PMDG 737 Weather Radar
Its been almost a month since SU10 why isnt there a weather radar? Is it coming with the EFB?
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Philip Matusiewicz -
The "weather radar" that Asobo provided access to is pretty much useless when it comes to providing useful information. Yes, it can show where there is precipitation, but it will show that there is precipitation in front of you even if you are thousands of feet above that precipitation. The weather radar information that was provided basically will show precipitation at every altitude if there is precipitation at any altitude.Tim Lincoln
My YouTube Channel -
I've been wondering if there's been any thought to get the weather radar data from a 3rd party application rather than from Asobo. I recall in FSX the weather radar used data from ActiveSky weather application rather than from FSX.Comment
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For future reference RSR's updates are very good at answering questions like thisOriginally posted by Realblox View Post
Joe ColehouseComment
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Emi has provided an explanation why a weather radar would be useless:Fred Huisman / EHAMComment
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It’s a shame no one figured how to get realistic weather radar working in MSFS . Hopefully soon.Paul Gugliotta
13900K CPU - 4090 GPUComment
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The real shame is that Asobo doesn't have anyone with aviation experience other than a few joy rides and recent PPL's in a C-172. This lack of knowledge reveals itself in several ways. But here we are, the product is making lots of money and that is the one and only goal.Originally posted by Paulyg123 View PostDan Downs KCRP
i7-10700K 32GB 3600MHz 3080TiComment
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Glad it is making a lot of money, because MSFS has completely reinvigorated the flight sim industry. In the sim itself, you use the C-172 as an example and I’m certainly finding it a far better experience coming from P3D. -
Dan, I’m interested in your involvement with the Asobo team. From your statement it seems like you have some “insider knowledge”. I’m curious how many hours do you have in flight sim development. It must be significant that you can make such a pejorative assessment of what is currently the best flight simulator available even by PMDG standards
-Braun Tacon
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Last week's MSFS Developer Stream had a tangential reference to this - basically, the weather data they get from MeteoBlue isn't in the format necessary to do a "correct" modern weather radar like those available in modern aircraft. They will be discussing this issue with their data provider, along with some other issues related to weather data.Herb Schaltegger - Father, husband, lawyer, engineer & getting too old for this $#!t. Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball!TM.Comment
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I get the feeling that Asobo has the ambition to make the sim realistic. The know-how may be lacking, though, but I also get the feeling that they are aware of it and want to change that to some degree, at least.André HanssonComment
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Or more simply they try to make you believe that.Originally posted by AndreH View Post
The number one goal for a business is to make money.
The question you need to ask yourself is:
"What will gain more from making a modern and realistic weather radar"Cedrice RiveComment
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That doesn't make sense though... the better and more accurate Asobo makes their product, the more users they'll have. Users who pay them. There's absolutely a financial incentive. -
They'd not be making a weather radar, though I s'pose they could. It's the wrong question.
What would I gain from being able to improve the reliability (or accuracy, or whatever metric you have) and readability of a commercially available weather model?
The ability to sell it to those who can use it but can't afford to develop it.
That's not us. We'd just be the test dummies. -
Andrew,
I am a dev, and I can assure you that adding or improving my products would make me gain nothing financially but worse than that would make me lose money, because you have to spend time developing new content.
After there is a certain limit that if you worked well from the beginning, you have not improved certain things.
Another important point, do not confuse bugfix updates with enhancement updates. The second is not obligatory for anyone.
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Much of their new money, I would bet, is coming from the Xbox crowd. I doubt that many of them care for accurate weather radar or could use it.Bob Zolto
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Well, yes. Like it or not, MSFS (and X-Plane, Prepar3D, and all of the previous versions of Flight Simulators) is a game. It is not certified for use in flight training. Can it be beneficial? Certainly. But you can't include any of your time spent in MSFS on the form that you fill out when applying for your pilot license. Even certified training simulators can only add a specific amount of time to your total time when applying for a pilot license. -
Tim, Mark stated that a Level-D simulator was a game, hence my inquiry. Presumably those are certified for flight training. -
Ah, I missed that line. Sorry about that. I suppose from a certain point of view, a Level D simulator COULD be thought of as being a "game." Training simulators utilize many of the same processes that video games use to accept input from a user/users and then provide feedback based on that input either visually or through hardware interfaces. The only significant difference between a training simulator and MSFS/X-Plane/P3D/etc. is that the training simulator is required to be certified that it meets some very specific criteria. Desktop simulators can often meet some of those criteria, but I don't think they can meet all of them, and they certainly haven't been certified to meet any of the requirements for training simulators.
Does being certified as a training simulator make a Level D simulated not a game? From one point of view, probably yes. From another point of view, not really.Last edited by Want2BFlyin; 24Nov2022, 22:15.
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I personally think the technology at get a weather radar image in 3D dynamic model and have a simulated instrument try to take a cross section slice on the weather system is extremely complex and I just don't think anyone has the know-how to accomplish this feat.Paul Gugliotta
13900K CPU - 4090 GPUComment
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It is indeed complex, but we were able to get something approaching a proper solution in P3D by using PMDG in combination with Active Sky. The folks at HiFi could most likely bring Active Sky to MSFS if Asobo would just open up the weather engine to allow them to use it.Originally posted by Paulyg123 View PostTim Lincoln
My YouTube ChannelComment
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This is an issue that has a difficult solution, since MSFS uses the meteorology provided by Meteoblue, which is a paid service and not precisely cheap, so I don't think Meteoblue is willing to allow any application to access the data provided by MSFS. Bad business.Originally posted by Want2BFlyin View PostGerardo CabezonComment
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I've been thinking about this. Now I'm no programmer and wouldn't know the first thing about how complex this might actually be, but I've read that the sticking point is that there's no elevation data associated with precip? Surely Meteoblue has cloud tops data though, or at least we know MSFS does even if they're intelligently inventing it, because the sim knows where and how high to draw clouds.Originally posted by Paulyg123 View Post
So it seems to me that if they would just pass this extra bit of data (cloud tops height) via the SDK, a wx radar could be coded that painted precip in the correct places, up to cloud tops height. Of course that's not perfectly realistic, ignores the decrease in reflectivity as you get into frozen precip above the freezing level in convective cells etc... but honestly, for sim purposes, it would be fine. It would be better than any other wx radar depiction we've had in any sim, since weather and convective cells in general behave more correctly in MSFS than they do in any other sim.
There's no reason manual tilt and gain couldn't be modeled with this info, but even an "auto-only" type radar (auto tilt and gain) would be welcomed by the community I bet...
Seems like it should be possible?Andrew CrowleyComment
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I believe that HiFi has their own weather sources for Active Sky. If they were to create a version of Active Sky for MSFS, it most likely would not be using any of Meteoblue's data but would instead be injecting Active Sky's weather into MSFS as it did with P3D, so there shouldn't be any conflict there.Originally posted by Gerardius View PostTim Lincoln
My YouTube ChannelComment
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You would need a 3D weather model at every elevation. So when you tilt the radar up or down it will take a slice of the weather model at a specific angle to the radar (including possibly the flight path off the plane also). Someone correct me here: (based on EMI's video) . say you are at FL350 and a storm is ahead of you with tops at FL300. Your radar should be clear. If you tilt it down, it'll take a slice of the storm an angle. Would you get the same result of you pitched the plane down? I think "YES"?? so the radar display in MSFS has to also compensate for flight profile and radar tilt angle. That's a lot of math!!Paul Gugliotta
13900K CPU - 4090 GPUComment
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Radar is stabilized so that aircraft attitude does not change the picture. You can turn this off but no one ever does because there's no reason to. So pitch can be ignored for sim purposes.
In the 737 (and most airline radars these days) tilt and gain can be automatically managed as well. You can manage them manually, but auto works best most of the time and would also be fine for sim purposes.
This is why I think cloud tops could be functionally used as precip tops. That's simplified but fine in a sim where all convection is simplified anyway (but still much better than we've had before.) The math involved should be simpler than, say, computing a VNAV profile...
Andrew CrowleyComment
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Interesting conversions going on over at Avsim and MSFS forums about the weather radar.
There Seem to be a few conflicting opinions
https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/6...he-fenix-a320/
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t...date/546318/42
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Imagine that. All it takes is one "expert" to opine against another "expert" and see the conflicts arise. It boggles my mind that everyone seems to need some kind of third party okey dokey for their recreation (or other life activities). They seem to love to divide up in camps and chirp at each other. Reminds me of the opening few pages of 2001 A Space Odyssey where the ape-men would gather at two sides of a pond to thump their chests and whoop and holler, neither side knowing what they were whooping and hollering about.
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I know it was mentioned at least - but here is the point in the recent Dev Q&A video, where they mention about the upcoming conversation with their weather provider to get additional data for snow cover, as well as weather radar.
Jason KitchComment
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