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?
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:
- It’s not providing enough data to developers
- It’s not providing enough information to the user/pilot
- 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
- It’s overly simplified of what WXR is
- 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.