It has been already said but clouds look very nice now even from high altitude and weather transition is really better .
There are a lot of complains in the forum and for a big part they are right but it is important to be grateful of the improvements done by Asobo team
First picture is not from the same flight
You’re setting a great example, my friend. While MSFS isn’t as perfectly polished in every area, there has been amazing progress. Seeing 3rd party developers flock to this platform should make it clear there is much more improvement on the way… and that’s good for all of us. Great pix!
Weather looking good Asobo! Keep up the good work!
If only they could fix the terribly over-exposed lighting in the sim, it would be almost perfect.
Yess your right, that’s why i disabled HDR
I agree that Asobo is trying to improve the weather but from my point of view it is still far to be at the same level as it was prior SU7. SU7 brought a big regression in clouds depiction, missing layers, missing fronts, overcast not rendered, incorrect clouds base, METAR bubbles. All those points were really good prior that update, with always room to improvement of course.
Honestly I really wish I could see this kind of cloudscape, all my flights in the last few weeks have been with that scattered messy cumulus cloudscape I’m sure we all know well by now.
I’m getting a bit sick of it to be honest. It’s not even that accurate to the metars anymore, just seems to be the default cloudscape. I wouldn’t even have a problem with it really if it wasn’t so ugly and unnatural looking.
Sorry to bring some negativity into your thread. Those are great shots and proof that the system does occasionally come right.
I agree look nice cloud in flight but my GP card can not work at cloud like fog. At that moment GP load 50%.
Yeah it’s great.
Since SU8, Live weather doesn’t cause issues with rat/tat/sat/isa anymore above FL280. That’s a huge improvement for me.
Live weather is awesome, yesterday I flew from Manchester to Split, and had everything from heavy rain to lots of clouds to bright sunshine. It was a joy to look how the cloud coverage changes. The sun was setting as I arrived - these systems working together are just a treat really. Extremely atmospheric. Yes, it’s not perfect, there are moments when you can see the clouds suddenly change shape, or weather data may not be 100% accurate all the time but it’s still the best weather/cloud system I’ve seen in gaming.
Not to forget the robotic wind always staticly blowing exactly as reported, ignoring magnetic variation.
SU4 took away gusts (although they were random), SU5 took away the subtlety of the lighting in favour of “popping” colors and contrasts and thus increased the impression of “ash clouds”, and SU7 rendered Live weather into “Some Weather”.
Although I concede there seem to be some tweaks that make it look less awful than 4 months (!) before and the screenshots shown by @GOTAWAKEMAN can make optimistic, but in my opinion those don’t warrant the term " real improvement" with regards to what Live weather is supposed to be.
Let’s not forget all the changes were made to improve the accuracy of the weather depiction according to METAR reports while maintaining a consistent overall weather simulation, and it still lacks a lot in that regard. The day before yesterday I spawned at my home airport to check as there was OVC (stratus type, fitting atmospheric conditions) reported in the METAR, and apart from the unrealistic robotic wind nothing was depicted correctly. The cloud base of the BKN CU was 1.000 ft off.
I have a hard time to be grateful for that!
And one more note: claiming improvement by posting pictures showing some cloud formation that may look pleasing without the information if the actual atmospheric conditions warranted such clouds lacks evidence.
Yes, some tweaks have been made and we will hopefully see more accuracy in Live weather over the next sim updates, but imho it is way too early for gratitude and a title like “Real improvement”.
I was thinking exactly the same prior SU7. But sorry to say that since then, I am thinking the opposite way, weather is the most unrealistic I have seen, looks like in an arcade game or even worse. In some few cases, yes people are reporting realistic weather and I don’t say it cannot happen, but your are really lucky then. In my case, 99% of the time I am starting the sim, I am only seeing those unrealistic clouds, volcanics, same patterns. So if I decide to fly I just select clear skies, I prefer not seeing those unbeleivable clouds. Maybe people that are reporting wonderfull weather system did start playing after SU7 and don’t realize how beatiful weather was prior that update.
I think the live weather is now really good. I sometimes feel the cloud textures are a little pixelated and sometimes far too dark in places.
I also would like to see the clouds cast darker shadows in the aircraft as sometimes you’re flying through heavy cloud but you have definite shadows in the cockpit and the aircraft wings appear well lit by the sun. But I agree a vast improvement.
I wish an option would exist to play a version prior to SU7 so that people could compare by themselves the before and after SU7 weather depiction. Many screenshots how it was prior Su7 can be found in the Weather/Bugs forum.
A possible explanation of different opinions is that beautiful and realistic are not the same thing. I lived in an are where winter is made of mist, fog, stratus. Grey is the main color. I avoid to fly there now because I only see cumulus, cumuls, cumulus. Beautiful ones indeed, when not deep greysh/brownish like after a major eruption. The point is: what we want? Beautiful skyes with puffy white clouds on clear blue sky? We are there. But if we want realistic weather, I mean realistic all over the globe, with all the local features, it’s still a long way to go.
I understand that some people can find the actual puffy white clouds beautiful, this is a personal judgement. In my case, I don’t think actual weather is beautiful neither realistic. Prior SU7, I think weather was beautiful and realistic. I suscribed to that forum right after SU7 to look for some explainations on what happened and see when they’ll fix that. I am really worry that Asobo did not recognized that big regression and the only known weather issue is the popcon clouds. So I am not even sure that their plans is to be back at same level it was when FS2020 was launched.
The diffuse ambient lighting in clouds was broken with SU5 unfortunately, They’ve been making some progress but it’s still got issues. Something to do with how they optimized flying through clouds I think. Hopefully we’ll get this improved at some point.
The weather seems to be getting better in general, I’ve been having success with it on VATSIM. It used to be really, really bad. One thing that I find very annoying though is my aircraft jerking around all over the place. This is something I don’t come across with Active Sky in other sims.
