I have seen many videos of the latest beta of xplane 12 … I also made the comparison with 2024 … they also have pixelated clouds but regarding the shadows in the sky \ clouds on the ground the variety of clouds especially the lighting are 10 steps ahead of Asobo truly at the top! … Even the sim gives some small satisfaction( 2024)but it is as if we were now at the dawn … I thought the lighting was at the top that of 2024 … instead I realize that in reality there would be a lot of work to do to keep up with the times … I think Microsoft needs to fix it because in my opinion they are losing many users due to this weather issue … has the right time come to get a move on?!? …
In the various flight sim-based discord channels of which I am an active member, the number of friends who have switched to X-Plane mainly because of the clouds, weather, lighting, atmospherics, etc. is staggering.
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Does anybody know the performance comparison between the two sims?
I have tried finding a comparison, but to no avail. All I find is eye candy comparison 
I am considering changing sims.
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Some of those XP shots look great. Others just look different, not better. And still others look like they were made in Paint, like they were airbrushed for the wallpaper in a child’s bedroom. No doubt XP had the opportunity to push the bar a bit higher while Asobo had to focus on other things for the past several years, but I think there’s also a little bit of a grass is always greener thing going on here.
But I agree that competition is good, and hope this provokes Asobo into action. They certainly are capable of making spectacularly realistic and well lit stormscapes:
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Is that XP 12.2, or MSFS 2024? Can’t tell from your post
That’s 2024, and specifically the storm chasing career mission. That structure was handmade for that mission, so you won’t find it in Free Flight or Live Weather. But I think it’s a great demonstration of what’s possible on a broader scale in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
For comparison, a couple of real supercells we shot from the air. I thought the lighting and atmospherics are particularly well done in Flight Simulator, the shadows, light rays, and scattering remind of these real life scenes:
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Well, are those last two images from 2024 as well? Couldn’t quite tell from your comment!
could it be a strategy to improve vram and stability to improve the weather later!!! … guys here we need ray tracing and ray marching together plus new shapes and infinite random varieties of cloud formations… i don’t know if it’s feasible…
Now in my 70’s I’ve flown every msfs since the very first. Flown four flights over UK today in three different aircraft with real time weather and the clouds are freaking superb.
Zero improvement? . For a flight simulator (game) costing less than £100 ($120) the visual effects are outstanding. Enjoyed every minute. 
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If you think these are freaking superb then fair enough.
But to me, they are way worse than they were at the release of MSFS 2020, and way way worse than
FSX/P3D. I thought MSFS 2024 was supposed to improve things.
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That’s incredible, and just shows what the engine can produce with the right data structuring.
Come on MS / Adobe, XPlane has really thrown the gauntlet down with their new clouds. Time for you to finally integrate the Live Weather data in a way that releases the power of the engine!
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OK, maybe XPlane’s gauntlet isn’t that threatening in some examples 
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The clouds are still blurry in XP 12.2.0. That’s a hard no for me, to consider XP 12.
It’s weird how some people in this thread are suddenly bringing up XP 12 clouds are better than MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 clouds. I guess it’s a personal preference, but XP 12 clouds are far worse than MSFS 2020 and 2024 clouds until LR can figure out how to make their clouds not blurry.
And it’s very obvious that XP 12 clouds are blurry. If you don’t mind the blurriness in XP 12 clouds, you may think they are better. If you do mind the blurriness in XP 12 clouds, you may think they are much worse than MSFS 2020 and 2024 clouds.
Here are the other photos in this thread showing the blurry XP 12 clouds:
In all these photos, it’s hard to make out the definition in the clouds. It’s not what I encounter in real life, or when I am on a plane flying above the clouds.
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Thank you, this is a very good example of MSFS clouds vs XP 12 clouds. You can see the definition in the MSFS clouds because they are not blurry. This is what I see in real life too.
Now all the photos people have posted of the XP 12 clouds in this thread, they are so blurry. It’s not even close to this photo.
The last message I want to send to Asobo is to make MSFS 2024 clouds closer to XP 12 clouds because Asobo will think the community wants blurry clouds. No, I do not want blurry clouds at all! I’m sure many of us don’t want the blurry XP 12 clouds either! Maybe improve the structure and variation of the clouds, if that’s what people are saying is improved in XP 12. But certainly not making the clouds blurry.
I want the clouds in this photo, where I can see the definition in the clouds. That’s what I see in real life. And that’s where MSFS 2024 is at, and not XP 12.
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Hi. I know you enjoy XP 12 when you posted this photo. But at the same time, I think there may be some MSFS developers that read these threads, so I’m going to be a bit direct and maybe a little harsh, because I don’t want the MSFS developers to get the wrong idea, and go in the wrong direction.
I have seen a lot of photos comparing MSFS to real life, with some of the best photos scoring probably 9/10 and 10/10. But if I were to grade this photo, I would probably give it a 6/10, if it’s being compared to real life. One of the biggest giveaways is the lighting. The lighting is just not correct in the photo, and it makes it easy to determine that it’s far from real life. The blurriness in XP 12 clouds, I have already mentioned in the previous posts above this. Finally, the shadows in the clouds are not quite right.
To be fair, there are other photos of XP 12.2.0 in this thread that look closer to real life. But there is a lot of giveways in this photo, and hence I score it 6/10. Sorry for being a little harsh, but again, there may be MSFS developers that follow this thread, and I wouldn’t want them to get the wrong idea or direction from your post.
What would that wrong idea be, that you don’t want MSFS developers to have?
By changing the lighting and changing the shadows in MSFS 2024 to become closer to the photo posted by @Foxhound6050.
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I didn’t see anything wrong with the shadows. The only ones I can see are on the engine cowlings as we are above the clouds in that image.
I think the lighting in XP12 is better in many cases than 2024. Whether its their implementation of Rayleigh scattering or not I’m not sure, but terrain out to the horizon usually looks better in XP12. There were improvements in 2020, and 2024 as well, but it never quite looks right. You often see “infinite” visibility right out to the horizon. The sun shining through clouds also often looks wrong, and Active Sky struggles with this, often causing what looks like a nuke to have gone off if there is enough moisture in the air.
One of the big benefits that XP11 & 12 have is their ability to strictly control RVR. If you want 0 visibility you can set that. Try that in either MSFS. You just can’t get it that low.
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Yeah, I guess we agree to disagree. It’s peculiar that some people keep saying XP 12 has better lighting than MSFS 2024. And yet we both look at the same photo, and come away with different conclusions. I was just pointing out the lighting and shadows for the clouds, I didn’t even focus on the lighting for the engine and wings. For example, the lighting for the engine looks very different from what I would see in real life. Here is the XP 12 photo again, look at the shadows inside the engine:
The shadows are very light, you can clearly see the inside of the engine. Now look at a real life photo, it’s usually pretty hard to see the inside of an engine because there will usually be a shadow on it, making it look pretty dark (the quality of this photo is not that good, but it demonstrates that it’s not easy to see the inside of an engine because of the shadow on it):
Now here is a photo from MSFS 2024, the cover photo from one of Blu Game’s Youtube videos:
Clearly, MSFS 2024 is much closer to the real life photo, in that there is a shadow on the inside of the engine, making it hard to see the inside of the engine. The shadow in XP 12 of inside the engine is very light, and is not something I would likely see in real life.
I hope we can both agree that the MSFS 2024 shadow of inside the engine is better than XP 12, comparing it to a real life photo? Granted, all 3 photos are taken at different times of day, with different sun angles, etc, but the premise is still the same, that the shadow of inside the engine in real life should make it much darker when you try to look inside the engine.
In general, the lighting of the engine and the wing in XP 12 is just off. But I guess people will have different opinions.
If any of the MSFS developers are reading this, you got the lighting pretty good in MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 (and lighting in MSFS 2024 is even better than MSFS 2020, especially with respect to how light passes through clouds - sunset and sunrise are the best in MSFS 2024). And if any of the MSFS developers are reading this, please don’t go the direction of XP 12 for lighting. Thank you.