The current weather system does not allow a visibility below approximately 3000 m (aerosol density 100%) and no low visibility take-offs and or landings are therefore possible. It is possible to put the cloud ceiling on ground level, but precise control of visibility / RVR is unavailable currently.
Also “aerosol” sounds fancy but its not very practical it would be better to change it to visibility / RVR with absolute values in meters / km or miles rather than %.
Not having the ability to set visibility makes MSFS extremely weak as an IFR training tool. It’s currently impossible to truly simulate an approach down to minimums since there’s no way to set runway visual range as you can on FSX, P3D, or X-Plane. I’m no coder - But simply put, this would be a very simple yet significant change that would give MSFS much greater ability as an IFR simulator.
Clouds are way too transparent. If you fly through dense cumulus clouds when sitting near the wing in a large airliner, try to see the wingtip. Not possible. The visibility inside real cumulus (and some other) clouds is very, very low.
This is important for IMC training. It should be possible to set an overcast cloud layer and become visible just at the minima. However, currently you can see the ground already 2000 ft (!) above the cloud base. This is unacceptable bad modeling of clouds. They might look pretty from the outside but for practical purposes, they are not realistic at all.
I can agree the clouds need alot of work. Also when flying through clouds it’s way to bright it wasn’t like that before SU5.
Fully agree. Also makes general lighting too “sunny” even on cloudy days on the ground.
Hopefully, this is just some internal slider the devs could play with (but likely not that simple 
)
This has been an issue for quite a while now. I have tried to learn to live with it, but it is very frustrating none the less. I’m hoping as the overhaul the wx engine over the next year, that will change. I’ve noticed at least since SU5 that most clouds don’t have cloud shadows either. I’m not sure if that has something to do with the density setting they have running or what. Clouds more than about 50’ thick are almost impossible to see through so I def get your point. I know Asobo at least has acknowledged they are reworking the wx engine and other important wx features.
in line with this topic, I notice (particularly when flying on Vatsim) that live traffic (more often at night) is visible through heavy clouds.
How can I control visibility?
Either select one of the weather presets like “Clear” for best visibility conditions, or use the “Aerosol” slider. Btw, your title got a typo, it’s “Weather”, change it so others can find it via forum search.
Thanks. I corrected “Weather”. Btw, when I slide aerosol, how do I know visibility in miles ot km?
Still shows “wether” to me in the title…
No kidding! So how do you set the weather for pratice approaches and missed approaches, like 200ft ceiling and 1/4 mile visibility? Answer: You can’t. I’ll keep my opinion, in response to their answer, to myself. Devs are either missing the point or don’t have the knowledge to understand why this is important to RL pilots.
StubbiestCargo5,
I clicked the edit button to edit the title Wether. I inserted ‘a’. Then I can’t save it!
I really don’t know why Asobo/MS are degrading MSFS as a useful IFR training platform by leaving out the option to set a certain ceiling and visibility.
They are correct though. This weather model is not static like in other sims. The weather in other sims is just a local replication of conditions from a METAR. In MSFS there is a completely different weather model. Visibility is a result of other factors.
The plus side of this model is that the weather doesn’t change suddenly mid flight, which has always been a problem.
Please, spare me your sugar, will you?
something like active sky can do both. you can have live dynamic weather or you can set a visibility and a ceiling or anything else by just simply typing in your own desired metars
not being able to set visibility and ceiling as a custom mode is a complete oversight and im surprised (well not really anymore) anyone would defend it. reminds me of that twilight zone with the crazy omnipotent kid that terrorized his town… “ITS GOOD YOU OMITTED A VISIBILITY CONTROL, Asobo. THAT WAS GOOD!”
nobody cares how they arrive at it but in a flight simulator that wants to be more than a toy, where you may want to practice in IMC, you need to be able to set a value for visibility if desired.
I’m guessing right now ofc on how they model whole thing, but - It seems like they actually made this decision fully consciously, because first time in flight sim history we can observe variable visibility conditions right next to each other in both dimensions. Which is super cool. Previously we could see that only vertically, like haze layers or other tricks that Active Sky implemented to simulate this. But now we can observe different visibility conditions that stretch both vertically and laterally.
Example - airport A is in light rain, 2SM visibility and few miles ahead we got Airport B with clear skies and 30SM visibility. It is now possible and I have seen that couple times. It looks absolutely stunning.
Probably they could just add one additional slider for now that would simply set manual control over visibility globally and scale it with statue miles instead of some aerosol mambo jumbo. To apply manual vis locally it would need some kind of weather painter, like XP10 had.
…or at least see the immediate value of the horizontal visibility while adjusting that ‘aerosol density’.
yeah but i think asobo said even maxed out it only gets you down to like 2SM or something.