KBGD
CYEG
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That’s true. Several layers of different amount of cover can add up to being overcast from the ground.
They look ok, but none of them look like the overcast in my pre-su7 image. That is the kind of overcast we have here in the UK. A uniform, flat cloud layer, like a blanket from horizon to horizon. The first one, you can’t see the clouds due to the visibility, 2nd one is not a flat overcast layer, neither is the 3rd one. They seem to be made up of dense “broken” clouds rather than a large flat overcast blanket.
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Visibility to the horizon would also be a useful judge of how well it is represented. If you have it, it’s worth playing around with Rex Weather Force, though I think its overcast wasn’t as good as MSFS native. Other cloud types it was better for though.
Which from the ground can still be observed as 8 oktas, and therefore overcast.
I think that is what an automated weather station would report, rather than FEW016 BKN031 SCT042, an so on.
For the record, this is a real world example of the kind of higher altitude overcast I’d like to see:
Many of the airports I fly into report high altitude overcast but the sim always shows patchy blurry ‘bowties’ overlapping and it just looks bad. The sim used to be able to do solid, soft, pleasant looking overcasts like @AndyXPO shows and I and others have similar pics. The sim seems to have an abundance of low dark overcasts but where is the more somber soft appearance?
It is not too much to ask to have back what we once had.(and by that I am talking about an appearance of a situation that is quite common in real life and used to be in the sim. – I’m actually quite happy with some of the lower altitude clouds I’ve been seeing – they just need to keep working with it and make all clouds look like clouds and please please please bring back some softer somber day type appearances – it doesnt all have to have so much contrast)
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which brings us back to creating weather from what a station can see instead of the detailed weather that forecasts provide. if a station only sees up to a certain altitude it wont care what lies beyond. it may say Clear if there are no clouds below the max observing altitude. is that what the game then should show?
The sim doesn’t do high altitude clouds very well at all. It’s attempts at what I assume are cirrus are often really bad. Yet, I have had a play around with making them by hand, and get reasonable results, so I think the engine can handle them, to an approximation at least, it just do a very good job of realising them.
This is what I saw one day:
My hand made efforts:
it was once able to do them better in live weather so I for one want all of that back please
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Something definitely happened. The attribution can be disputed, but the atmosphere doesn’t seem as nuanced as it used to. I think the individual cloud rendering is more than acceptable. I don’t see that grainy effect I have seen others report, for example.
But the cloud layers, the variety…we lost something along the way. What altar it was sacrificed on we can only speculate.
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I saw this satellite image just an hour ago:
SKC to the east, while all stations west of EDDH (A) reported BKN to OVC 023. So I decided to take a test flight from EDDH to EDWE (B).
Here’s the situation at EDDH looking east, few clouds and SKC in the distance
To the west: obviously more clouds
Enroute I saw mostly BKN coverage and what appeared to be OVC to the south.
On approach to EDWE (B), overcast around 2300 ft, accurate to the METAR report. No METAR bubble or sudden changes in the cloud coverage were discernable.
On the ground in EDWE:
Here’s my take: accuracy in terms of where clouds are rendered and the degree of coverage has vastly improved. Credit where credit is due.
Had I not expierienced one year of pre-SU7 cloud rendering, I guess I would be content with the improvements of the last months.
But comparing mine with your pre-SU7 screenshot demonstrates that there’s still a lot to be desired in terms of fidelity and naturalness.
And it has to be mentioned that today’s clouds were far better than what I see most days.
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It’s the inconsistency that niggles the most.
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It’s overcast in Cambridge right now, if anyone wants to spawn at EGSC to check?
Here’s how it looks for me:
Not unreasonable, given that it is obviously on the edge to SKC and that there has to be some sort of transition.
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Comparison should always be done against MeteoBlue forecast since it is the source for clouds, not against satellite image or other sources.
As per MB, it says 80-95 % of Low Clouds in Cambridge:
This is from my trains window at Cambridge station.
When I got home 20 minutes down the track at Ely, I spawned at Lakenheath (EGUL) which showed this:
Not completely terrible.
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so from what I can tell it seems regardless of the satellite or weather map showing overcast for a whole area the game can only render low overcast over stations that report OVC? in between the best it can do is broken.
I tried using Rex Weather Force to see what it made of it.
And from above.
It seems to do a better job of creating that “foam” look to it. So I think the sim is capable of doing what we want, but is not being told to, as it were.
With the assumption that the only source for clouds is coming from MB:
• It is not a guarantee that if you have OVC in the METAR you’ll get overcast in the sim. Some examples have been posted in this topic, showing OVC in the METAR but not in the sim. So with above assumption, if MB does not report OVC, the fact to don’t have overcast in the sim is correct even if METAR says OVC. It is not a bug
• I think the sim is able to render overcast outside of METAR zones, we should look for zones with overcast reported by MB and check there, then post screenshots to confirm it is possible to have OVC outside of METAR station
• The issue I see here is the inconsistency: if MB is reporting OVC, sometimes overcast is rendered correctly, sometimes not
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Exactly, it’s not a bug. Same if METAR says clear skies we can get some clouds because METAR not always report high level clouds.
The thing is, the METAR integration makes us as users even more confused and also much harder to report issues because those 2 sources conflicts.
I think they are using completely different weather engine code after su7. If that is the case when we compare the post su7 to pre su7 weather is like compare 2 different 3rd party weather addons. It’s 2 completely different things. I report that i preffered the pre su7 weather engine much more. Thats what i can report for sure.
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Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
Yes
Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
As per Meteoblue map right now, Low Clouds coverage is >95% at LFAC airport (north of France), so it means overcast. Loading the flight at this airport does not reflect the correct coverage. No METAR is available at this airport
If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
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