everything look blurry on clouds, low res, real cloud at close don’t look like this either at far with pixed line. generic texture on ground.
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Yeah, was a bit of a bummer
because they look real in MSFS,
, or at least what I see from the cockpit - this isn’t about individual clouds - X-Plane has its flaws, no question, and the screenshots aren’t the best either - but what I see here, I see much more often in the sky than the generic, clouds in MSFS that look the same everywhere, low resolution and without any structure- and ground textures are orthos, yes, very clearly – not blurry like in MSFS – but to each their own, some people here are trying to convince others that pears are apples – that’s fine too. You should be happy with what you like. I just notice that some people don’t often sit in an aeroplane!
Yeah, it’s not the greatest. Even if LR is making significant strides with the overall patterns and layers, those clouds look like airbrushed smudges. I’d love to see X-Plane become a serious threat to Microsoft Flight Simulator, provoking them to stay competitive. But they’re not there yet.
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That’s true, in part – I mean, I have to say, I use lossless scaling and a ‘sharpness’ filter because of the instruments in Toliss – that makes the screenshots as PNGs a bit more pixelated than they actually look.
But it’s about the principles – I was one of the biggest MSFS fans – until SU6 MSFS 2020 – look, the thing is, when I expect certain weather en route, it will usually look like that in X-Plane, even if the clouds aren’t always correct. In winter, we usually have stratus clouds or similar here. When I start MSFS, I only see cumulus clouds, with some indefinable wisps of cloud above them that make no sense – just generic. No fog between the METAR stations, no correct visibility, etc., etc. And I think that’s what many people here are concerned about. It may look good sporadically, but often it’s not correct according to METAR, forecasts or satellite images – and I think that’s the consensus of these threads, not whether every single cloud is pixelated or not. The lack of density is also the main problem because some people were upset at the beginning that the clouds were too pixelated without understanding that there is no other way with Voxel Engine. But anyway, now we have what we have and everyone has to know what they are happy with.
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Yeah, I was wondering what went wrong with your screenshots. Clouds look like this when I play XP12:
And yes, they look a bit blurry. IRL cumulus/cumulus congestus have much more defined and sharp edges, especially in unstable airmasses conducive to thunderstorm development. But maybe Laminar went with the ‘more blurry, less pixelated’ approach, whereas Asobo went with the ‘much more sharper, but more pixelated’ approach. I know people are complaining about the pixelation in MSFS.. but I don’t think there’s really a solution to volumetric clouds being sharp and without pixelation at the same time. But I’m not a developer and therefore have no idea how it really works.
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I can imagine the complaints when Asobo would present us with blurry clouds. Just sayin’
I’ve seen plenty of clouds that have a blurry, smooth appearance to them, and it’s 100% not my cataracts.
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We had great, sharp clouds pre-SU5 in 2020. They’re still possible in presets. The engine can clearly do it.
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O no, not again.
If only we would count the number of posts that are pointing to SU5 and SU7, as being the magical builds…
I am reading this forum on a daily basis since day 1, so I am aware of this argument.
Point that I was making was that many simmers would not like the blurry clouds from Xp. Especially up close.
But I am all for one or two weather updates!
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Yes, I would like to apologise to everyone – firstly for that reason (bad screenshots), and secondly because I didn’t want to prove anything to anyone in terms of ‘X-Plane’ being better than MSFS – that wasn’t the point at all. I’m just saying that even a small company with “15” people can create something plausible – I’m not saying beautiful in terms of clouds or anything like that – but plausible in terms of the weather in general.
Here’s an example:
LOXT airport and surroundings this morning (however, this comparison is not only true today, but almost “always”)
The screenshots are only separated in time by the loading of the respective SIMS.
This is an airport that does not always have the latest METAR data, and is usually located somewhere ‘on route’, etc. But the weather data is not the point here.
There are also real photos taken in roughly the same direction and area (approx. 3 miles from LOXT) – there you can clearly see what I mean by ‘plausible’!
Both SIMS real time / real weather on stock !
First MSFS:
Then X-Plane:
Real photos taken in roughly the same direction (almost same time)
I don’t think there’s any need to argue about what ‘what I see out of the window’ looks like
and I haven’t even started yet – because I know exactly what it looks like from above in MSFS, which is usually ‘wrong’, and that’s a recurring theme in MSFS!
There are certainly moments when this is not the case – but after almost 2000 (since Alpha MSFS 2020) countless hours and comparisons, I can say that with confidence!
Of course, X-Plane has errors and the clouds often have strange and peculiar shapes, no question, but they are often there in the way they should be!
BR !
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that is the point most simmers seems to not understand , this thread is not about the sharpness and colours, its about the shape and depht from meteorological perspective, the atmoshpere needs to be alive , sharper or not , in actual state its more like a fantasy game , sorry ! . hope Asobo read this .
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Not to ignore the near absence of cloud shadows on the ground. Even the “sharper” clouds rarely cast any identifiable shadow.
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of course , there are cases when you see more light coming from the ground on cloudy day , and the sky is almost dark, its almost sad because this are elementary simple things not mega high workloads .
Clearly, the resolution of the cloud isn’t the most important thing at the scale of the sky. What really matters is the overall feeling — the lighting, the color, the atmosphere, the sense of air mass — not the aesthetic beauty.
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bare minimum i want air density/pollution/visibility or whatever this phenomena is called 
in XP12 they have it and you can see it looks like irl.
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Addons to the sim can help with this. I just took off from a Florida coastal strip headed North, specifically because I noticed on the map screen there was some form of weather front.
Here’s the same shot at different times.
If I now fire up Rex Atmos Core, which is configured to only alter the atmosphere, and environment:
As the post above suggests, cloud representation is one thing, but if anything the atmosphere representation is just as important, if not more so.
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Great post! I’m with you, I think the reason that I, and others, keep talking about X Plane’s advances is that the atmosphere and lighting seem so much more convincing. For me, it is so much so that I can put up with the “square”, and “fuzzy” XP clouds, etc.
I pretty much only fly MSFS in clear conditions (to see the lovely earth), or in soupy, overcast conditions where I override the live weather clouds (keeping/re-creating the same wind settings) to get the look I want.
If the MS team improved the lighting and overall atmosphere feel right, the cloud issue would not be such a problem to me.
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I’m on the very smooth sim beta 5 and I’m happy with this… but Asobo please start fixing the lighting and shadows… here everything looks the same color… there is no depth…
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