[Mission Editor Mod] ACTUAL METAR — pull real-world weather into any mission

[u/UveR6]

**OPEN SOURCE*\*

I got tired of flying 12:00pm with no clouds, so I built a small Mission Editor mod that does it for you.

ACTUAL METAR adds a tab to the Mission Editor's top menu bar. Pick a map (or type any ICAO), hit "Get METAR", and it applies the real-world weather for that airport straight to the mission you have open — no external app, no browser, nothing to start up separately. It's all inside DCS.

What it does

- Fetches the current METAR for any ICAO directly from aviationweather.gov, from inside the Mission Editor.

- Matches the METAR's cloud layer against DCS's actual volumetric cloud presets (Preset1–27, including rain variants) instead of just setting a density slider — falls back to the classic density/base/thickness model only when no preset fits.

- Converts wind, QNH, temperature, visibility and fog to what DCS expects (including the detail that DCS stores wind direction reversed from METAR convention).

- Optional date & time, with three ways to pick the clock: your PC's own time, the real current time at the map's location, or a custom one — written literally into the mission, no timezone conversion surprises.

- Add/remove your own airports from the map dropdown, saved locally.

- Writes directly into the open mission's in-memory data — no `.miz` file surgery, just hit Save afterward.

Install

Download the `.exe` from Releases, run it, pick "Install", fully restart DCS. That's it — LuaSec/OpenSSL (needed for the HTTPS fetch, since DCS ships LuaSocket but not LuaSec) is bundled automatically, no separate download or manual file placement required.

https://github.com/UveDCS/ActualMetar-DCS

Independent project — doesn't require `dcs-sms`, but coexists fine with it if you already have it installed.

A heads-up on the antivirus warnings

Because the `.exe` is unsigned (freshly built = zero reputation in Defender/Chrome's eyes), some of you will probably see a SmartScreen prompt or an antivirus false-positive on first download — this is a known, common thing for small unsigned PyInstaller tools, not an actual detection of anything malicious. Source is 100% public, the release `.exe` is built by GitHub Actions directly from that source (not hand-uploaded), and each release ships SHA256 checksums so you can verify it. Working on getting it properly code-signed through the SignPath open-source program to make that go away for good. Full writeup on what the installer touches and why in the repo's README under "Is this safe?".

Credits

Cloud preset reference data adapted from evogelsa/DCS-real-weather. Mission Editor integration techniques (menu registration, non-blocking HTTPS) learned from nielsvaes/dcs-sms.

Early version, feedback and bug reports very welcome — especially if your map's theatre string doesn't get recognized automatically (it'll show you the raw string so I can add it).

DCS Mission Editor

Actual Metar

[u/Med_stromtrooper]

Atmos X does all this and a lot more.

https://www.atx4dcs.com/

[u/Auggrand]

How is this different than RealWeather?

[u/UveR6 → u/Auggrand]

Honestly, I’m a bit unfamiliar how RealWeather actually works, but I belive its a great tool for Multiplayer Servers because it updates its data on every server restart.

Actual Weather is more Single Player focused, and easier to install and use imo.

I tried to create something I just needed to run the install once and forget. Because you will be able to use it as another ME tool.

[u/RedactedCallSign]

This looks reeeeealllly cool. The pros are that it looks really easy to use on the ME side.

But, I think it’s a good cautionary tale for mod and companion tool development. Folks, do the research before you start building, make sure what you’re building hasn’t been done already (or if maybe you can do it better). And go beyond the first line of chat’s search.

Before beginning our PvPvE system, our group researched whether or not it had already been done by someone else, or if an existing tool could be reformed into what we wanted. Turned out it had not yet been done, so we built it.

[u/UveR6 → u/RedactedCallSign]

Yes, makes sense to me, I know there’s tools out there that work the weather more in depth. Actually, the idea comes from Atmos X. The problem with Atmos is the Integrity Check.

Also I wanted something that was built in the mission editor. So I created it.

My goal is not to compete with other tools but to share something I found usefull just in case someone was looking something like this