SU11 vs SU10 Clouds

Is it just me? Or do you think the clouds in SU10 looked better than SU11? :slight_smile:

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Well. I can’t say whether it’s just you or not as I don’t know what others think. However, I’d say that clouds appear to be better in SU11. It may be my imagination but there seem to be better and more layers of clouds.

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Absolutely. Clouds in SU11 are a big improvement over the ones in SU10. Especially those layers of clouds, as you mentioned.

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I think its important to differentiate between the way the clouds are laid out in the sky and the textures used to illustrate those clouds.
The layout does seem to be improving. The textures themselves, especially the high altitude ones, still need a lot of improvement. The textures were better at one time and the layout was good too but they decided to go in a new direction. I think 8-bit to 10bit and HDR must have played some role that I don’t know about/understand.

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I thought the clouds were volumetric? But i agree, since a while ago the clouds looks more like textures than volumetric. The weather felt better pre su7 to me. Much more dynamic feel. Can’t tell any difference between su10 and 11.

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I think the lower altitude clouds are volumetric but the high altitude clouds look more like textures. Whatever we choose to call those images that represent clouds, I hope they find a way to do better. I also think its very important that they correct the lower atmosphere and its lighting. There is no reason for a clear sky’s horizon to be that bright when looking away from the sun. Where are the lower atmosphere haze effects? undersides of distant clouds?

I could be wrong here, but the way i see it, the clouds - with exactly the same weather presets no longer look the same. It seems to me the SU11 clouds have much smaller puffs (popcorns if you will?) put together to make larger puffs. Also the blending between them like the base of the clouds for instance no longer have that nice blend to them. I dunno, not sure if there are changes made to them. Again, maybe it’s just me. :slight_smile: Whichever is the case, I can live with it. And if ever there was indeed changes made on them in SU11 should be for the sake of performance.

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I’m posting some SU11 examples so we can look back here. They seem to be getting a little more detailed, slowly. Or perhaps it’s just our imagination? Still a little blocky sometimes, and I get interference when I move my aircraft around quickly in front of them.

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No idea what update those clouds are from, but I think there is kind of an unhealthy obsession about the clouds at this point on the forum. Looking at those pics, and comparing them to what we had before MFS, they are amazing. Even in their “worst” depiction, they are so much more immersive than what we had. It’s getting comical the fine tooth combing that’s going on around the clouds, including the “pre-SU7” myth.

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Actually it started with SU5 which degraded the cloud optics (together with many other graphic fidelities) massivly.
It took several SUs to mitigate the “pixelization” on the edges, the overall render quality and lighting of clouds again.
With SU10 they started to look quite pretty again like PreSU5 and improved further with SU11 (not talking about the layering, only the render quality of clouds!).
Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally happy with what they become now again, but i also remember the times, where i did not even want to load up this sim anymore due to the lack of immersion with the downgrades since SU5.

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Unfortunately in VR the pixelation can still clearly be seen, not as bad as it was post SU7/8/9 (it has got better) but still nowhere near how good it was pre SU5, where there was very little if any pixelation.

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There’s no pre SU7 myth. SU5+ did downgrade the quality of the clouds, or the engine behind them. Especially on higher resolutions the clouds were blobby and cartoonish. Maybe you just never saw that. But they are improving again.

My examples above now are from the current SU11, and they’re great!

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What I find interesting, is because the weather engine is so ground breaking for MFS, you’d think anytime Asobo improves the clouds, they’d crow about it during their live developer Q&A. They didn’t say one word about any across the board weather improvement this last time, yet people are subjectively saying the clouds are better.

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Clouds are looking great today over Britain (although the people living there might think otherwise)

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I think the lower altitude clouds have been improving. Its mostly the high clouds I have problems with. I’ve been noticing just how often in real life we get an upper overcast deck with a low few cumulus condition and its very common. The sim used to do this quite well but now the upper what should be solid overcast is so just an overlapping grouping of striped textures.
For reference, heres what the sim routinely did before SU5:



In all cases the look was much more convincing than anything I’ve seen since SU5 (or SU7 - I can’t remember when “the great cloud downgrade” occurred)

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Now it just needs it’s own CNN style crisis theme music. :smile:

Would you feel the same if three months from now they intentionally removed the A310 and the helicopters and gliders and replaced them with models that had no cockpits and could only be ‘flown’ from outside?

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I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. Removing cockpits, and locking out cockpit views, is a very objective change. The clouds, and any changes of them, are very subjective, because it’s impossible to compare exact scenarios in live weather.

To answer your question; no I would not like to fly the A310 from only the external view.

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Exactly that feel i got when they changed the weather system in su7. I know clouds have been downgraded since release but su7 were the worst for the whole weather system. I can try name some of the downgrades here.

  1. less density in clouds, aircraft dissapeard in clouds at release 2020.

  2. No volumetric light anymore. The clouds not reflect landinglights anymore when flying inside clouds.

  3. Metar bubbles with hard transitions with foglayers that marks where the airport is located.

  4. More frequent updates from Meteoblue that makes the clouds change instantly.

  5. Clouds casts less shadows.

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Looks good to me especially on Ultra!

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