Ya, I just wish they’d make it clear to us so we truly understand the limitations (and opportunities!) instead of us having to piece it together and continue to ask “why is (isn’t) it doing that?”
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Me personally think both we as users and the developers are limited by the data that are provided. And i think the data that are provided is not that usable with volumetric clouds. And i know Seb mentioned it’s hard to create cirrus clouds with volumetric clouds. And Seb also mentioned it’s hard to create more density in clouds without affecting performance.
But i agree, they should be more open with what they can achive and not. Then i think we all may also set the expectations at a correct level.
I know other “games” can achive more realistic visuals but those don’t need to have it accurate to real world conditions.
Maybe the Optica was flying on Exegol?
Think a discovery series about FS2024 it’s weather will answer our questions if they proceed with it like they did with 2020.
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Apart from if they do the same as the discovery series for 2020 and essentially falsify what they said the weather would do vs the end product we actually ended up with
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Why does Jorg sound so annoyed having to talk about clouds? Like he is upset having to spent any resources on it at all instead of more fun stuff.
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They are always annoyed when any question or valid criticism about weather or clouds is raised in a Q/A and seemingly here too. That eye roll is just disrespectful. The stock answer “we are looking into it/ we are working on it” is given here - the same as any other Q/A. So disappointing.
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As we have seen and experienced over the past 4 years, the weather - including clouds - has not been their favourite. 
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I am however glad they improved on several things, so cirrus clouds are indeed added and new.
volumetrics now accept lighting in several layers which can give a more dynamic feel.
Raytracing is in the sim, but limited to ray traced shadows? (maybe)
They said new lighting engine but that can also mean a screenspace lighting techniques.
I hope they will add a full RT stack.
GI, Lighting, Reflections, Shadows etc.
I don’t want just negativity and complaints here, if they do something that improves this area i’ll take that as a win and appreciate it.
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Even more irritating was the Q&A part after the presentation. While Seb promised further information about improvements to the weather (so there’s still some hope!) for the future, Jorg was back to his standard answer since SU7: “We’ll talk to Meteoblue about what is possible” (when asked about reduced visibility specifically) and “we talked to Meteoblue and there seems to be something available regarding thunderstorms, we’ll need to look into this more” (when asked about thunderstorms not reaching high altitudes).
The communication regarding the weather is irritating since SU7, and it seems to remain that way.
When MSFS2024 was announced, the representation of a tornado was THE topic. An MS official even explained that due to the progress made, particularly in weather representation, the team felt that a new simulator version was justified.
And now we seem to be back to the standard: “we need to talk to Meteoblue”?
The discrepancy in the development of MSFS should be obvious:
- Standard aircraft and avionics insufficient? Hire Working Title on terms that allow their team to be multiplied.
- Scenery enhancement? Work with countless third parties to create PG, TIN and bespoke airports. Use AI companies to make the ground 3D etc…
- Flight model insufficient? Hire Andrey Solomikin!
- Replay module insufficient? Hire Fabio Merlo!
- Ships, gliders, air races, you name it - Integrate third parties
- (Live) Weather depiction insufficient? Well - yeah, you know… I guess we’ll have to talk to Meteoblue sometime…
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This bit frustrated me, they should’ve been talking to Meteoblue post SU7 and have a change in place well before now. The lack of weather information last night, coupled with confirmation there’ll probably be only one new cloud type and the shyness regarding visibility suggests to me they don’t have it much better in the next sim.
So why? Why is live weather so difficult for them now? By all accounts it was working just fine pre SU7, but since then it’s been largely broken with rare thunderstorms, bad METAR transitions, clear visibility everywhere. It’s been over two years since that update and here we have a new SIM coming out and it doesn’t look like it’ll be much better, they were too focused on discussing the lighting changes.
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They straight up dodged the visibility question. Seb basically had no clue on what was being asked. Realistic depiction of visibility due to haze and humidity seems to be completely missing from live weather in Fs2020. Then another question regarding the supercells heights was dodged as well and given the usual answer ‘we are discussing with meteoblue’.
This was very concerning. No concrete details have been provided on improvements to live weather.
I really do hope someone can interview them at expo and ask about improvements to live weather. How cloud generation will be different from fs2020? How visibility and haze will work in highly humid areas ? Show us some live weather supercells maybe ? Show us storm fronts ?
Honestly I was very disappointed.
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Visibility is so important, that alone makes XP atmosphere look more realistic to me.
you can see the scenery in the distance looking more realistic cuz of that
With MSFS it feels like you can see the edge of the planets curvature most of the time.
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They’re going to need to rework things using radar if they’re going to inject supercells into the sim. That’s the only way, unless they just give a supercell x chance of happening in an area, which, please no. Kind of the same with squall lines, especially during initial phases. Current state, once storms are mature and have been around for a while, they have a better chance of making it into the sim. They just need to close the time and space gap and there’s only one way to do that accurately enough to be credible.
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A 6 second clip is him being annoyed? The rest of that piece didn’t seem to have him annoyed.
I think Jorg just loves airplanes - and unique airplanes at that. He just doesn’t care about the flying environment – if it has cloud-ish looking things then thats good enough. and unfortunately that seems to be an opinion shared by most ‘simmers’.
That XP pic a few posts up looks wonderful! Why is that so hard? and why the heck don’t they care more!? yeesh.
but on the bright side: the ground scenery just keeps getting better. Digital Twin must not have an atmosphere.
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Evidently it has lots of volcanoes…
Going by FSExpo I think it’s probably safe to assume that live weather will not be considerably, if at all, different to 2020. Sorry guys.
I mean I love the new ground details too, but why are clouds and weather still so neglected in comparison? They even showed real world photos to compare to and it had clouds that should be in the new sim. If I was Jorg I would have said come on guys we need those kind of skies too. It seems all the performance wins went straight back to other areas first, like deer walking in the forest.
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