In a new development post from HST, the team has announced a new weather engine called Weatherman. The new weather engine will be delivered with xAmbience Pro once it’s made available and the developers claim Weatherman will be “better than other weather engines” on the market.
The bold claim was made based on the fact that the weather engine uses data from various sources. This includes NOAA, Satellites and local private weather stations around the world. In total, HST uses 30 sources. Once the data has been streamed into HST’s servers, it then interpolates this data on the backend before then being injected into the simulator. This simulation of weather comes with multiple levels which also changes the density of clouds, the colour of the sky. Other weather engines don’t do this, according to HST. Further to that, the team said that custom turbulence also comes with the weather engine, along with soft changes to wind, temperature and pressure so there’s no jerkiness in the sim.
Whilst Weatherman comes with xAmbience Pro, there will also be an offline mode for various weather themes for simmers looking to use various types of weather in their own scenarios.
HST say that the previews shared are still a work in progress and there still more to do to get the visuals just right. When we last shared news from HST, they said that xAmbience Pro would release in a “few weeks”, but the team said it will still be a few additional weeks yet. We’ll be sure to keep you updated with any progress from the developers.