Franz007

I have definitively also noticed quite some inacuracies as you describe. The temp, pressure and winds are usually excellent and very close to what the latest official metar says. But the cloud coverage and visibility is pretty often a miss. I also tested some airports in an area with big storms, ugly weather and very bad visibility (many times). And in XP it is often just scattered and visibility seems to be 10+ km or at least clearly better than what it should be. What is weird is that for you it seems to be the opposite? Perhaps related to the area? As far as I remember, the accuracy used to be better around 6 months ago. I think Marco is aware of something related to the weather needing improvement. At least LR is aware of the radar-returns not being shown anymore and this should be fixed. Let’s hope it will also fix what we are talking about here.

I haven‘t had it as extreme as you describe. But I absolutely withess something like a flash and the sky colours (and haze) changing within 1 sec. But the cloud coverage seemed to stay more or less identical as it happened (every 30-60 minutes as an estimate)

You can absolutely get great results from USGS in specific areas — no argument there. The problem is that USGS only covers the U.S., and even within the U.S. the resolution varies a lot. Once you step outside U.S. borders, there’s no equivalent free 15–30 cm source. Europe, Asia, Africa, South America… all the high‑res data is commercial. That’s where the real issue starts: Laminar can’t build a global product on top of a patchwork of “free here, pay there” imagery. And they can’t redistribute processed USGS tiles either — even if the imagery is free, the derivative product still has licensing restrictions unless you host it yourself

The tech for cleaning up imagery isn’t really the issue. The real blocker is licensing. High‑res imagery (30–50 cm) isn’t free, and the companies that own it—Maxar, Google, Bing, Esri—don’t allow cheap redistribution to hundreds of thousands of end users. Their pricing is negotiated case‑by‑case and gets very expensive once you need multi‑user rights.The “taxpayer‑funded” datasets you mention (Sentinel, Landsat) are 10–30 m resolution, which is far too low for a flight sim. There’s no free global high‑res source Laminar could legally stream.

same! I just wanted to write it here. I'm having the same error-message...

Well I think there is a simple reason for that. The licence costs for streaming orthos for the whole world in a high resolution are not only very high...they are horrendous. And added to that, Austin also said that he didn't like them because you'll see a lot of shadows, snow-patches and weird colours (from the aerial capturing). What will most likely happen is that they will use these satelite-imageries to build a more simplified kind of world but most likely not stream orthos 1:1.

I am using the free autoortho and it is not perfect. There are some inconsistencies from time to time and a few tiles stucked in low-res (but only like 1-2% of them). This is only noticeable when flying very low, where MSFS for sure has an advantage. But above 3000ft - together with simheaven - it can look absolutely fantastic. And I also noticed that the quality varies a lot from country to country. But I would personnally not call it simply « decent ». It adds a lot to the visual immersion. Here a good example:

@MrBitstFlyer Fantastic job! Many thanks 🙏👍

That's weird...for me it's like night & day and I even have to admit that I couldn't fly without it 🙂

No no, it’s already an issue in the default XP12-version. I was just wondering if there was something we could do about that…

Great news and I really start to appreciate that plugin more and more. A think I still don't understand quite well, is why there are some layer of haze appearing out of nowhere. Is that a known bug in XP12 that cannot be fixed now?

Thanks for your help 👍 Will do that. And another thing I noticed: at each refresh (300 sec) the sim freezes for about 5-10 seconds, although having excluded the script-folder from the virus-checks…

I still see some very abrupt haze-changes, that are my main problem when doing VFR-flights...do any of you guys know why?

Here my actual settings. Is that good? 🙂

OK, so now I could enter my other API-key for OWM. I opened the window of the script and select the "LIVE"-register. What do I have to set there? I see a lot of options and sliders to change...I guess I have to check the box "Use CAMW aerosol data"? What about the ones for altitude fix? And what altitude to enter there? And do I have to check the box "override XP12 visibility"? And at the there are two sliders for turbidity: if I check the boxes, it will be set automatically, is that correct? Sorry to ask but I am a bit confused about all options. I wanted to test the automatic values coming from the API (Live).

Thank you for the explanations. I will try it tomorow when I’ll be back at my PC again 🙂

Yeah, I mentionned it to them already and as far as I recall, they said it would not be changed because it was very difficult to do. I also think they will look at the weather again in the future when they are dbe with their actual roadmap. I will for sure give some feedbacks again when it will become a task again.

That sounds good. Thanks for the review! I failed when I tried to use it. First, I must be too stupid to understand the signification of all options lol and second I could not create an API-key via openweathermap. When I cliked on "Get API-key" it relinks me to a page "The page you’re looking for doesn’t exist or has been moved". I am potentially very interested since I realized the haze is a huge issue, not necessarely the intensity but the very fast shifts we're facing: from excellent visibility to a thick layer of haze (back and forth), making us lose visual ground-contact in VFR-conditions...

I love these effects! The default SR22 is excellent and about to become my favourite GA-plane. And the avionics have been massively extended. A great plane. Kudos to Laminar 🙂

I haven’t noticed anything. At least the performance seems to be pretty much the same. But since I’m having 24GB of VRAM I may simply not notice it. So it’s difficult to tell.

🤣🤣🤣👏

Laminar’s new roadmap just got updated: https://www.x-plane.com/2026/03/x-plane-roadmap-update-april-2026/

I just grabed that one. And I must say: it’s absolutely fantastic! It improves all default airports quite massively in my opinion and I can only recommend it.

This approach may be valid for you, but it doesn’t define how everyone else evaluates a long‑term simulator. But if users truly ignored future development, studios wouldn’t publish roadmaps, communities wouldn’t discuss them, and media wouldn’t analyze them. Users constantly base their decisions on future development — whether it’s waiting for XP12, choosing MSFS2024, or even deciding which PC hardware to buy. That’s why studios publish roadmaps, why media reports on them, and why users discuss them.

I haven’t used « soon ». And calling it ‘false hope’ only makes sense if everyone buys a sim for what it looks like today. Many don’t. Long‑term users evaluate both the current state and the confirmed direction of development. You may have a different strategy when investing into a plateform but I doubt that you can speak for everyone.