Our Partnership with Microsoft Flight Simulator

Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS)

Our partnership with Microsoft Flight Simulator (MSFS) dates back to 2018. When meteoblue was approached by the MSFS team with the request of weather data for the most iconic flight simulator of all time, it was an exciting challenge  and a unique opportunity to innovate how weather data can be visualised. meteoblue has pioneered multiple visualisation formats (such as meteograms with vertical cloud structure, MultiModel forecasting, and model comparison graphics), and this collaboration allowed us to push these capabilities even further.

Why Microsoft Flight Simulator is special

Microsoft Flight Simulator is an amateur flight simulator  and one of the longest-running, best-known, and most comprehensive home flight simulator programs ever created. It was also among the earliest products in Microsoft’s application portfolio. The first version launched in 1982, meaning it predates Microsoft Windows by three years.

Back then, users started Flight Simulator via DOS. Today, MSFS delivers a hyper-realistic flying experience, featuring virtual reality interfaces, true-to-life geography based on satellite data and flyover imagery, AI-generated traffic, realistic, real-time, globally available weather data.

From “airport weather” to a full 3D weather solution

As our co-founder Mathias Müller explains (in a Microsoft Flight Simulator partnership video featuring meteoblue CEO Karl G. Gutbrod and CIO Matthias D. Müller), the project started with a limited scope: delivering a small set of weather variables to better simulate conditions near airports. In previous versions of Flight Simulator, no scientific weather data had been used — so even this step was disruptive.

But the collaboration didn’t stop there. Over time, the scope grew significantly:

• Airport-focused forecasts were the initial goal
• High-altitude winds were added so pilots can fly in the jet stream
• The solution evolved into an advanced system including full 3D icing risk data derived from cloud microphysics

“Originally, we only intended to deliver forecasts for airports. Then, winds at extremely high altitudes were added, so that the pilots can fly in the jet stream. And gradually the project developed into an extremely complex weather data solution, including the full 3D icing risk data derived from cloud microphysics, a variable we did not even think of at the beginning of the partnership with Microsoft.”
— Mathias Müller

How the MSFS weather data is produced

To generate weather data for MSFS, meteoblue describes a global modelling approach:

• The Earth’s surface is divided into a grid of approximately 250,000,000 square boxes
• Above each grid box, the atmosphere is split into 60 vertical layers, from the Earth’s surface up to the stratosphere
• Each layer has its own weather conditions, together enabling a global weather data model

The biggest challenge: delivering massive data in real time

Microsoft Flight Simulator is a project where there is virtually no limit to how much data can be provided. The most demanding part was figuring out how to deliver enormous volumes of data in real time without compromising performance. A particularly challenging requirement was the realistic rendering of cloud shapes and textures — and doing so live.

“Microsoft Flight Simulator is a project where there was virtually no limit on how much data we can provide. The most serious obstacle for us was figuring out how to deliver the huge myriads of data in real-time without crashing the system. Particularly demanding was a realistic rendering of cloud shapes and cloud texture, and above all, getting it done in real-time.”
— Mathias Müller

Reception and ongoing evolution

The result was met with overwhelming enthusiasm. Microsoft Flight Simulator received broad acclaim from critics and flight sim enthusiasts worldwide, and was widely considered one of the top games of 2020.

Since the 2020 launch, MSFS has continued to evolve with additional features, including satellite imagery implementation and real-time weather event tracking. The partnership has enabled experiences such as exploring extreme weather events in real time, and it continues to expand in scope and impact.

What this partnership means to meteoblue

For meteoblue, this collaboration has been a rare opportunity to experience our own data in a new way — not just as code, maps, and diagrams, but as an immersive environment.

“The partnership with Microsoft has been exciting for meteoblue since innovation simply never stops. As you can imagine, here at meteoblue we work a lot with codes, maps, or diagrams, but with Flight Simulator it is different. Even for us, it is the first time we can truly experience the data we compute.”
— Mathias Müller

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