I really like the weather in MSFS, but the clouds are way too dark and seem too-blue too. I try to make adjustments in my color settings, but that can only accomplish so much.
I wonder if we can get some traction to persuade Asobo to lighten things up a bit? We should be flying into white clouds, even in thunderstorms, until we get on the shadowy side of them.
Thunder clouds tend to be very dark, not white. If anything, storm clouds in MSFS aren’t dark enough.
As for the other clouds, I find them ok for the most part, but they could use some adjustment.
Unless you’re flying next to or in them- most are pearly white. A quick search on Google or YouTube will illustrate what we’re talking about here.
I think the clouds are ok… well still the grainy texture to resolve.
They’re okay for sure. I think they could be awesome though 
They used to be awesome on ultra. Now they’re just good.
I’d be careful comparing a photo or video because what you see with your eyes is often very different to a photo. There have been plenty of posts where people want MSFS to look like a scenic photographers photo rather than what we see in real life with our eyes.
I’m not saying you’re wrong though, the top cloud layer can look brilliantly white as long as it isn’t a storm cloud and it is dense enough.
I most certainly do not want thunderstorm clouds to be white though. They mostly match what I see outside my window and that is good for me.
I do wonder how much monitors factor into this. The color accuracy and dynamic range of monitors varies a lot and there is nothing Asobo can do about that. To really do lighting accurately you would need a HDR monitor. Amazingly enough I have one but never enabled it, I never had an app that used it before so I’d never even thought about it. Time to experiment!
I think it’s a limitation on “indirect light sources” without ray tracing. But RT would eat your 3090 for breakfast in this sim.
Also, the photogrammetry textures are like black holes absorbing any possible light, making the PG buildings like black untextured blocks in these conditions, even the ones that are supposed to be white.
If you’re talking about being on top of a cloud layer, then I agree to a point that sometimes they might be a tad too dark. But this seems to vary in the sim, just like in real life. If you look at the bottoms of clouds they do tend to have a blue cast, even more as they recede into the distance. Just like you’ll see mountains in the distance take on a very blue hue, even on a totally overcast day. Being in the arts, I really have to pay attention to this stuff. But I’m still blown away overall by the weather system in FS.
I think msfs clouds look pretty epic at most times. I got nothing to complain about them, but I am not a meteorologist.
I think the clouds look fine. Maybe it’s your monitor, I’m using an HDR10 capable monitor and my clouds look white and very realistic (or dark if they should be).
If you have an Nvidia gfx card you could always try using the freestyle post processing filters to tweak your display.
When flying on the monitor and nVidia GPU you can use nVidia Freestyle to play with brightness, shadows, highlights, gamma. Unfortunately this doesn’t work in VR. Asobo should at least add gamma control option.
That said, it depends on the perspective. When viewed from below, the density of the cloud blocks sunlight from coming through. That makes the clouds look dark proportional to their size and density.
From above and lit up by the sun, they always look white, because they are.
Someone who has way more knowledge than me speaks about the cloud lighting in detail in this video and also talks about a probable fix. Skip to 4:58"
(84) Flight Simulator 2020 Graphics Issues: An In-Depth Analysis - YouTube
some prefer the clouds a different color, others want the water color different. Yet others want the leaves browner… maybe the next release will ship with a box of crayons?
j/k
Yeah, that’s also my impression, they used to be epic, now they are “just” good or very good. But they are definitely not too dark, but the top should be whiter and reflect sunlight more I think. At least from my remembrance of flights in airliners.
The CUMULUS and CUMULONIMBUS especially. People keep forgetting that clouds look different from above than from below. The sky should also appear very dark-blue while looking up and out while at flight levels too.
I challenge anyone in here who keeps disagreeing to post pics of RW conditions to what we see in the sim. The youtube video above does a great job of explaining lighting options.
The problem is that if we all just throw our hands up in the air and settle for what we have, nothing will get changed. I’m happy to have what we have, but it needs to be much, much better. Atmospherics for high-level flying are way, way off.
That was my original thought months ago
Cumulus etc look ok to me, but overcast always seems too orange/brown.