Real-world live weather for MSFS 2020.

There is no call an add-on can make that says put a cloud deck here and a different one over the next ridge. Microsoft Flight Simulator exposes no writable ambient-weather API. What it does expose is its weather presets, so an external engine assembles a complete weather state and hands the whole thing across as one preset, over and over, as the aircraft moves. Everything an engine can be good or bad at happens before that hand-off: how well it reads the real atmosphere, how well it rebuilds it, and how smoothly it moves the simulator from one state to the next.

StrataWx is two pieces, both installed for you. The desktop app is the engine: it reads real observations and model data, builds the atmosphere around your aircraft, and serves it on your own PC at 127.0.0.1:19286, a loopback address nothing outside your machine can reach. The in-sim panel is a small add-on in your MSFS 2020 Community folder that reads from it and keeps the simulator matched to what the engine is serving. Start them in either order, then leave the app running. Close the app and MSFS 2020 returns to drawing its own weather.

The served state changes while you fly, because you are moving and so is the weather. Wind, pressure and temperature are eased in rather than applied the instant they land: the panel steps the simulator toward the new target every 200 ms, at one of four speeds you choose.

Cloud decks are handled differently on MSFS 2020, deliberately. This simulator rebuilds the whole cloud volume whenever a cloud field changes, so nudging the decks a little on every tick reads as a flicker rather than as motion. The panel therefore holds cloud geometry steady while the drift is small, then re-seats it in a step and holds again. Decks are still matched across updates by identity, inside a 500 m tolerance the engine holds deliberately under the panel's 600 m, so a deck whose base is drifting is held on the same slot instead of being torn down and rebuilt.

• Vertical temperature profile
• Winds at every level
• Real bases, tops and coverage
• Live precipitation scope

StrataWx does not work from a list of supported airports. It resolves the atmosphere at the aircraft's own position: the temperature curve and the freezing level, the wind at every altitude you will climb through, each cloud band sitting at the base and top it actually has, the visibility and the pressure. Over any airport, any ocean, and everything in between. What the profile shows you is what the simulator is being given.

Profile · Scope

• Icing and turbulence bands
• Freezing level and ceiling
• Convective risk
• SIGMET, AIRMET and PIREP

Ceiling, freezing level and convective risk up top; icing and turbulence plotted by altitude; live advisories along the route you are flying. The desktop window also decodes the observation the whole picture is anchored to and writes an ATIS for the field, with an information letter and a runway in use. You get the flight picture the way a briefer would hand it to you, in the same window that is feeding the simulator.

Hazards · Advisories

Live flies the weather that is happening right now, and it keeps flying it. As you move, the engine re-resolves the atmosphere at your new position; as the real weather moves, the served state follows it. There is no preset to reload at the top of descent and nothing to refresh by hand, which is the difference between weather that is set once at the gate and weather you actually fly through.

Author exactly what you want and fly it: overcast at 1,200 ft, a 30 kt crosswind, moderate chop. It is the mode to reach for when you are learning an approach rather than touring, and it needs no connection at all, because nothing has to be fetched.

Same desktop window, and the same engine serving on the same loopback port. The same in-sim controls, too: turbulence strength, transition smoothing, freeze and refresh are all in the 2020 panel. And the same price, which is the part people expect to be different: StrataWx for MSFS 2020 is $29.99, exactly what the MSFS 2024 licence costs, and one licence covers up to three of your own PCs.

Because there is no writable ambient-weather API, weather injected from outside arrives as a single global preset. StrataWx resolves that preset for the aircraft's own position and keeps re-resolving it as you move, which is what makes a long flight feel like it crosses weather rather than sitting in one block of it. But at any given instant the sky over your wing is the same sky two states away. Nobody injecting from outside the simulator has a way around that.

The aircraft's weather radar reads the simulator's own weather state, and an injected preset is uniform, so a convective cell built outside the sim does not appear on the scope. This is a property of the platform and it is true of every external weather engine in MSFS, not a shortcoming of one of them. StrataWx draws its own precipitation scope and hazard picture in the desktop window instead, which is where you plan around a cell.

The panel flies what the engine serves, so with the app closed it reads OFFLINE and MSFS 2020 returns to its own weather. Live mode reads real observations as they happen, so it needs an internet connection; sandbox does not. And only one weather engine should ever drive the simulator: if another live-weather add-on is running, turn it off first, or the two will fight over the sim's weather and the symptom looks like weather that keeps changing its mind.

The desktop app is Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, and ships as a code-signed installer, so Windows opens it normally with no unknown-publisher wall. It installs into your user profile with no admin prompt and brings its own runtime, so there is nothing else to install first.

1. 01

   Run the installer

   Download StrataWx-Setup.exe and double-click it. The simulator does not need to be open, there is no admin prompt, and the file name is the same for every release, so a saved link never goes stale.

2. 02

   Confirm your MSFS 2020 Community folder

   The setup screen shows a row for each simulator it finds, for Steam and for the Microsoft Store. If MSFS 2020 reads "not detected", click Change and point it at that sim's Community folder. Leave "Install the in-sim weather panel" on, and if your licence covers both simulators, tick "Install into both".

3. 03

   Restart MSFS 2020 completely

   Community add-ons are loaded only at sim start. If MSFS was running while the installer copied the panel in, close it fully and start it again, or the toolbar will have no StrataWx icon and nothing will inject. Do this again after any app update that mentions the panel.

4. 04

   Start the app, pick a mode, fly

   Launch StrataWx and leave it running, choose your mode, then load a flight. The panel connects on its own and injection starts a few seconds after the aircraft loads. Opening the panel in the sim is optional: it is where turbulence, transition smoothing, freeze and refresh live, and injection runs whether or not that window is open.

Activation happens once, in the StrataSim Manager, a small companion app the installer sets up alongside StrataWx, and one licence covers up to three of your own PCs. The Quick Start guide walks the whole thing, activation included, and carries the fixes for the handful of snags worth knowing about. Download StrataWx when you are ready.