Cognita

I suppose a way around it is to give others an SKD of all the data fields related to weather that are on the client side -- so that a company like REX or Active Sky can easily insert data to your particular installation of MSFS. These companies have now figured out how to do this in a preset, likely to a limited degree, but then have to turn off live weather -- as live weather and a preset are mutually exclusive. An SKD of client weather might help, although what can be done in a preset is likely more circumscribed so it may also entail building out data fields related to those presets. Maybe Asobo will do this, but it does it at its own expense. But it is hard for me to visualize how Asobo can give access to the live weather client fields without creating a security threat that a client installation could be used or configured to be used to access and attack Azure servers. When you run Active Sky r Rex you are giving those companies access to your computer; MS does not really care about this as you are taking all the risk. But opening live weather, even providing a detailed SKD of it, opens potential vectors to attack, and there are bad actors out there always looking for attack vectors. I just don't see a way around that given the current design.

I am not sure the issue is storing data. I don't have the impression that live weather in MSFS is generated by reading a data file and then displaying weather according that file; that sounds like how weather was handled in FSX. In such an approach data is not a big deal. Take all the METAR reporting stations in the world and add some NOAA forecast data and it will probably not be more than a few GB, and that can be stored and served up easily. What MSFS seems to do is to interface and read Metroblue's NMM forecast weather model. That model requires a supercomputer, probably several supercomputers, to run. It runs twice a day and produces updated forecasts based on a stream of weather inputs about every 3 hours at different resolutions around the world. Metroblue is not the only weather forecaster but it is one of the biggest; this is where your local TV station is getting its forecast from when it does its weather segment. MSFS takes the forecasted data directly from that model and uses it to generate weather. While MSFS will certainly have data fields they are likely populated directly by Metroblue's servers to Azure servers. And there will be a host of security arrangements and protocols to protect that data transfer and use. This arrangement allows Asobo to sidestep sourcing and maintaining weather data, it just worked out a partnership that would provide its servers with the data needed to generate a evolving live weather scenario in MSFS. It is actually a brilliant idea. But it meant that it cannot allow read access to the data -- as that data is propriety and the source of Metroblue's income -- or to write to those fields as this would open up glaring security vulnerabilities to both Azure and Metroblue. They may have taken time to adapt the architecture in MSFS2024. They already expanded it to be able to include METARs -- these may very well come from Metroblue too, as Metroblue collects all of these as part of the input to its data model -- so it is possible Asobo have made further changes to let users access that weather forecast back in time by 24 hours, the life cycle of one model run, which is what is needed to provide forecasts around the world. It will be interesting to see but unless they have made a deep architectural change, I do not see weather read/write access becoming open to third parties.

Yes, it seems that with all the delays to SU15, the roadmap has changed and SU16 has been pushed to next year. SU15 is basically the end of the line for 2020.

If I understood what was said -- I was working at the same time as listening so the stream did not have my full attention -- it is one world, whether you are in 2020 or 2024 all the world data is the same; so the two editions share a lot in common. It will not be an issue to keep both operating and I suspect they will leave 2020 for quite a few more years; it really does not cost them very much. Because it is one world, any update to Bing or world updates to photogrammetry will apply to both editions, 2020 and 2024. These features will port backwards naturally. However, while I am sure there will be some sim updates for 2020 after SU15, I suspect these will largely focus on security and bug squashing and ensuring the sim remains accessible as hardware and operating systems change. I would not anticipate many further features, unless it is a feature developed for 2024 that is naturally ported backwards. 2020 is essentially complete after SU15.

I think I can assume now that SU15, which is going to be delayed yet again, will basically complete core development on 2020, with it now transitioning to legacy. So, all focus is now on 2024.

It also does not mean that every one of those people is an FTE dedicated to MSFS. Some may be allocated .5 FTE or .1 FTE for MSFS, depending on what they do, and then they have responsibilities for other titles.

I also think that they are basically ready to release the 773 but like Black Square are awaiting SU15 to be in people's hands. Once this actually happens we can expect them to crank the hype machine up to high and we will hear a good deal from them.

I have come to think that this is their actual intention. I recall from one of the development streams the response to questions about the lack of cirrus clouds was along the lines that "different types of clouds do not actually exist in nature; clouds are just water vapor and we have made up names to describe formations that look similar to us." (A very French philosophical approach) But this may be why we are seeing basically a single cloud type trying to be made to look like every cloud type.

Yea, that is a good point about fronts really just being clouds. AS has been a worthwhile investment but it also reminded me of how substantially the weather in MSFS has regressed since its release. I really hope they address this in 2024.

Yea, this pretty much sums up the conclusion I came to -- there is a choice now to be made. In the end, after a lot of back and forth over the weekend, I chose to go with the AS Preset because in the final analysis what is most important to me is the airspace immediately around my aircraft, where I interact with the air, navigate and fly. I really wish I did not have to make this choice but with the exception of this limitation, AS appears superior in every way. I will re-evaluate when 2024 is released but until then it is AS. A worthwhile 25 dollar investment -- to be honest, I would have paid more.

This is largely true. Part of my work involves writing online and one of the first things I was told is that "people do not read online; they skim". Only after skimming do they determine if this is something they want to invest time into reading. So a lot of thought now goes into things like the size of the headline, the length of paragraphs, where things are placed on the page -- sometimes I feel more attention is given to this than to the actual content! But, back on topic, I just climbed out of Long Island and for the first time in years -- since SU7 -- I felt like I was flying in weather again. Like someone said earlier, it is like a new sim.

In the end, what really matters to me in a simulation is a few nautical miles around my aircraft, this space has to be more important than a good-looking picture in the distance because it is here that I am interacting, navigating and flying.

I will say, I think Hi-Fi could have helped themselves by being more proactive in their marketing. I don't mean this as a criticism, but there is a reason developers like Fenix and PMDG work closely with some streamers, giving them and advance copy, helping them understand and configure the program and then encouraging them to stream it. It is 2024 now and the reality is YouTube and Twitch is where people go to see things and you need to put a good foot forward in these venues. We all would have benefitted from a few well done streams, even some properly done comparison streams -- two computers running side by side. This all takes some work but it is the nature of marketing now. Gone are the days of a nice website with some carefully selected pictures.

I miss the global picture with more variety of weather in different directions, but I have to agree with others here that the representation of weather in active mode is almost always more convincing, as is the interaction with the air. So, it seems, I will need to let go of my desire for a more global picture and take the more authentic portrayal produced active mode. It is really too bad that Asobo did not give weather the time it needed but maybe they will now have a better appreciation for what a company like Active Sky can do.

You must have missed the first year when every flight was one accompanied by thunderstorms and lightening! The default live weather has a great deal of potential. Those of us who have been flying in MSFS since the beginning have seen the varying cloud types, thunderstorms, with towering cells, and lightening all in what can be seen as an organic moving system. Unfortunately, in the early iterations there were a lot of complaints of global weather not matching perfectly micro-level weather conditions, at the level of an airfield. After a lot of vocal criticism, Asobo introduced METAR information and tried to blend it with their global model. This did help ensure the live weather model matched local reports, but it made the weather bland, generating essentially one cloud type and reducing the presence of storms and their effects. What is frustrating is that the sim is capable of these things but now we are in a position where we need to trade one strength for another. Asobo seems to have abandoned efforts to improve weather in 2020. I suspect they have turned attention to 2024 and we can only hope that their being able to work offline they will come up with something that brings these strengths together.