Sure I can’t argue with any of that. 
I can enjoy what we have though but remember, when the sim first launched it didn’t do half what it does now and for me personally the sim has never performed better so of course there were going to be some compromises. Volumetric clouds remain one of the most GPU-intensive effects in the game so something had to give.
Funny enough, I was flying a few days ago across the Midwest and noticed the “repetitive cloud patterns” IRL. Not as aggressively, but the visual pattern was there 
Cirrocumulus and Altocumulus clouds sometimes look repetitious or uniform across the sky. As far as I know, cloud types are not yet selectable in FS2020 weather tab.
Based on what you show in your high altitude screen shot, I couldn’t reproduce your cloud coverage.
They kind of are selectable. You choose their appearance by altering the thickness of the layer.
Clouds in nature tend to be repetitive in most cases based on atmospheric conditions and altitude. But I still think the sim needs more cloud variations; there are many.
Sure, I can imagine such repetitive patterns happen IRL. However, one look at my image uploaded above should really clarify that this does not look as anything natural. More like a checkerboard.
Yeah, I had not noticed this level of repeating textures before, and it really is ruining flights for me. All i see is scattered clouds. It’s even more painful when you tinker with the custom weather settings and you are able to create beautiful, natural looking cloud layers of differing types, e.g. thin and flat stratus layers with irregular holes in it.
It’s almost like we’re stuck with the “few clouds” custom setting in live weather most of the time. I’ve noticed that’s the closest setting to replicate these live weather patterns.
Oh I dont get that using live weather. I get full skies filled with clouds in VR. But it is always either fluffy cumulus or stratus layers. I have yet to see any cirrus clouds.
That looks normal to me. I’ve seen that cloud pattern in real life many times. It just means the air in that area is stable and uniform, or whatever. But I am not saying the sim is doing this on purpose for that reason lol. If you see that pattern all the time, I can see that as a problem. But the sky looks like that often where I live (MI).
I use Floyd’s Epic Clouds sometimes for variation. You can adjust the settings for it in the in-sim weather menu up top. https://flightsim.to/file/24251/floyd-s-epic-clouds
I suggest you take one flight in x-plane and come back again.
Even with all the drawbacks fs2020 has, it’s still light years ahead of the competition.
Flightsims in general are just mediocre when it comes to graphics, and fs2020 is the first breaking out of this. I think you’re over reacting.
In this very thread I stated a few times already that I’m far from venting and complaining about the sim itself. I do believe it’s supreme in many of its aspects. I also have 12 years of flight simming behind me, have come a long way back from FSX/P3D times so I kinda don’t need to check out x-plane to know that what we have here in MSFS is far better than what they have offered.
That having said, I do believe we have seen a substantial drawback when it comes to the way cloud formations are generated. I’d like to see it reverted to the way it was before and I’m sure I’m not the only one. So much for my overreaction.
Thanks for this recommendation. I’ll definitely have a look at it!
Edit: overcast conditions over Southern Germany tonight. First time in many days! Looks like something has changed. Or maybe I’m just lucky:)
Latest Drawyah stream had these checkerboard clouds
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Nixe1p3iQgo
If the competition is the main yardstick then still plenty of room left for graphical optimizations, hey?
The comparison should be to previous versions of MSFS.
I’ve enjoyed reading through this thread, and I also noticed the annoying repetitive cloud patterns. Would be good to have this fixed.
This has been stated often here, but I disagree. Though at times, in the real world cloud patterns may look repetitive, in the Sim, they always do, and that’s not realistic.
Agreed … perhaps its happening in real life .. but most people know the repetition in MSFS is not a “feature” but just bad cloud programming
It is fascinating what kind of things bother folks in MSFS.
It is a paradox of sorts. The more real things look, the more you notice imperfections. And the more you crave perfection.
You do not see these types of complaints about clouds in the other sim communities because they are so far from reality to begin with, folks know better than to expect real looking clouds.
People just accept that they have to turn crashing off in P3D.
Nobody expects to see their house in vanilla X-Plane.
VFR was always hit or miss (mostly miss in vanilla sims) so folks learned IFR for a, “Realistic” experience before even learning VFR.
So we have new things to be bothered by in MSFS… and suddenly the best looking weather in a stock sim is, “Disgusting” because some folks saw a slight roll back in fidelity after a System Update which was probably done to quell another, “Disgusting” issue folks were encountering before.
Just remember to tango through updates. Two steps forward and one step back is the nature of things.
And keep things in perspective. We are now easily bothered by new issues we couldn’t even imagine having in a vanilla sim before MSFS.
The complaint about repeating cloud patterns is valid, and yet, it is new to this sim. We just had blobs before MSFS… and we LIKED them. 
You’re absolutely correct, this Sim is fantastic and the best the world has ever seen. I give credit to those who created it. However, I don’t think it’s wrong to strive for perfection if perfection is achievable in a rather simple way (for this issue, I imagine the reprogramming effort would be minimal). And ultimately, Asobo also depend on user feedback like this to improve the Sim.
Exactly. Asobo threw down the gauntlet for realistic visuals, so now they must weather the complaints stemming from newly raised expectations.
