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MSFS 2024 Live weather vs weather addon?

Flight Simulator 2024

I recently got back into flightsimming after some time off for several years and got MSFS 2024. In the past I flow mostly airliners and did a bit of bush flying thanks to Misty Fjords and what came after. I'm not sure if any bush flying sceneries would be needed given how stunning MSFS 2024 looks out of the box but there's probably also some room for improvements and for airline flying I will definitely get a study level plane again down the road.

One thing I wonder about is the weather. I always used to have some weather addon in the past but so far the weather engine seems at least decent (There may be something about clouds looking quite similar but maybe I just need to fly more and in different places). I tried to find some reviews or comparisons online but found only stuff that's for MSFS 2020 or early MSFS 2024 but from what I found the sim got a lot better with the 4 big updates since it's release while the addons probably had updates too in that time.
Therefore I'd be curious to learn what those who use some weather addons can say about the differences between the current vanilla MSFS 2024 weather and in the latest versions of available addons. It's less important that the weather is as close to the current reality as long as it looks and feels believable.
How do realism and visuals compare between MSFS 2024 and available addons? What do you use and why or what would you recommend?

Even though I'm currently more than happy with the included content I'd also be interested in other recommendations for various addons given the ongoing holiday sales that I could maybe make use of still.

Thanks a lot and have a happy new year!

Posted Dec 30, 2025, 9:11 PM UTC

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