Exactly right, and I have mentioned before, considering Asobo havent been in the flight sim game for a long time like the rest, they’ve done an actual good job for most parts. After the sim matures more it will be unbeatable, I just want MSFS to keep going forward and not back. Like you said, after seeing XP12 I was underwhelmed and to be honest I dont even touch p3d anymore. MSFS full steam ahead! oh and DCS for the fighters woo!
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Clouds suffer from color banding badly! This was the very first thing i noticed after SU5. Also they look completely different when you are inside the cloud compared to pre SU5. They are less dense and sometimes completely fail to cast shadows on the aicraft. Many times i have flown inside a thick layer overcast clouds with sharp shadows from the sun in the cockpit.
If you say something a 1000 times doesn’t make it true. Clouds were one of the biggest complaints after su5. You say all those people just make things up?
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it is very good that this topic is gaining popularity.
Soon SU 6 and again there is hope that we will be heard by developers and will fix many problems after SU5
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You missed the “Xplane Expo” as there was only xplane covered basically at the Flightsim Expo last weekend and well, it was not much. They have some weather now, and volumetric clouds after 12 versions finally. it ran with about 20FPS on their PCs and it only looks “next gen” in veeery specific shots but not when you look at the overall look.
The screenshot above proves this.
Clouds do not get great press on these forums and I agree that they are grainy BUT they are wonderful in every other way. The endless clouds at 36000’ are a joy.
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Imagine the grief that would result in these forums if MSFS looked like this:
Trees on the hills…
Loving the repeated skyscrapers…
Nice jaggy water’s edge
So we shouldn’t lose sight of what we have already - which can of course get better yet, but is still pretty awesome
Some recent MSFS cloud shots from me:
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exactly, visually, it still looks very bad and outdated. Ofc, there is more to a sim than the visual part, but once i have seen MSFS, i cant go back to the visually outdated sims.
My bet is on MSFS 100%. Xplane could never really appeal me, it looks worse than P3D and it has not too much to offer that im interested in. When i see 170USD Payware planes with a cockpit that looks like an FS2004 import, well, this is not gonna make me happy…
But yeah, we should not derail the thread into an other Sim vs Sim war. 
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Actually yes I can
Agree, last post on this (just because I can’t resist it)…here’s a recreation of that New York dawn shot in MSFS
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As a GA flyer who enjoys exploring at around 2000ft, clouds are my biggest issue with the sim at the moment. Accordingly I’ve posted and voted on several cloud related threads. The first time I noticed the poorer quality clouds and red/green colour banding was very shortly after SU5. At first I thought (hoped) it was a one-off, but subsequent cloudy flights confirmed that it wasn’t.
Viewing clouds from far away I don’t think they look too bad it’s when you get up close and into the clouds that they turn ugly. Pre SU5 I enjoyed looking down through misty grey clouds, grabbing glimpses of the terrain below. Post SU5 I hope for non-cloudy conditions so I don’t have to look at terrain through a red/green filter.
I always use live weather (and fly in Ireland mostly, so lots of clouds!!). I really hope that SU6 and/or SU7 will see a focus on fixing clouds.
See from 5:40 here for an example of the red-green banding and cloud popping.
Really hope asobo can bring the pre SU5 graphic back, just add more sliders to allow us achieve that
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This is the result of what they called “optimization”…
But the good news is that, apparently, we will have a xplane 12 launch soon! It means a very strong player arriving, and maybe msfs will start to do the right things - or they will be overtaken by the competition (which means less money from marketplace).
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You speak facts 
save for a few avid defenders, I’m sure most simmers agree on the obvious downgrade and degradation of overall graphics in the sim since release, most likely for the sake of an increased performance and a smooth XBox compatibility.
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Agreed 100%, like I mentioned earlier, I posted on FSelite that XP12 didnt excite me in anyway… I got jumped by the Xplane gang… I just dont get it…do they choose to turn a blind eye to it through arrogance or are they just turning a blind eye out of loyalty.
How can they not see that XP12 does not belong in current gen gaming/simulation. The response I got was well we care about whats under the hood… they are forgetting they are still playing a desktop based simulator and that visuals are apart of simulating flight.
Immersion in my books is very important. If they care about whats under the hood and just flying purely based on numbers and no visuals then might as well stick to XP9 and just work on the flight model.
I dont see XP as a competitor to MSFS tbh… wayyyy out of its league. The screenshots look like XP10 with a really good reshade… like mentioned it only looks good in certain scenes…Not all round.
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Each time I open a new flight (usually dark & cold, on a small airport, because I mainly fly helicopters and GA planes), my 1st reaction is “Oh, I forget how beautiful it is”.
The huge work made on the world rendition is not just a matter of 3D buildings and trees (even if this is already impressive). I find that the lighting, the sound atmosphere, are a high contribution to the immersion feeling.
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MSFS flight dynamics can‘t be reviewed from the default aircraft, it needs 3rd party developers who understood the system and carefully tweaked their model for it.
While it‘s certainly not perfect I‘d still like to point out the old discussion about the lack of adverse yaw induced by the aileron deflection. While there is basically none existant in the default airplanes the DC-6 features it impressively well. If you only turn the yoke to the side the nose will swing around just as I know it from other older aircraft.
So yes, the MSFS flight dynamics engine is abolutely capable of doing it right but developers have to learn how to work with it. Apparently, and that is a shame, Asobo themselves who have created it don‘t take advantage of their own system to display its capabilities.
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A few thoughts for improvement:
There’s a major competitor that just released some footage of its new rendition and while overall MSFS still looks better, they have actual 3D trees when up close. I wish MSFS could find a solution like that as well.
Plus, the ground textures at airports don’t look like they’re out of the “airport washing machine” - more dirty and thus realistic.
MSFS could need better offline textures as well.
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Exactly and have you seen the xplane 12 announcement?.. what a joke.
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My opinion, XP cannot compete with MSFS visually, except seasons, 3d trees etc with XP12.
On the other hand they can compete as a simulator. I remember reading something about properly designing a plane so it can fly (years ago). I think Austin was talking about it so support Blade element theory.
So visually i dont expect them to be able to compete with MSFS in a scenario where we have PetaBytes of data streamed from servers owned by one of the biggest companies in the world that also made their AI available for their sim game.
As i always say, they are doing this for money. If you think economically, i would do the same. Who would you prefer most majority of gamers with tons of money or few hardcore simmers who spends hundreds or thousands to 3rd parties?
All i expect is a stable sim with a proper SDK so 3rd parties can release their addons. In the end i will have what i wanted.