Yes, but was it the clouds, the sky, the mountains? A comparison shot of what it was like without the AI changes would be useful.
For example, the biggest change I’ve seen for a more realistic scene is to use Rex Atmos Core. Then, and it’s situational, Active Sky FS. Yes, its clouds are global, so you don’t see weather “over there” as it’s the same all around you, but it tends to offer a better representation of the weather.
When i get a minute I’ll post an example comparison.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe weather was quite decent with Meteoblue data in early FS2020 days, it was only after they implemented METAR data that things started to go south.
On, or around, SU7, yes.
Here’s an example. This is Gibraltar, native.
Now enable Active Sky, currently in Passive, to Active Preset.
And finally Rex Atmos Core, for atmospheric improvements.
From another angle.
ASFS tends to give you these larger cloud formations, whereas Asobo native tends to give you lots of clumped together little clouds, to give you the impression of larger clouds.
I don’t think I have checked this out, but I am kind of curious about how this all looks from a high altitude. I’ll try to find somewhere with one of those very obvious repeating patterns, and repeat this there, but looking straight down from high altitude.
Correct, it had actual dynamic weather in zones that looked way more natural.
The transitions between the meteoblue data being updated in real time was also VERY natural.
I believe the only issue people had with weather at that time were windspeeds cuz they were flying online.
Honestly that could’ve been fixed without changing the entire system.
That’s why we had a ton of timelapse videos in the beginning of FS2020 which is barely possible in the same way as it was.
Here are a few examples of how it used to be.
Notice how clouds don’t just pop into and out of existence like it does now?
I am not claiming the weather was accurately being represented (sometimes it did).
It just was more naturally moving cloudscapes and they changed shapes in intervals instead of “Ticks” of let’s say 500ms like you see now.
The METAR method was being added after some complaints from vatsimmers.
We saw that the moment the weather updated, it looked like those early weather addons that changed the cloud shapes every 1 second till it was done with the metar update, it was quite jarring.
credit to MegaRiceBall734 for the collection from another post and the creators of the videos.
It’s just so sad, seeing what we lost.
Thank you so much for taking the time to collect these videos! It will forever remain a mystery why they replaced this organic weather system with such an amateurish interpolation between incompatible data sources.
Sorry, what presets are you using in Rex Atmos?
AB MSFS I believe they are called. Just Atmo, and Enviro, not weather.
Sadly they remain unwilling to accept or even acknowledge what happened, let alone address it.
we are still waiting for jorg when in a dev he said there would be a surprise for the weather… we are still waiting…
I get and to a certain extent agree with what you are stating but the reality is there is no need for them to acknowlege what happened.
Leaving aside the uglieness of the clouds, ‘We’ are what happened to the sim weather. Everyone cried and stomped thier feet about demanding ‘METAR based weather’. Well, they gave it to us. What we have now is the result.
The only way for them to ‘address it’ is to revert back to the dynamic weather that was present at the start. This is my personal preferance, METAR based weather is an extreamly impractical method to use for area, reigonal, global weather generating systems.
I could (and have in other posts) go on and on about the whys of the above but seeing as this thread is titled ‘improvments to clouds’, not weather, I’ll just leave it at the above.
Now as for the ‘clouds/lighting’ this has and contiues to be an absolute joke in MSFS and they should acknowledge and address it. However after 5 or 6 years and a full (re)build I suspect like ATC/Traffic they never will.
Mostly right, but we didn’t have any accurate winds on short final before that change. No gusting winds, landing was very unchallenging. Also, speperate to weather I guess but still in the ‘weather sphere’ are the clouds .. and it seems the MB tie-in has us suffering the ice-cream mush I mentioned in my post.
Breaks my heart to see what we had at launch of FS2020 and what we have now. I am still annoyed to this day with Asobo for what they did at SU5. Weather used to be so much more natural and organic. Weather fronts for miles and clouds that did not resemble puffy nondescript blobs that materialise in front of your eyes. Still a massive backwards step. As soon as X-plane sorts out a streaming ground texture provider I’m moving over.
Honestly, I think it’s been three months since I last played the game. I don’t like the 24. The visual immersion isn’t good. I don’t feel like I’m in the sky. Until they come up with a whole new atmosphere system, I won’t be going back to it.
Absolutely nothing on weather or clouds in SU5 from as far as I noticed on a quick scroll though.
We can give up…
Your observations only confirm what I have been saying from the start – they also seem to use a kind of ‘presets’ in LIVE weather when certain conditions apply – which is why the weather always looks so uniform (starting with SU5-SU6 MSFS 2020) – as shown above, Asobo can no longer deny this!
But there is another way – even without AI – it’s called…X-Plane 12 :-)!
But then you have to use X-Plane 
Thank you for the tip – I will follow this very sensible advice. 
