I wrote that I don’t expect the clouds to look exactly like the ones outside my window—just that they should resemble them. If I drive 100 km (covering quite a large area) and see high-altitude clouds the whole way, I expect to see something similar—not identical—in the simulator. That’s the difference. What you see in the simulator, however, looks like a child’s scribbles in MS Paint.
The problem is that these clouds don’t look like clouds. If they do look like clouds, then name them.
bla bla , xplane show that is possible, and like Nelson said above , " at least closer to real thing " , the actual cloud shapes are in opposite direction
haah . very good point brother .
And it’s not even just clouds but also the sky colors, lighting physics, the transition from horizon to straight up along with the environment and ground colors and how all of that interact together in a scene.
The clouds are part of this whole harmony and coherence from the atmosphere to the terrain that is completely messed up in FS2024.
Fortunately, we can influence the colors and atmosphere using Rex Atmos Core—which I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone not yet using it. For me, it completely transforms the visuals into something much closer to reality. The color grading is vastly superior. It is a shame, however, that you have to rely on additional software to achieve satisfactory results. And, of course, Rex won’t change the physics, shapes or arrangement of the clouds, so it only offers a partial solution.
There was a time, not too long ago, where out of the blue we started getting really good looking high altitude clouds. I’m sure I posted images of them here somewhere at the time. Then they completely disappeared for some reason.
It’s hit or miss. I had some nice high clouds this week, but usually, unfortunately, it’s just those infamous Asobo cirrus clouds.
Yes, those look pretty good. Were you using Rex with weather as well?
Yes, that’s the strange thing – we’ve noticed it quite often – perhaps it’s just that a source is used where it looks appropriate and good – and then, on the other hand, it looks like nothing at all! We’ve been wondering for a while now why there are these ‘wow’ moments and then ‘what on earth is that?’ moments – Or perhaps something is already being changed “behind the scenes”– that would be the best thing of all, but I’ve thought that quite often before, only to be “disappointed” again!
This guy is doing something very interesting with the weather engine.
https://www.reddit.com/r/flightsim/s/PBZtWYPLOU
https://www.reddit.com/r/flightsim/s/MqZwGa3m4p
Till he shows it moving, or makes it available to the public. Probably plans to sell it as an addon, and they’d make quite a bit of money if they did.
Looks very interesting. Will certainly keep two eyes on it.
At the cost of almost 10 fps.
Unfortunate, if i lose 10 more fps in msfs, i dont have stutters anymore but a nice steady wallpaper.
But it will be one with nice looking clouds…
Very interesting, and again shows what so many of us have said; the engine is clearly capable of much better skies already.
Any speculation as to exactly how he’s doing this?
It manipulates light scattering, the way clouds blend into the sky, and so on. The cloud shapes themselves remain the same, but because they blend into the sky differently, they look slightly different and more natural. There’s also the atmospheric effect. can only assume it works similarly to the Rex add-on, but the final result is better. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for this project. This is what clouds should look like on ultra settings.
Why do so few people remember what FS2020 actually looked like in the promotional material, alpha, beta, and even at release? that’s pretty much how FS2020 looked.
And the problem ain’t between marketing and release. FS2020 WAS changed in ways that reduced detail and draw distance. The infamous SU5 brought major rendering and memory, they called it “optimisations“ including changes to LOD behaviour and texture handling, and users documented worse terrain detail, object and vegetation draw distances and the clouds in particular were noticeably different from the early versions.
Then FS2024 arrived with its own showcase footage, yet we’re again seeing aggressive LOD, blurry terrain and reduced distant detail and botched life weather. At LOD 400, vegetation sit at only around 10nm and as a caveat fs2024 TLOD 400 doesn’t guarantee an actual 400 LOD, the Dev Mode FPS display shows the effective LOD can be scaled down even with Dynamic Settings off
So when microsoft and even other users responds with, “What do you want? The sim looks amazing,” it sidesteps the criticism. Microsoft set the expectation, altered the rendering after release, and then repeated the same cycle with FS2024. Customers are justified in asking why. Though at least for one point we all know why.
Agreed. A world away from what we have now, in 2020 or 2024. It’s been downhill ever since, with clouds being an easy target to improve performance more generally, and with one specific vector, and it wasn’t the PC.
