If this is in response to my post then it is curious how we perceive things differently. You think it is awful, I think it is OK. To each his own.
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I’ve been looking back at footage too and 2020 was not more realistic on my end. Maybe there is some performance variation that makes 2024 look bad for some?
I would still argue that most of it is rose-colored nostalgia. With time you get better and better at seeing the imperfections in basically any game and this is no difference.
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2024 is a huge improvement over 2020, on many levels.
A couple of test flights from yesterday to illustrate:
Game environments are also models of reality, they are not reality.
There are always going to be trade-offs depending on where we are on the tech/development curve, modulated by individual user capability/settings. Expecting it to replicate every single aspect and environmental condition of real life is just unrealistic, and just setting yourself up for constant dissapointment.
2024 is full throttle onwards and upwards, even if it’s blowing some smoke and leaking a bit of oil.
And the odd inflight wheel change.
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There have been other threads reminiscing about some specific time where the sim looked amazing and has been degraded since then. That may have been true but it’s also highly subjective. One persons amazing realism is another’s cartoon.
My experience is that most of the time, the environment looks fine, not bad but not spectacular. That’s often because I fly with boring weather presets often. But every now and then, a location and conditions align to really wow me and I think how impossible this sim seems compared to earlier flight sims.
To really get that amazing environment experience, it helps when the weather is unusual in some way. Just like the most memorable photographs are rarely taken at noon on a sunny day but during golden hour when the light enhances the moment. When 2024 launched, I immediately noticed how much better the lighting engine was. Now it’s commonplace and doesn’t stand out as much. Has the sim changed or did I?
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This is actually one of my pet peeves about the depiction of weather. Your real life pics show what appears to be a lower level broken with an upper level overcast. The sim just uses one level of giant clouds. IT did not do that originally. Heres a pic for example from 2020 that illustrates what could be done:
For me this “which is better” is entirely situational. XP12 appears (I dont have it) to do some great things with fair weather cumulus and cirrus. FS24 is often what I call downright ugly in that department. FS24 looks pretty good to even great though when it gets cloudier in some situations.
For me I think it comes down to the fact that individual clouds don’t look like clouds – they are not round in their appearance – they are often just splotches of translucent color. and other times it looks like the dog shredded the couch stuffing and somebody tried to make clouds out of it.
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I do believe the answer is… yes! 
Or is it 42?
But jokes aside: I have never made a secret of the fact that I find a number of things in 2024 very annoying.
But then… over the past few days:
I flew over Sydney… and it was incredible.
I flew into Le Bourget… and it was beautiful.
I took off from JFK and flew over NY… and it was as good as it gets
I flew from the small 21W Ranger Creek to 2W1 De Vere in Washington State just 100km or so south of where I live… and it was simply stunning.
So for now with my type of flying I will continue to live with the bad - of which there is a fair bit - and thoroughly enjoy the good - of which there is a lot!
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I was doing a low-level helicopter tour over San Francisco and the photogrammetry looked so incredibly detailed and realistic. Better than I have ever seen it before. The screenshots don’t even do it justice. I run pretty low graphics setting and have very few complaints about the sim. It’s exceeded my expectations since the beginning.
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I realize it must be hard to create clouds using computer code and I also can understand how hard it is to make a situation, as seen from far off, hang together in a believable way when you get to it. Heres two pics of the same weather in FS24 and I think the first is not very good but the second (closer) is quite good.
from far:
and then close:
its really all about rendering realistic cloud scapes to fit different conditions. I think they do some of it really well:
I just don’t understand why, if the sim can create good clouds, why is it allowed to create ‘downright ugly’:
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tl/dr:
Because it’s not deterministic in outputs.
There are a lot variables and factors at play, and the solution space is large, so you get non-deterministic outputs.
The long answer:
Creating consistently perfect clouds in a flight simulation is a hard problem because weather is a very complex system. The simulator doesn’t just place static cloud images in the sky—it generates dynamic, evolving cloud formations based on real-world atmospheric data. Presets are just snapshots of real-world data as well, fwiw.
Here’s why sometimes they look great and other times they look “downright ugly”:
- Procedural Generation: The clouds are built using procedural algorithms, meaning they aren’t handcrafted. The system tries to mimic reality by generating clouds dynamically, but sometimes the result is less than ideal.
- Real-World Data Limitations: MSFS uses live weather data like METAR reports, but these don’t always give a complete picture of cloud shapes, heights, and densities. The simulator has to fill in the gaps, sometimes making imperfect guesses.
- Balancing Performance vs. Detail: Ultra-realistic clouds require a lot of computing power. To keep the simulation running smoothly, compromises are made—sometimes reducing cloud resolution, level of detail, or blending techniques.
- Random Variability: Because weather is unpredictable in real life, the system introduces some randomness to cloud formations. That randomness can create stunning skies or, occasionally, odd-looking blobs.
- Lighting & Rendering Challenges: The way clouds interact with light can make them look unrealistic. Changes in shading, transparency, and layering might sometimes break immersion.
So, while MSFS (either version + other sims/games with weather systems) can generate fantastic clouds at times, the sheer complexity of real-world weather simulation means there will always be moments where the results aren’t quite perfect.
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I would disagree that the clouds aren’t ‘hand-crafted’. Programmers do their best to create believable clouds and I suspect they do a lot that leads to bad results and they spend a lot of time tweaking the code. Here’s three pics of different times/locations that all show a similar cloud layout:
Its subtle but some programmer must have spent a lot of time tweaking the code to get it to reproduce in appearance something that looks correct (at least to me).
My argument is simply that those same programmers should hopefully spend more time making the code create other layouts to the same graphical believability. I think they will because Seb was actually open to cloud improvements in the most recent Dev Q and A. (which tells me they already have some but its still WIP)
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besides, FS2020 looked way better at or shortly after release, and nothing like it after or shortly before SU5/xbox update.
some screnshots from before january 2021 Sim Update 2, with live weather.
Sim Update IV
don’t bother with live weather in FS2024
X
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Honestly this is a pretty strange thread to me starting with the title - what are we looking for? Realism (“Real”) or cinematics (“Amazing”).
To me MSFS 2024 looks more into the realism direction on general illumination. Things don’t have as much contrast as on MSFS2020 and less saturation. Both are things that make something cinematic as it’s coming from movies.
For comparing clouds and stuff imho people should use presets and NOT live weather as the rough data alone will not be perfect and so the visual representation may be even worse. In general the color and granularity of clouds in MSFS 2024 is way better than on 2020 as these always tend to be too dark especially during the early days (“ash clouds”).
Navigation lights during bright daytime are also way better on how they are simulated in a realistic (not cinematic) sense on MSFS24. Even on LEDs there usually is a colored plastic cover used on top of the light source and when this is exposed to direct sunlight you won’t see anything being lit. This is even worse on halogen lights of older aircraft. Also during daytime you’ll only see the silhouette of an aircraft from some distance and not any lights but MAYBE the landing light.
So, generally speaking I’m on the “MSFS 2024 is more realistic than MSFS 2020” side of things. Perfect? No - it’s a simulation/approximation of the real world. “Amazing”? Still but way less cinematic than the older sim - which I personally welcome.
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To be honest, every time I fly fs 2024 I get depressed because I have to look at these puffy white unrealistic looking clouds and atmosphere. It’s just an immersion killer. How they found a way to completely destroy what was an immensely awesome sim is beyond me. The only thing I like about 2024 is the startup time, the EFB and well, that’s about it. Everything else is a regression. And now they’re bringing their new Bing maps to 2020. Depressing.
That being said, I think it’s a great sim for low-level flying. The only real enjoyment I get from it is if flying low to check out the scenery. Just don’t look up at the clouds.
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100% agree.
By the way, my topic about the regression of the terrible reduction in quality of the clouds with the new LOD finally got ‘feedback logged’.
I so hope that they take this onboard and fix this bug. It will make a big difference I think.
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This is how I feel. Feel like the lighting is much better in 2024, but also it’s going to vary person to person because of the exposure slider in the settings now. I don’t think 2020 even had an exposure slider.
Also you’re absolutely right, the best way to compare clouds is going to be using presets, not live weather.
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The clouds I see in MSFS 2024 are amazingly realistic.
Can you show us what you see on your system with screenshots?
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In this topic, for example, you can clearly see the massive regression in cloud depiction:
I myself regularly encounter such clouds during my flights (i9-12900KF, RTX4070, cloud options on ultra), and have recently reverted to MSFS2020.
In several cases, I have started a flight with MSFS2020, then exited and started a flight with MSFS2024 at the same airport.
The difference in favour of the MSFS2020 was very clear and obvious.
I am of course talking about live weather.
There is no point in talking about presets in this issue, because live weather has not produced such clouds before.
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Just after FS2020 came out I flew into a hurricane off the coast of Louisiana and was amazed at the realism of the clouds and weather. I did the same thing later in FS2020 (after it was ported over to X-Box) and it was also a good experience but everything look somehow “different” and “unworldly” with the clouds looking more like an “artist rendering” than real weather. Alias I do not have any pictures to collaborate my statements. FWIW
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