding graphics it is a surprising development for sure.

Won't happen if there's no awareness that issues exist. Hence the link for upvoting. Where's the damage?