Same cloud setting on both screenshots?
On ultra, my clouds still look the same as they did in August and I love them.
Iâm playing 1080p and can confirm that my clouds are grainy also. Iâve managed to dull the effect by changing âsharpenâ to 0 in usercfg.opt file, but that means trees etc also look fuzzy. When I put the âsharpenâ back to 1 in usercfg, I can see the grainy clouds clearly.
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Have to post here for this reason also. Its absolutely ugly. Running widescreen 1440k, clouds on ultra, most settings are high. 2080TI and I7 9700k so performance is not much issue. Click on the image to see it in full.
i tried a few things and one thing can be sure said, the sharpening is one of the huge culprits for me. i turned off sharpening and film grain in the config file and did a few test with the nvcp and was able to recreate the sharpening problem coming from msfs when enabled. i found somehow a sweet middle spot for myself which works for the moment.
edit: this site seems to downgrade picture quality when uploaded. the center screen display is not that pixelated in my sim and you can read everything fine⊠makes the whole photo comparison somewhat pointlessâŠ
here it is with 100% sharpening. itâs more than msfs does but u can clearly see where the problem originates from.
here you can see sharpening completely off this is just config sharpening 0 and film grain 0. itâs a huge improvement but also the cockpit labels are getting blurry a bit. (a bit too much for my liking)
here it is with my personal preference settings at the moment. itâs my little sweet spot at the moment. not perfect but way better than before. this however doesnât fix the pixel effect on the edge of close clouds. that stuff is not fixable.
let me know what you think.
btw anti aliasing trans is set to 8x in nvcp
Each monitor/TV also has its own sharpening settings and it might help to reduce the sharpening of the screen itselfâŠ
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Yes, I play in 1080p only. The grainy thing is very obvious in below two screenshots I captured recently (GTX 1660 Super, Ultra settings, 30-35FPS):
You can see the cockpit glass reflection was very grainy under bright sunlight. I never saw anything like this before Update 5. This âimproved TAA causing grainy graphicsâ issue seemed to be more obvious with object reflections under certain light conditions. This should be the reason why people wonât feel itâs an annoying issue until they fly in clear or sunny weather conditions near noon.
I suspected something similar and also mentioned that the development team might sacrifice TAA quality for VR readiness. However I was wrong to think that VR-ready graphic cards wonât have the same issue.
Yes, this grainy/flickering/ugly clouds issue is certainly related to image sharpening. I can prove that because when I turned down the sharpness level of my monitor from default 5 to 4, MSFS images appeared much better.
Actually I almost lost my appetite for continue playing MSFS until I found that it could be salvaged by adjusting the monitor sharpness. If I didnât do that, the overall image quality would just look like a much inferior (FXAA or so) anti-aliasing method was used.
It also had something to do with object reflections and light conditions. To me, the worst is to fly around noon under clear sky. I used to like flying in that settings (best FPS), but now I would rather fly under âHot and Humidâ clouds.
True⊠I implore the devs to look into the issue with TAA etc that caused what we users perceive as âgraphical downgrade / issuesâ closely and actively. I am not sure whether they mainly test updates in 4k, thus missing issues found in 1080p or what, but my suggestion to devs would be to have more tests and emphasis on 1080p also.
I mean upgrading graphics card is easy as itâs smaller. Chucking away your monitor and buying a new 4k one on the other hand is more troublesome. We canât just put it in the bin etc plus if it still works perfectly, people might tend to hold on to their monitor.
And while there are some tweaks for temporary relief, we shouldnât have to rely on tweaks just to get what we had before in the game. Iâve planned to purchase some 3rd party products such as airplanes, city scenery etc, but because of the mix of issues after update-5 (night lighting, grainy clouds and trees, LODs, terrain resolutions), Iâve put them on hold until the issues are all fixed to our satisfaction.
And thatâs just me⊠I donât know how many other potential buyers are the same.
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thatâs no solution. this problem didnât exist before update 5 and my screen sharpening is set perfect. this is something which needs to be fixed within msfs settings
With what I see⊠its more about the very defined straight leveled cloud area. 9 /10 thousand feet I get a break in the cloud for the low altitude airway flying. However I see a cloud layer below me which looks ok but the cloud layer above me is very straight/flat 14/15 thousand feet. It looks very unrealistic. Its good but looks cut off like a knife through a cake. Iâm thinking minecraft and dirt verse stone level.
There has to be some billowing cloud dropdown above!
Whatever your observations may be, folks at Asobo think that it has always been like this and doesnât have to do with any of the updates.
Check out below:
As for me, yes they do look grainy especially from a distance when cruising at high altitudes and frankly it does look shabby. Something Asobo really need to work on or else open weather for third party developers and they should be able to do a better job.
Of course, screen softening is not a solution, I was just saying that screen over sharpening could increase the problemâŠ
You have to set your graphics to custom. If it is on one of the presets (ultra, high end, etc), changes in the config file will be reverted to the default settings of the preset.
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So it is just mass hysteria? 
Sure, after the update, everyone just coincidentally realized for the first time the graininess that has been there all along?
The problem is, that there are two sorts or maybe two levels of graininess. The first one is inherent to the way the clouds in the sim are made (as has been mentioned here), and this type is not the issue. But the second level is some kind of artifact probably at least partly connected to the sharpening filter that is oversharpening the image. It is also much more apparent âliveâ than in screenshots (because there your cannot easily distinguish between the two âtypesâ).
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Agree with that although I canât confirm since I was running on medium settings at that time due to hardware limitations. I got a new GPU and found out that graininess has nothing to do with graphics quality. This downgrade may not have been intentional but now that itâs there, developers shouldnât just shrug it off.
The granulation occurs under certain light conditions.
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I have to say I havenât had any pixilated cloudâs so far. There are certain things I donât like about the clouds, but no grainy or pixilated textures that I have seen.
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Are you flying in live weather? If not try it where it is cloudy.
On âhighâ cloud setting, Iâve seen the graininess as well, but on ultra they seem fine.