for cloud lovers? I mean, I liked it… ymmv.
I think he wants clouds like the ones in the video in MSFS.
The potential that this sim has to produce good clouds generally. The convective conditions in the US east coast has produces some interesting weather. The cloud colors notwithstanding, the density of the clouds seen here is something to build on. The variety in cloud shapes plus working on how light travels through them would be something interesting to see improvements in. Making the clouds low density/almost translucent to avoid “volcanic ash” appearance is not a fix that is worth doing at this point.
However, the easiest place I feel they can look at to make improvements is how the meteoblue data translates to cloud depictions in the sim. Bumping up the baseline density values of the clouds really helps imho.
By the way, a good example of the volanic ash is demonstrated below:
The first image shows teh voncanic ash issue. The second image is taken from the right wing where the light falls onto the cloud at a different angle and it looks splendid!
Another demonstration today of some EXCELLENT convective condition depiction over ATL today using LIVE WEATHER.
Below is some non convective conditions close by and some isolated convective buildup in the distance in florida (FLL and MIA area). The isolated/scattered/few cumulus clouds barely have any density and are almost translucent. We could benefit by the algorithm being tweaked to increase the baseline cumulus cloud density across the board. There is no need for the sim to really render these translucent blobs, especially at ultra settings.
There is just so much wrong with those convective clouds. To begin with the lighting on those convective clouds just look plain wrong. They need to completely redo cloud shadows and how the clouds absorb light. The scale of clouds is also incorrect. Not to mention the ■■■■ filter that has been plaguing the sim since 2020, the tonemapping needs fixing.
Your first two pics have an incredibly unrealistic reddish tone. Why? a sandstorm perhaps? Are they all sandstorms because that red tint is everywhere in FS.
Your third pic is fine imo except that that is the only good look we ever see and it always looks the same. Your remaining pics show that they’ve created an engine that lowers cloud density along with conditions which is not how weather/clouds work.
I honestly can’t think of any other game that has such juvenile representation of clouds and weather.
LR has a superior implementation of clouds than MSFS 2024 right now. The point of my post was not to critique the cloud coloring/tone/shadow calculations generally. That is clearly something that will take some work, and Asobo is in no hurry to address this sadly. Keep in mind that even their dev Q&A does not talk about/address this.
The point of my post was to at least fix the density of the clouds in live weather so that the baseline density isn’t so low for isolated cumulus and high level cirrus clouds.
Here’s what I think that first/second image got right (the second image was captured first, and the “storm” evolved into the first image). The structure of the convective system is good. The variation in density and the size of the system looked menacing. Keep in mind that the image was captured at around ~ 9AM ATL time, and the camera was facing south. I wish we could get a “color corrected” image of what the clouds “should look like” given these conditions + time of day + month of year.
I think that even if I was to post a million real life properly white balanced photos of similar real life situations, that it would not make a bit of difference to some people and that there is no way that I could ever prove just how wrong the lighting on the ground and on the plane and in the clouds and all the shadows – just how wrong and un-Earthly it all is. That scene just does not commonly exist in reality but yet it is incredibly common in FS.
but heres a video for fun:
and another:
Another thing I notice is that the cloud “resolution” drops rather quickly at a distance. X Plane maintains pretty good resolution far out - I suspect their rendering technique is “distance-based” ie depending on how far the camera/airplane is from the camera, they will either render clouds as volumetric/not.
Those upper cirrus clouds look really bad in the screenshot below. IDK why you’d have clouds that look this bad generated in live weather when on ultra settings
Another example of awful cumulonimbus:
YPAD live weather looking towards the southwest
Here’s what the same scene looks like in X Plane 12:
Yep, no argument here. That lighting is much better.
The cirrus clouds continue to get worse. Seems like every update, the resolution continues to go down and they look nothing more than white waves from the ocean. I’ve all but given up hope that Asobo even wants to fix the weather. I think we will just have to either live with what we have or move over to XP. I personally think it’s ridiculous that Jorg and the over devs and talked up the weather system like it’s a thing of beauty while injecting nothing more than cotton balls and wanting us to be ok with that. The weather in general just feels way too 2D. I can’t tell you the last time I flew through a cloud and the plane moved other than forward. With live weather, there is 0 density to any clouds as you get closer to them. For whatever reason, they choose to become very see through.
The weather system has been one of the biggest let-downs in MSFS 2024. I love what they have done with all the sim updates thus far when it comes to improving performance, but a full SU for weather and atmospherics is much needed. They can legit just run GPT on this thread and all others and get concrete things that people want out of the sim.A dev Q&A addressing why these changes are taking time/not a priority/not possible would be great. Besides, does anyone know if dev q&a stream news is posted beforehand so we know when to tune in and ask questions?
As for your issues with the flying through clouds, a great addon to somewhat bridge the gap is tritrisim gfx.
Rex atmos core is also a must-have addon for better atmospherics + humidity + scattering
To be fair, this screenshot was from MSFS 2020 back in March of 2023 near NZCB. You can tell from the sharp-ish textures. I think I was using live weather for this one too. I paused the sim and changed the time of day to get the sunrise colours showing.
You can even see a rainbow where the cloud was dropping precipitation.
. FS2024 It’s a complete mess. 15 years of flying in real life, I never imagined that the representation of the atmosphere in a flight simulator could be so poor represented. Pathetic.
They will never do anything about it.
This has gone on for years and years. The only logical conclusion is that they don’t care.