I’ve flown across the Pacific ocean several times in real life, and I know that it’s tough imitating the real world, but the clouds in this sim are lousy!
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You have made a valid point about the clouds.
Quite a few of us here feel that they are far from accurately depicted in the sim.
Hopefully, they will get some love soon from Asobo and will be improved 
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Agree. Sometimes they look like dirty cotton wool crumbled up together.
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Insolating foam!
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They’ve been downgraded really bad since SU5. I feel they used to look a lot better.
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Before SU5 I used the high setting for clouds because for me they looked more true to life than ultra.
I have difficulty understanding how people can complain about Asobo’s efforts if they were familiar with the billboard method used extensively in previous versions of Flight Simulator.
I am by no means saying that we shouldn’t strive for continuous improvement, simply that it is also healthy to occasionally stop and smell the roses.
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People complain because improvements are going backwards. I never got this before SU5
This is what I got before SU5
Actually that was 11 months ago, a few downgrades further back.
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The cloud in your first image is clearly dysfunctional. I would also be very unhappy with that.
However the image that the OP posted was similar to your second and third images, which may not look prototypical, but are quite impressive.
Clouds indeed did look great before SU5. For me, they now mostly look terrible.
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No Cirrus high alt cloud appears to be in this sim. Im surprised it took me 3 weeks to notice this, as i love meteorology.
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There is something wrong in your first screenshot (bug? reverted to low quality clouds?).
For me the clouds look similar to your second and third screenshot, even after SU5 (i am runnig my clouds at ultra level).
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I completely agree. Prior to SU5 clouds were one of the highlights of the sim, but SU5 really impacted the quality. Now they appear very grainy and often pixelated at the edges.
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I agree that the best cloud textures I’ve seen were on the initial release a year ago. Crisp edges, good colour. And while I didn’t experience frame rate problems back then, perhaps that’s the reason they’ve been ‘tweaked down’… an effort to improve performance.
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Yeah i agree 100% they used to look a lot better
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Most likely it is for performance but it’s not a good enough reason to downgrade. Many PC owners have powerful rigs well capable of handling the way the clouds were.
We paid for what we had before. It is not good business ethics or justifiable to downgrade like they did.
They need to give the option of more settings so we have the choice to have better clouds.
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It appears that MeteoBlue forecasts cloud cover and level but, unless they produce more data than they provide on their website, it doesn’t appear to indicate cloud type - which likely explains the lack of cirriform (and other types of) cloud.
That said, in theory this could be approximated using existing data so is hopefully something to look forward to in the future.
I’m also not sure if I’ve ever seen proper stratus in screenshots either - almost all cloud is cumuliform - can somebody confirm?
Ah ok, that explains it
The blocky high altitude clouds have been around for a while. This particular flight I ended up in them. They usually stay at the horizon (looking ugly) when live weather generates them. So maybe a glitch that they got this close.
My other two shots are at high settings from last year. Now I run clouds, shadows and reflections on Ultra and it still doesn’t look as good anymore. Lighting is not as good, more artifacts in motion, shadows are not as good.
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Hmm yes seems to be a glitch.
What is really strange, is the different occurences of such glitches/bugs for different users. Some seem to have severe issues, other seems to have none at all. I am luckely on the side with nearly no issues at all.
Regarding the clouds: In my case I got these weired cloud glitches were sometimes distant clouds got blocky and pixelated and once I moved the camera or did a steep turn of the plane, they dissapeard. After SU5 I didn’t have this isse anymore and the clouds look clear an crisp with shadows.
I am not in front of my gaming rig currently, but once I am at home I can post some pictures from a 2:30h flight I did yesterday flying along the adriatic coast of Croatia.
So as I said, it seems that only some people have the problems with clouds and I am wondering why - maybe a certain HW configuration or SW configuration (certain drivers)… - anyway it seems to look like a complex problem.
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