Sucks...
Sorry, but this could have been a nice feature, great even. Instead it's just a case of "Go to X location and wait for time/weather" for the most part. It completely kills the concept in my opinion... I'm not sightseeing, I'm waiting to be allowed to sightsee... If it wasn't for the (best) minion being locked behind this, I wouldn't be doing it at all in its current state...
Would have been much better if you just got a cutscene when we find the location, tie it in with the Echo even; when we get there, we get an Echo cutscene showing us the vista as described (time/weather) in the log. That would have been much more enjoyable, I'd have done that even without the minion reward.
That's better, maybe I'll actually be able to get my baby Apkallu now, with only minor injuries to my forehead from bashing my head against my desk because I'm "not allowed to look at a vista at this time"....
An improvements and improvement though, thank you.