Known for their popular weather engines on both the ESP platforms and X-Plane 11, developer HiFi Sim Tech has confirmed that work has begun on bringing a new weather engine to Microsoft Flight Simulator. The news comes as a surprise considering that the current SDK inhibits any interaction with the built-in weather engine, but Damian of HiFi has taken to the Microsoft Flight Simulator forums to confirm they will use “non-SDK weather access techniques.”
Speaking candidly on the forums, Damian said that the development of a weather engine product could have started a long time ago, but decided to take a wait and see approach in the hope that SDK access would eventually happen. Despite waiting, Damian said that they can wait no longer and have instead begun to work on developing something new without the support of the developers or an SDK. He said, “users demand better weather experiences, and we think we can deliver, so we keep at it, despite incredible challenges. As long as our customers keep asking for more, we’ll keep working hard.”
Whilst there is a clear sense of frustration coming from Damian in the forums, he adds that he has “no ill will towards [Microsoft]/Asobo” and that he thinks the current weather depiction is “incredible.” That said, Damian is clear that the types of features HiFi want to implement are things currently not in the simulator or simply can’t be worked on with the current use of Metro Blue as the weather supplier.
Despite all of this, a clear product announcement at this time has yet to be confirmed, but all of this information from Damian confirms that research and development is certainly ongoing. He is very open and keen to see what other developers do in the meantime and is excited to see how something akin to Active Sky in Microsoft Flight Simulator will enhance the simmer experience.
We too also look forward to seeing what can be brought to the table.