Cloud «synch» PSX - MSFS 2024

[Aleks]

Has MSFS2024 opened for possibility of synchronizing position of clouds/weather visualization between PSX and MSFS?

[Gary Oliver]

Aleks,

Currently I set MSFS to Live Weather and PSX to the same.

Macroflight has a python program that syncs the cloud state to the Icing model in PSX.

Currently the weather radar may show really big cells which don't show in MSFS, but most of the time it is plausible.

That's the current state - I don't foresee spending any development effort on anything more regarding clouds this year.

Cheers
G

[Will]

I use real weather in MSFS, and I let RealTraffic inject live real weather into PSX. At low altitudes and on the ground, the agreement is excellent -- MSFS and PSX are being fed the same METARs, after all.

The advantage of using RealTraffic to inject weather into PSX is that the winds aloft match the real-world winds. This is very helpful for flight planning using real-world weather. Plus, you can tell from TCAS that the traffic around you (in PSX and MSFS) is flying in the same atmosphere that you are flying in. If you're in a 100 kt headwind, then so is everyone else flying in your direction. Plus, RealTraffic injects a little turbulence in shear zones as a bonus.

[Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers]

... and every time I read this title, I think "who would want to synchronize PSX stuff using the cloud?!"

[Daniel Neugebauer]

The only really feasible way to sync clouds and other weather information would be to sync them from a visual sim to PSX. That's because visual sims require much more information for realistic weather depiction than what I assume PSX is able to generate and also because visual sims try to use as much real-world weather data as possible whereas PSX just implements a plausible simulation based on METAR and (if you have the addon) manually injected wind data. Unless PSX would get upgraded to also use more detailed GFS GRIB* data etc. it would make more sense to think about how to transport the visual sim's weather, which already has those weather models implemented, to PSX.

Although you asked about MSFS, I would like to mention that X-Plane 12.3 will add a weather radar simulation and also seems to have a way of retrieving a weather map (which I have not tried yet). If there was a way to provide PSX with either a set of (low-res) bitmaps of cloud presence/severity or maybe a list of cloud "hotspots" (lat/lon/elevation + severity/spread) it may be possible to scrape and transform such information from a visual sim for injection to PSX.

Alternatively, maybe it would be feasible to just inject the actual weather radar "map" as rendered by the visual sim to PSX for rendering on the 744 NDs plus information about weather conditions at the aircraft (wind direction, strength, turbulence, pressure, temperature, ...) so that essentially PSX's own weather simulation could be replaced by external injection another sim (or some alternative weather generator). I don't know what currently exists in MSFS but such data could be available from XP, at least.

*) Just wanting to add that with the recent service shutdowns/cost-cutting in the US there's a risk that data from NOAA will cease to be published (for free) at some point. ECMWF wanted to start publishing their data under CC-BY-4.0 later this year, so just in case Hardy wanted to reimplement the weather model using more extensive real-world datasets it would make sense to wait for that alternative data source to become available (hopefully with the same data formats, but we don't know yet). Nevertheless, that still wouldn't really sync "clouds" as visual sims don't allow detailed weather injections and may still render clouds in completely different places; reading such data from visual sims and bringing them (incl. turbulences?) into PSX still seems more feasible.