Will we ever see full Weather Radar compatibility in this sim?

[MSFS 2020] Questions & Community Discussions Aircraft
1

I’ve seen the development update today and also been following the responses
by the Asobo team in this forum. Since there hasn’t been clear response to
this question at all, and it’s removed from Wishlist, marked as FIXED (which
means Asobo considers it completely fixed and no work will be done for it
anymore), I just want to simply ask Asobo directly: Will we ever see full
Weather Radar capability in this
sim?

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The reason why I’m directing
this question to Asobo is as we all know the weather data is protected in the
sim, which means there’s no write permission and there will never be one (as
marked will not do in the Wishlist). Due to this, developers cannot use data
from external sources (even if it’s available) as well because it simply would
not match with the sim. As it was explained by @IcemanFBW in this post:
<https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/idea/254/comprehensive-weather-api-
custom-weather-radar-pre.html>, Weather Radar is not simply a watercolor
painting. It shows much more data and it gives lot of information to the
pilot. In fact, some airlines even consider WXR as MEL item and do not
dispatch the plane to flight (which means its grounded until it’s fixed). The
current version of providing bitmap to developers is useless as:

  1. It’s not providing enough data to developers
  2. It’s not providing enough information to the user/pilot
  3. It’s not providing correct visuals as every WXR system is different and if necessary/sufficient data is provided, developers are able to simulate those systems
  4. It’s overly simplified of what WXR is
  5. As developers want to provide a realistic experience to their customer, they simply can’t because of lack of support/API from Asobo.

I understand there might contractual issues with MeteoBlue however Asobo was
never open about this. They said we are working on Weather API solution yet
what’s provided is completely useless. Even from business standpoint, this
does not make sense. Wasted developer hours and resources because it’s not
used by anyone. I hope Asobo comes clear with this and actually tries to
understand what community wants/needs. Doing band-aid fixes only stops the
progression of the sim itself on its journey to achieve greatness with the
potential it has.

2

“I understand there might contractual issues with MeteoBlue however Asobo
was never open about this. They said we are working on Weather API solution
yet what’s provided is completely used. Even from business standpoint, this
does not make sense. Wasted developer hours and resources because it’s not
used by anyone. I hope Asobo comes clear with this and actually tries to
understand what community wants/needs. Doing band-aid fixes only stops the
progression of the sim itself on its journey to achieve greatness with the
potential it has.”

Completely agree. We have been asking for this for well over two years,
detailing exactly what we need in terms of a weather and terrain API, and were
promised it would be implemented, and MANY months later, we now have something
that fell completely short of even the bare minumum. Just a few weeks ago,
the wishlist graphic said that SU10 was just the start, but now it seems this
has been abadoned completely. There is a complete and utter lack of
transparency into exactly why this can’t be done. I’ve heard varying
explanations, from an exclusive contract/NDA with Meteoblue preventing access
to data, to challenges streaming live data to the end user, to performance
issues, and even that this work simply isn’t a priority compared to more
“flashy” revenue generating features coming in future sim updates. To
reiterate once more: we need an API, not a bitmap. Raw, numerical data that
tells us everything we need to know about weather and terrain to accurately
simulate radar systems as in the real aircraft. Not the same old bitmaps with
a few more limited customization options.

3

I was really hoping with it originally saying SU10+ the stuff they added to
SU10 wasn’t the end of it. But it appears I was wrong with them marking it as
“Fixed” now. I really hope we can get them to implement what we need or
provide a full detailed on answer on why it is not possible (if it isn’t
possible to do) because of licencing or an agreement with the weather provider
they use. Please don’t leave us in the dark (Microsoft/Asobo) on this.

4

From our side of things, we completely agree with the post above. In order to
provide realistic, product-tailored solutions (which the public asks from
developers), we need access to more information than a raw bitmap. All weather
radar gauges require a wealth of raw data (which we will then have to parse)
in order to provide the desired result, which, as stated above, is custom for
each project, it can’t be generalized. Unfortunately even the most basic
information is not available via Simconnect (only WASM/JS) and we do not have
any official response to our post:
<https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/questions/9500/weather-data-to-
simconnect-external-application.html> All developers who develop via
SimConnect are left out entirely. This makes a great disparity and leave out
many excellent products. We hope that this solution will be reconsidered as
there are a lot of customers asking for a true weather radar.

5

Bumping this thread so it can hopefully receive the attention it deserves -
nothing has changed in this week’s dev update with regards to this discussion

6

Eric from Asobo replied to another comment of mine in another thread,
mentioning a little about the WXR.
/comments/11334/view.html

7

One of the real worlds pilots and member of PMDG tech team created a video
regarding why the current solution is useless, can be watched here. I hope
this can give more information why current bitmap solution is useless and a
failure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdV5Q6dPQ1Y****
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UPDATE: In today’s SDK Q&A; livestream, Alyzze and Eric answered to this
question which can be found here:

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https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1660848226?t=00h54m25s