Real World Weather

[jojohnson9]

I do most of my flying in clear, calm weather. But occasionally I like to fly in nasty stuff. Every time I try to load real world weather, I get the same thing. Today in Maine we are having really heavy snow with wind gusts to 30 knots, air temperature 20 degrees (f). Real world weather gives this: Wind calm, broken clouds, 59 degrees (f). So I went to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii...same real world weather. No different in Moscow. Any ideas what's wrong?

 

[gradyhappyg]

Real weather isn't really. I started using this a while back and it seems closer to whats going on now locally. You might want to give it a shot.
http://www.hanse-coders.net/index.php?page=self&id=1

 

[stansdds]

I used to use MicroSoft's real world weather, but it's not always accurate. I switched to Active Sky X and saw a great improvement. I'm now using Active Sky 2012 and I must say that it is far more accurate, not perfect, but a whole lot better than MS and it includes some great environmental textures as well.

 

[fxsttcb]

Open Clouds is a cheap alternative. Our UK brethren get it for free, but the rest of the planet will have to pay.
I used it when it was first released as freeware, and it works really good.
It's cheap @ $15 year, or $3 for a month will alow you to test it and decide if it's your cuppa...Don

 

[srgalahad]

I do most of my flying in clear, calm weather. But occasionally I like to fly in nasty stuff. Every time I try to load real world weather, I get the same thing. Today in Maine we are having really heavy snow with wind gusts to 30 knots, air temperature 20 degrees (f). Real world weather gives this: Wind calm, broken clouds, 59 degrees (f). So I went to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii...same real world weather. No different in Moscow. Any ideas what's wrong?

FSX is a bit different than FS9 in how it handles it at startup. It begins with the weather from your 'last flight' so if you've been running with a theme that's what it uses to begin. We run into this with the Duenna flight tracking program all the time (getting an incorrect wx setting).

Are you selecting Real World Weather with the 15 minute updates, or just the "snapshot"?

Also, there are some technical issues that we all may run into but not notice immediately. FS sees where your plane is and then goes out to get the METAR for the nearest station -- which may be not reporting, offline, etc. (not all locations actually DO wx observations 24/7 and many are now converted to Automatic Weather Observation Stations that are just a computer, sensors and a comm.link). If FS gets nothing, it reverts to what it knows. Also, the wx is on a cycle, so it may not refresh instantly. We often see a change as the 15 minute cycle kicks in.

As for the add-on wx programs, they are great for casual flying and eyecandy but since they also allow you (in many cases) to control the weather you see and fly with they are a bit "unreal". In fact, that's why only the default Real World Wx is allowed in the RTWR to provide a level playing field for all.. but you can use the 'graphics' parts of AS for the appearance benefit.