MSFS In-depth weather tutorial

Hello flight simmers, and welcome back to Alpha Hotel Flight Simulator Training.
In this video, we'll peel back the curtain and take a deep dive into the weather settings in MSFS. The weather system can be used to provide live weather, set up beautiful flight environments to fly in (or make videos in 😄) create challenging weather scenarios to tackle, create realistic instrument weather for IFR practice, or to create completely unrealistic weather to have fun with.
The weather system also has some quirks, and is still a work in progress - so we'll talk about those quirks and rough edges, and how to work around them.
This video was created with build version 1.29.22.0 - which was the public Beta of sim update 11 released on October 12, 2022. The changes to the weather system with sim update 11 have been minimal, though, and mostly relate to enhances to the live weather system - so this video should be accurate for everyone currently using sim update 10 as well.
As always, if you enjoyed the video, please don't forget to like, subscribe, and ring that notification bell!
All charts used in this lesson are available at SkyVector.com
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:43 - Options that affect weather
06:33 - Icing effects options
10:05 - World map weather menu
15:05 - In-flight weather menu
17:48 - Time, date, live weather
18:52 - Using weather presets
24:03 - Altitude calculation
27:00 - Humidity and pressure
31:17 - Temperature and lapse rate
39:59 - Lightning and snow depth
43:58 - Rain and snowfall
46:32 - Precip and visibility
49:32 - Clouds overview
57:23 - Cloud bases and tops
1:01:31 - Weather for instrument approaches
1:07:01 - Ground and valley fog
1:08:55 - Wind
1:18:46 - Hover Taxi??

[@mosesdivaker9693]

This is extremely helpful. Thank you for doing this!!!!!!!

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

Glad you found it helpful, Moses. Thanks for watching!

[@papolo2001]

Top-notch video as always!!!

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

As always, thanks for the kind words & positive support, and thanks for watching pablolloves4095!

[@ariev9482]

Great help. Thank you for it.

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

Glad you found it helpful, Arie V. Thanks for watching!

[@bankabled]

Thank you.

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

You're welcome, DRD flyer. Thanks for watching!

[@tommaxwell429]

Thanks for the very good video! Very helpful. Quirky is an understatement for sure! It works, with the workarounds you mention. There should be a slider for visibility. Maybe in the subscription version of 2024 Microsoft will actually fix what they say they can't do in 2020.

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

Hopefully so. The community has made their wishes clear - we'll just have to see if they respond.

[@tommaxwell429]

@@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation hopefully, is it known that real world weather seldom matches real world weather? Or am I doing something wrong? Is there a way to force a real world update?

[@steveflynn9279]

Thanks for the great video. I have always struggled with which sliders to use to try to match a METAR. XPlane allows you to set weather based upon a METAR and it would be nice if MSFS would allow the same. From a definition perspective scattered cloulds refer to 3 to 4 oktas, broken 5 to 7 oktas and overcast is 8 oktas. Another definition I've seen is clear skies is coverage of 0 to 1 tenth, scattered is 1 to 5 tenths and broken is 5 to 9 tenths. Do you think adjusting the 0-100 coverage slider to those ratios would closely match what a METAR says the cloud coverage is? Thanks, Steve Canada

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

I think it comes close, Steve, but it is certainly less precise than XPlane. I would much prefer a system that lets you precisely set cloud height, coverage, and ground visibility. The system in MSFS seems more focused on aesthetics. I know the community has been asking for the change to a more precise system for a while - but I'm thinking we may have to wait for MSFS 2024, if we get it at all.

[@steveflynn9279]

@@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation Thanks for getting back to me. Maybe 2024 will allow us greater access to the weather engine.

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

@@steveflynn9279 No problem. Sorry I took so long. Hopefully 2024 will bring many of the changes the community has been asking for, weather among them. Time will tell...

[@thesolaraquarium]

Great video thanks. Very professional. I am able to set the weather from the map screen. You need to set a ‘custom preset’, the tab second from the right of the presets (clear, partly cloudy etc..) created by MS. Once you name your custom preset you can then modify it any time you want. It seems it will not allow you to alter the MS presets. You change them but the changes do not hold. Maybe you have to press the save tab? I always press the first tab on the right (save I assume) to make sure after editing my custom preset it saves the changes. After setting and selecting a ‘custom preset’ it will load my correct settings. I am on XBOX CLOUD so the experience of others may vary. My humidity slider is now my visibility slider but as I am flying out of Hong Kong VHHH it is accurate. I set humidity 20.0 for a clear CAVOK low visibility day. In XBOX CLOUD I am unable to alter weather in game (at least I do not know how to) so it is my only option. It works. The AMSL wind bug which sets your wind at ground level as half until you reach 1000ft AGL sounds interesting. It may be taking into account ground effect which would be amazing. ie that at that altitude above sea level the wind speed WOULD BE 20 KTS for instance, BUT BECAUSE OF THE GROUND (shear forces) it is only half and only reaches that level higher up. I am no meterologist or physicist but if this is a true physics law applied to the wind that would be amazing to find in a flight simulator? After an hour playing around with clouds in MSFS I worked out what ‘scatter’ does. Coverage is say 5% of the sky but a high scatter of above 70 means small clouds are distributed evenly across the sky, but a low scatter (say 30) means they are clumped together more (more blue sky appears), but still 5% of the sky is covered in clouds if that makes sense. I used a density of 0.25, cover 5, scatter 30, low cloud base 6000-12000 ft to recreate a sky, humidity 12 for some haze, AMGL. If you change the scatter to 73, you will see what I mean. At scatter 30 more of the sky is showing with clouds grouped together more, not spread out. Hope this helps.

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

Thanks for all the info @towerofnaphtali4066. You are correct, I believe that you cannot change MSFS weather presets and save them - only the ones you create yourself. The way it treats winds is interesting, and in my opinion, a little overdone. In a sim, it would be nice to set the wind at a certain velocity at any altitude you want, with transitions between the altitudes - but it currently isn't doing that too well. Hopefully that will improve with time/the new sim. I appreciate the info on the scatter setting. Glad you enjoyed the content, and thanks for watching.

[@fgmasxk7]

Hello there. In the 1st seconds of the intro, you change the weather without going to the menu, is that a location trigger? How to? Thank you!

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

@fgmasxk7, that's just an editing trick for the video. You have to use the weather menu to change the weather (unless you're using live weather.)

[@t.buitano5093]

One problem I've encountered is that no matter how cold I set the temperature at sea level , lakes and other water bodies do not freeze, but if I set live weather it does happens in places like Alsaka or Russia.

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

T. Buitano - I had never noticed that until you mentioned it, but you're right. I tried several different ways to get it to freeze, but it will not. I know there is a payware addon to create seasonal effects - maybe that would do something?

[@t.buitano5093]

@Alpha-Hotel-FST I've seen those addons but never tried one before, I bought the helicopter that comes with the aircraft carrier tho and works pretty well. But, yeah really strange the ice thing also if you look closely windows don't get ice formation or the airframe when using custom settings.

[@Henkerhaus]

The video is only 360p? Is that because the higher resolution versions haven't uploaded yet?

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

Yes, it's still processing the higher resolution versions. Just uploaded this afternoon, so it will take a few hours yet, but will be available in 4k. This is a re-upload of a video I uploaded last week that contained an error - so this video is corrected for that error. The old video is up in 4k, if you want to watch that instead of waiting: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eICqd6eNdrF_gq8

[@jtepsr]

Why is my weather and time greyed out, I can’t change any weather at all

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

James, The only reason I can think of as to why it would do this is if you have live weather turned on - that restricts access to the rest of the weather controls.

[@keyogen]

So scatter changes the puffiness of the clouds.

[@AlphaHotelFlightSimulation]

As far as I cam tell, it changes how the distribution of the cloud layer. Same coverage, just in slightly different places. Changing the height, coverage or density seems to have more effect on the puffiness.