I doubt that any “real world” Pilot would think the weather depiction in MSFS is realistic. Yes it looks “pretty” but that’s where it ends.
If you doubt what I say pop down to your local airfield and book a trial lesson. After that flight come back here and tell me that MSFS looks realistic. Great for screenshots to impress your XBOX buddies but realistic? Nope.
I agree that the earlier versions of MSFS had better looking weather. It was quite impressive for a computer game. Unfortunately lots of “non flyers” complained about it and it appears that Asobo responded by dumbing down the weather, turbulence, gusts, flight dynamics etc. It is not a flight simulator. It is just a pretty arcade game. Will the developers improve it? It’s been two years and not much has changed yet so I suspect the pro simmers and real-world PIlots will jump to XP12 and the kids will enjoy pressing buttons on their Airbuses in MSFS.
PS: I’ve been flying “real” aircraft for 30 years in case you think I’m just another faker pretending to be a Pilot. Got a licence to prove it too!
I agree in all points, except the saturation one. Color saturation will mostly depend on visibility, but if you have great visibility, colors will be really saturated in real life, even at very high altitudes, so the problem is not saturation, but the lack of a proper “atmospheric” visibility system.
I am not judging anyone. And I’m not trying to prove one point or another. All I am saying is, haze has been in the past added in by request. It was then removed by request by the community. Both sides had their people claiming expertise. I don’t know who is an expert or not. I don’t know who is right or not. The only thing I am saying was, what the OP is requesting WAS once in the sim for 2 weeks, and the community was in outrage and it was removed within two weeks. I’m not judging anything. Merely pointing this out because I doubt Asobo without good community support is going to put it back IN the sim again.
Well, I think the reasons behind what you say are not because community stopped wanting the feature in the sim, but because the feature implementation was not good enough/sim breaking.
That’s an interesting point you know! I think my point is that colours are always quite extreme, while real world is pretty dull in general. But you are absolutely right, a fantastic day would bring clear colours! Food for thought for me!
Yep, experienced it this weekend when I climbed into a real cockpit after a long time. I had my saturation turned down a lot (by using nVidia geforce experience) because it felt more realistic to me but after the flight I had to turn them up to about default to get the same experience I had in real life. MSFS seems to output some pretty realistic images by itself, the only thing I really need to tune is the contrast and shadows. The image needs way more contrast and deeper shadows.
It’s gotten better, but still not enough. You still cannot set anything below CAT I.
To set a low visibility, drag a cloud layer base down to below the ground, make the tops around 5000’ or so, and use the density slider to adjust the visibility. The 100% density slider approximates CAT I minimums visibility-wise.
This gives a visibility of around 800m. On approach you should be able to see approach lighting, but not the threshold at the CAT I minima.
I’ve seen conditions in the sim that have astounded me on how realistic they look.
One condition in particular is flying close to sunsets with orange skys over Florida. If anything the real thing can be even more spectacular and saturated. The ground reflections off the lakes, oceans and canals match the sky to the point you can’t tell up from down.
I was shocked I’ve seen it recreated in the sim in the right conditions.
I do think the lack of haze and sharpness are overdone in the sim. But people are always complaining the distance isn’t sharp enough and that it’s undersaturated. Hard to please everyone.
I fully agree. Watched some XP12 videos and my first thought was that it looked so much more true to life and immersive.
The landscape of course doesn’t compare to MSFS, but the general feel was much more realistic. It’s probably mostly because of the duller colors and lights. MSFS is way too saturated.
No, it’s way too clear. The country I live in, the UK, is generally every bit as lush and green as it looks in the sim. But humidity, a common occurrence near oceans so common in the UK as it’s a small island, does reduce visibility and that tends to temper saturation as USAMOR quite correctly says.
I have a preset I created for the lowest possible vis in the sim. I use it to practice handdlown AIII approaches with the HUD in the 737. When on the runway, sometimes you can see maybe 5 centerline lights, and sometimes you can see about 2. (Centerline lights, not edge lights.) It works well. Maybe I’ll toss it up on .to.
yeah, same - depends on where you live or fly - but the real world isn’t drab in most places and MSFS isn’t over saturated everywhere… XP12 is definitely way too desaturated - the whole world looks bland af. ( I’m A/B’ing both games at areas that I fly IRL )
Also, perception of saturation depends on your monitor / tv settings in addition…
I agree but distance haze was added in a few sim updates ago and I think was quietly, slowly removed because there were so many complaints from people saying they could no longer see anything. Asobo need to find a balance.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say its got poor fidelity. With where we are and whats capable with current tech its pretty much on the cutting edge I would say. The sim is what it is though. It does have its own art ‘style’. Its computer game graphics after all. A lot of this sort of thing will change and improve over time. It can look genuinely photorealistic in the right light but obviously there are limits to it.
I sort of see what you’re getting at but the weather system is one massive work in progress and will continue to be. Its so much better than it used to be. I think the lighting is the biggest issue rather than the actual volumetric effects.
Asobo have said there would need to be a complete over haul of the lighting in order get far better grading of the clouds, which would get rid of that horrible volcanic ash cloud look everyone talks about. They did say it’ll happen one day but I guess they want to get other areas of the sim working better first. I presume things like that are tied to heavy implantation of ray tracing. It’ll be something for the future, and certainly future generations of hardware.
