Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
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Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
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If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
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SU2 latest Beta
Cloud positions are still completely different using the same custom weather preset.
This creates issues with:
- pilots experiencing different conditions while flying together in multiplayer
- pilots unable to replicate a flight in the same conditions
In 2020 we used to be able to click fly on the world map at the same time, and end up with the same cloud positions when doing group flights.
Unfortunately this is not possible in 2024 anymore 
A fix would be highly appreciated! 
Session 1 with custom weather preset
Session 2 - restarted sim, same weather preset
10 Likes
This needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Immersion killer!
5 Likes
This needs fixing! Because the MSFS2024 release was so terrible, I haven’t even bought the new version yet, and I won’t be unless this is fixed. I’ll stick with MSFS2020 for now.
Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
•I have the issue every time I try to spawn in when about to do a gliding task, the clouds do not match other peoples which is a problem with a thermal task
Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
The original description is very accurate
It’s definitely a REGRESSION from 2020 which synced without a problem
If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
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2 Likes
Live weather is terrible in 2024. Such a shame.
1 Like
The in-game time in these screenshots is 1400 in one, and 1409 in the other.
In the pics in your OP, were those 2 screenshots from within the same game session, or did you close out of MSFS completely between them? If they are from the same session, and then the screenshots from the quoted (or er, replied-to) post are from separate sessions, maybe the game is generating a seed on startup that drives the procedural generation of clouds, and so everyone is on a unique seed hence unique weather patterns despite identical everything-elses.
In which case - can MSFS just… not generate a new seed every time? I am trying to think why a new unique seed would be necessary at all.
Edit: And further to that, is the creation of the mission.xml somehow baking a seed in? If missions are intended to be replayable and repeatable with things like wildfires then to procedurally generate those reliably a seed would need to be baked in. Can this be abused to force MSFS to forget the random startup seed (that I am assuming exists, but I could be way off), eg. load a mission, exit the mission (leaving the mission’s seed in memory), then load a WPR and fly from a specific location at a specific time? This could be testable by 2 people in a similar way to the above mission-based test.
So? Changing the time in the sim doesn’t move the clouds in weather presets.
The problem is the inconsistent seed of clouds that was introduced in 2024, which is not related to the ingame time and date.
I really hope this will be addressed in SU3, otherwise multiplayer gliding in 24 is not in a good place.
1 Like
Purely thinking in terms of keeping all controllable variables the same just in case there’s something weird going on in the background 
Wondering if the time resolution of 1 minute when setting the simulation time is sufficient, since the clouds, especially those relevant for gliding, transform significantly within this time scale. So if a group of online pilots wants to fly gliders together, their clocks must be synchronized from the server.
Guys, let’s not add any confusion to this topic.
Time progression has nothing to do with the issue described in this thread.
- The sim creates a random cloud seed for the same preset every time you load the game.
- It creates a different cloud seed for every player joining a multiplayer session.
- This happens besides players synchronising their ingame time and weather preset.
- This is a regression from msfs 2020, where clicking “fly” on the world map at the same time, would allow to synchronise cloud positions between players in multiplayer.
Having the same weather across different players and sessions (if the same preset is selected) is really a basic, fundamental multiplayer functionality.
6 Likes
Voted , i havent been sim gliding since 2024 release
1 Like
Testing on SU3 beta 1.5.3.0 the issue persists.
Doing a simple test using weather preset few clouds I zoomed in the world map into Paris and got the clouds in the left image. Then I zoomed in New York and then zoom back to Paris and got the clouds on the right, that are completely different.
It would be greatly appreciated to have (at least) the same behavior we have in MSFS2020 where we can sync the clouds in multiplayer by just clicking FLY at the same time.
3 Likes
Isn’t this expected? The clouds are now 3D morphing cumulus sprites with a lifecycle and will look different at two consecutive time instances. The synchronization in multiplayer should be enforced, that we can agree. But for a single player they are still way too static and lack the dynamics and variety from the early days of FS2020.
yes - the fluffy ‘perlin noise’ cloud graphics is actually a carry-over from MSFS 2020, and it’s a reasonable attempt to visually (& efficiently) give the clouds a ‘life-cycle’ while retaining their ‘fractal’ wispy attractive visuals.
Asobo made an initial mis-step with MSFS 2020: they didn’t realise the vertical air movement underneath each cloud is intimately linked to the cloud and its life-cycle and the ‘perlin noise fractal cloud generation’ info never refers to any related air movement, it’s just a graphics technique that runs on the GPU. Instead, the vertical air movement in MSFS2020 is pretty much random, unrelated to the clouds. Asobo, to their credit, have retro-fitted relatively simple rising air in the proximity of some of the clouds - it’s not great, but a big improvement over ‘turbulence’ unrelated to the clouds. In 2020 the cloud map in multiplayer can be ‘synced’ IF all players hit “Fly Now” at the same time, so that’s what we do. Essentially the ‘perlin noise’ algorithm has some initialisation parameters and in MSFS2020 these are set to the same values IF you spawn in at the same time into the same location.
In MSFS 2024 the ‘perlin noise’ initialisation radically varies between different players, or the same player entering the sim multiple times. This gives each player a completely different ‘cloud map’ for the common area they’re all flying so it’s unworkable if the clouds are the main thing you’re using to determine where the rising air should be while flying together (as in RL). Note the cloud map in MSFS has never been based on time-of-day, it’s set the same whenever you spawn, but the clouds will move with the wind and evolve in their life-cycle from that point on.
NOTE: if you care about multiplayer, and haven’t voted already, please UPVOTE this bug via the button at the TOP of the thread. Asobo are pretty good at prioritising bug fixes that get voted by the community and any help would be appreciated.
4 Likes
Issue still reproducable in SU3 Beta
Steps to reproduce:
- Boot up the simulator
- Go to free flight and choose a departure airport and runway
- Go to flight conditions and load a custom weather preset
- Click Start flight
- Once finished loading take a screenshot of the cloud positions from the cockpit
- Exit the flight and close the simulator
- Reboot the simulator
- Choose the same airport and runway
- Load the same custom weather preset (same ingame date, time, etc as before)
- Click Start flight
- Take a screenshot of the clouds positions from the cockpit
- Compare the two screenshot and notice how the clouds are in different positions
4 Likes
I can confirm this is still an issue in SU3.
1 Like
Basically, what they have to do is that the seed for cloud generation is based upon the time at which “Fly Now” is pressed.
1 Like
Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
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yes, it was working very well on MSFS 2020
Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
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If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
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This issue, like several others that still affect MSFS 2024 compared to 2020, is probably the cause of this right here, where we estimate that MSFS 2020 is currently flown 1.5 to 2 times more than 2024.
This isn’t just anecdotal. We’re actually using IGC files uploaded by pilots from soaring flights to track which version was used. The data varies slightly but I’d say that MSFS 2024 has been losing ground to 2020 since Sim Update 2.
