The thing is ASFS is capable of generating those large banks of clouds, so I don’t think its necessarily the sim being incapable of doing it, just the live weather often doesn’t for reasons.
If I had to describe in the form of a crudely made Paint image, this is what ActiveSky might show you:
What you get in native live weather might be:
It’s “banks” of cloud often presented as lots of little popcorn clouds close together.
It can do very convincing overcast cloud, but those banks of distant cloud seem largely absent now. It was never like that in the early months of 2020.
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Yes, exactly! Most of the clouds are made of one or more of these ‘dot puffs’ and all the puffs are the same size and apparent flatness. Its really surprising to me because I always thought the one thing shader code was really good at was making copies of things in all different sizes very quickly. While some clouds do have that general appearance in some areas, those same clouds will nearly always be more wispy, soft, or ‘hairlike (strands)’ at the bottom with a more bulbous look at the top like here:
or here:
Mainly, with cumulus clouds, although the dot puff approach could work, they need to make the dots larger, softer and more round in appearance at the tops of any cumulus cloud.
and they need to build some of those lacy hairlike structures because they are evrywhere in real life.
Note: pics from this video (favorite local streamer – his home base is not far from me) –
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exactly.. reproducing that white and that lighting is only possible with ray tracing (and I’m not mentioning path tracing, it’s even better but it absorbs more resources)… if you search on YouTube there are many videos that explain how to build ray tracing on clouds… among other things, it would eliminate pixellation… as I’ve always said, it takes a team of 2\4 people who dedicate themselves every day to the construction… now I don’t know if it’s feasible with their graphics engine or not… but we’re very behind…
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The hard part about this is convective (cumulus and cumulonimbus) clouds are often very ephemeral - always moving, changing, morphing, growing, and dissipating based on synoptic-scale environmental conditions like (in)stability and both broad-scale and local initiators that change throughout the day. Another way to look at it is asking “why are these clouds here - what conditions have caused them to behave in this way?” Either way, I have yet to see evidence that MSFS has enough data at scale (in both time and space) and has devoted enough processing power (and/or programming) to get these right in both look and behavior.
Alternatively, you could “paint” an area of them with broad strokes, but it leaves in question what they’re going to do once “painted.” Are they going to do all the things described above in a realistic manner or are they going to be a passable-looking, but relatively static painting? It seems to be we have something like that now. Due to whatever limitations exist (and we still truly don’t know), suspension of disbelief might be needed to an extent, and I’m okay with a bit of tradeoff between good looking and realistic behaving, with the proviso that it can and should be continually improved.
Maybe there’s a case to implement some more granular input and use AI interpretation to draw them better.
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Exactly. They built the weather engine with 2019-2020 technology, and then updated it in 2021. Since then, technology has gotten better and now allows for high-definition clouds (as we see in XPlane12). The weather system is due for an overhaul, and yet nothing has been said/done. Asobo added 3D trees and ships and ray-traced shadows for MSFS2024 because technology improved and they can now afford to, but I must say the sky is a far bigger priority for a flight simulator. Trees and ships are important, yes, but necessary? No. It’s been 5 years, and we’ve even gotten a new sim before we get a functioning weather radar, which is vital for anyone trying to fly a plane in anything less than VFR conditions.
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Agree mostly, though I’ll make a case that trees are pretty darn important for many thousands of airports, just not necessarily the big ones.
But at some point I’d like to see a comparison as to what XP is putting out as far as weather is concerned - again, is it really behaving like weather over time or does it just look good in any particular moment that’s captured? So far I’ve just seen static screenshots without a lot of context and comparative analytics to rw weather. Unfortunately, that’s beyond my availability of time and energy (and really doesn’t matter as far as MSFS is concerned other than to be a proof of concept and competition). I’ve spent way too much time comparing MSFS and real-world weather behavior just to deduce what they’re actually giving us. I don’t know if I want to get back into XP (I think it’s been 10 years or more for me) and all the other tweaking involved just to do the same.
Either way, until we’re given a better glimpse behind the curtain of the MSFS weather engine, this is all academic.
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I can at least offer a purely subjective comparison between current XP12 and MSFS live-weather engine.
To me, XP12’s weather engine looks (in my opinion even better) and behaves like the old MSFS one (before SU5 and subsequent sim updates that supposedly made METAR integration more aggressive). It can be inaccurate.. having TSRA in the METAR doesn’t necessarily mean you will have a thunderstorm with rain in the sim. Haven’t yet tested the accuracy of cloud bases etc.
However, this lower accuracy to real life conditions is traded for larger scale phenomena. Weather fronts, vertically and horizontally thick altostratus/cirrostratus clouds are simulated extremely well in XP12.
Towering cumulus and Cumulonimbus clouds look much better, and have their dangers associated with them, mainly severe turbulence.
Clouds in general seem to have more life in them. You essentially won’t always see them looking the same way. Crepuscular rays and shadows are simulated very well, too.
And now, with WX API on the horizon, 3rd party developers will get their chance with molding the complex weather system to their liking. Something that MSFS hasn’t been able to do in all those years in development.
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We just really need a dedicated weather sim update
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Hi,
I can remember, unfortunately I can’t pinpoint the exact time, that I flew under clouds quite early in 2020 and when the light conditions changed away from direct sunlight, I got goose bumps.
I did cloud flying in multiplayer with my brother and we both loved it. There was no ray tracing back then.
I know the differences and I know what ray tracing is capable of, as I have to do some of it professionally. But what I calculate there is not feasible with the real-time calculation of the FS. I then ask myself the question, should I afford the computing effort? Even if my 4090 does a good job of it.
Do I really pay attention to this when I’m concentrating on flying?
Personally, I would see it as a nice extra and switch it off if switching it off brings FPS for my Pimax.
Especially as I’ve seen with my own eyes what’s possible without RT.
However, this WOW effect from back then has never been seen again, later in Fs2020. Not even in FS24 and not even with ray tracing.
Not that I’m unwilling to buy or install add-ons. At some point I had bought so many and downloaded so many free ones from Fs.to that I was just updating.
At some point I stopped because I could hardly fly.
I didn’t really care about the cost of the 2TB M.2 and today there are even bigger ones.
Would I buy an addon that does the work for MS/AS and then creates great weather for 50EUR, with great cloud representation, thermals, waves, etc.?
YES of course, no problem!
But if I were MS/AS, I would be ashamed that they can’t do it themselves in their position, unless they share in the profits.
Now my thoughts are going in that direction again. 
LG
Ralf
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Clouds quality in MSFS is limited by gaming consoles possiblities as are many other things 
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If anyone needs a cloud simulator, XP12 is on sale on Steam. just don’t look down LOL
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With custom orthos, there’s no problem with looking down :).
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With the Challenger 650 you won’t.
Mods, I hope someone is making sure the devs are seeing how well the competition is doing with their sky tech and how threatening this could be to MSFS.
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That’s one thing about MSFS that has XP beat. No need to spend endless hours churning out Ortho. Boy do I not miss that.
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Isn’t there a setting in MSFS2024 that auto throttles the LOD? I sometimes wonder if people that complain about blurry textures have this setting activated inadvertently.
Why does this argument keep popping up again and again? They (I think easily) could make extra settings for beefy PC’s. A super ultra mode. Jorg talked about this once. So while there might be a correlation, there’s absolutely no reason why Asobo couldn’t switch to higher resolution rendering for PC’s.
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And even with ortho’s it’s very bad in my opinion. Good enough for some, apparently.
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I’m seeing some posts of people really happy with the clouds in the latest build of SU3 beta - 1.5.13.0. For example, this post was upvoted to the top of r/flightsim on Reddit today:
https://www.reddit.com/r/flightsim/comments/1lub6t9/holy_■■■_departing_off_lga_with_latest_city/
And this post in Avsim: https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/674480-sim-update-3-beta-15130-release-notes-july-2-2025/page/5/#findComment-5511851
Seems like there is some type of disconnect between this thread, and what other people are reporting for 1.5.13.0 version of the SU3 beta build?
People are very unhappy about the clouds in this thread. But then some people are very happy about the 1.5.13.0 SU3 clouds, as per the two posts I have cited.
Under 20,00ft or so the clouds are alot better , even in SU2 but SU3 improves that some more. In an airliner, above 20,000ft .. there are no correctly rendered cirrus, no towering Cbs (imagine being able to see far off storms and lightning? They said in 2020 the cloud distance was 600km+ yet all you see around 30,000ft and above is a flat cloud layer in all directions)
There is 1 cloud ‘type’ , there is an almost translucent ‘cirrus-y’ kind of thing too. Surely this super duper rendering engine is more capable? When flying in these ‘clouds’ you can still see your wing …
This thread is for the 1% who would like to fly high above - and through - a jawdropping cloudscape. Not just what you see from the ground or half-way up, but what you see at airliner cruising altitudes.
We fly 10 hours+ .. and there’s nothing up there.
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