Still hoping to see a screenshot using live weather where the runway is correctly shown as being icy or snowy and the simvars indicating as such. Went to a some airports where the METAR indicated snow per badweather.com. A couple actually had snow on them, but as you can see in the following screenshots the runway surface condition simvar showed only “normal” or “wet.”
Runway showing active snowfall on MSFS 2024 with tire tracks though a thin dusting of snow on the runway – Simvar indicating surface condition is wet and is valid. Ambient precipitation state simvar is “none”
Runway showing completely snow-covered runway - Simvar indicates surface condition is “normal” and valid. Precip state simvar is “none”
Another one: Actively snowing, thin areas of snow on the runway. At least the ambient precip state is “snow.”
Is the lack of correspondence between the runway condition (and often the ambient precipitation state) simvar and the live weather depicted in the sim also considered a missing feature, or is it a bug?
Just to note, there is also a separate, but related “wish list” item in the main FS Forum to extend the runway condition and condition reporting capabilities as well as including the corresponding effects on airplane performance here: Friction on Contaminated Surfaces - Slippery Runways (Wet, Rain, Snow, Ice, Puddles) - Official Microsoft Flight Simulator / Wishlist - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums
Hello @AwarePlot117729
I moved this subject to a dedicated bug report and we’ll have a look.
Regards,
Sylvain
2 Likes
Hello @AwarePlot117729
Some of these inconsistencies are not live weather related I think.
I think some of it has to do with this being sampled from the underlying terrain, rather than the runway surface, which I think is a limitation of our current design.
For example, setting a custom weather preset to have rain in a snow covered area:
Runway is covered with puddles, but SURFACE CONDITION still reports snow.
I agree that live weather seems to demonstrate another issue on top of this, as it does not even match the actual terrain condition.
Regards,
Sylvain
True. Any chance of future fixes for both the underlying terrain reading and/or the live weather issue? Has the feature request from the MSFS Forum for use or consistency with runway condition reports been considered/evaluated?
Thanks!
I can’t tell what’s actively being tracked on the official forums.
We’ll see what can be addressed. I’ll update this thread when I have more info to share.
Regards,
Sylvain
3 Likes
