I have never, in 3.000 hours of flight, seen a sky like that.
Are you using or have you used in the past a weather mod?
As far as I have read there is no evidence of the claimed weather degradation, and in my experience the weather is better than ever right now, with no other sim even coming close to it, so I guess I cannot share the point of view of the OP.
Not sure what sim you are using but I would like to see pictures of that. The only lightning I have seen either shows up with small cumulus clouds or is seen in clear air. Take a flight across the midwestern part of the USA during a severe weather outbreak or down in Florida this time of year. No thunderstorms. Just some blobs of clouds with tops around 10-15K feet maybe. The thunderstorm rendering is terrible. Some of these thunderstorms will reach 60,000ft with most tops in the mid 40’s. I have never seen that represented in the sim.
In the real world, sometimes you have to deviate 250-300 miles plus to get around a large complex of thunderstorms. I have never seen that represented in the sim. Nor have I ever seen isolated super cell thunderstorms in the sim either. A few small or broken puffy cumulus clouds with some lightning isn’t very amazing based on how good this sim is visually already.
They have the potential and the ability to blow peoples minds with the visual emersion. Look around the sim at the visual rendering of the world already…it’s incredible. No excuse to have generic looking weather with half baked thunderstorm representation. Not in this day and age of computing and graphical generation technology. I know they can do it, and they definitely have the talent in place. The question is, do they want to do it, and does the populus really want it, or is everybody happy with generic.
There’s no denying this is a very pretty sim. However, i do still miss the wispy light clouds we had early on that looked much better & more realistic. For whatever reason, that was a very clear change.
I’m certainly not disappointed with the sim, it has no equal. I just feel like it’s missing so many cloud layer variations, the sky colour is fairly limited especially at sunrise/sunset & almost always far too strong reds/oranges & the way light works with the clouds could be much better. I know they are worlds apart but FSX still does some things better like sunrise/sunset colouring & (obviously a completely different & worse system) more cloud variations.
All,
I have opened a new wishlist item for improved cloud depiction in live weather. I hope it reflects the consensus view of those most closely involved in this debate.
You can vote for it here. I’ve taken care to frame it in on the actual issue and at what I hope is the right level.
And if you think there is no room for improvement then don’t!
There was a similar topic in the wishlist that has been closed: More cloud formations!
The reason was to have only 1 specific request per whishlist topic. For me it also makes sense to have a whishlist request to cover a general ask from users to have missing cloud types added and the existing ones (mostly cumulus we have so far) improved in Live weather. If weather presets can achieved that, Live Weather should be able too.
Oh I remember that one now. Those pictures! Didn’t find it when doing search the other day. It had 153 votes when closed and the others that replaced it? Mere handfuls. (Edit: actually cirrus, stratus and CB all have highish numbers of votes ranging from c60-160)
The ‘one item per wishlist’ rule was very much on my mind when creating my post (which is why I kept it to clouds). But what is an item? I mean having to vote on each individual cloud type seems a rather too strict reading of the rule. It just fragments the votes as the individual items are niche/obscure and keeps the wider point from ever going up the ‘stack’ in terms of votes.
I have no doubt Asobo are fully aware already of the issues with clouds, but it still seems right that there is a place we can formally record and vote for our wishes on the architecture of Live Weather.
Yes, I bet there are a lot of people who can cope with the inaccuracy of the weather model as a whole, but would really just like to see the look, i.e graphical quality of the clouds improved.
Could you elaborate ? As mainly a GA pilot in the US I use the Aviation Weather Centre as my main source and I find that temps, pressures, wind direction and speeds are usually spot on. Same also when I monitor winds aloft when flying airliners - it usually matches what simbrief gave me pretty closely.
What I find lacking is the cloud layers, tops, types and associated precip and convective turb. Icing and lightening are broken, but that’s a different story again.
Yes, ugly clouds. Nobody wants those.
But your post suggested the whole live weather model was inaccurate:
That was the part I was querying.
Pyroclastic cloud 
I would reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally like some signal from MS/Asobo that improvements to live weather are on their way…
That’s a challenge because in addition to understandably not reporting on items in flux or still under investigation, MS and Asobo often like to play cloak and daggers on items they plan to deliver. So it’s impossible to say if this weather issue is still up in the air or will be overhauled over the next 12 months and become a “surprise.”
They’re doing the same thing with AAUs, where we know there’s work planned but they’d prefer to be secretive about what the larger plan is for avionics and how it will interface with ATC and traffic. It’s an odd choice the more you think about it.
My thought is secrets and surprises are cool for stuff like World Updates, City Updates or completely new features, but being secretive about the plan for bigger picture core functionality (after decisions are made, of course) is a mistake.
As much as I would like to believe that enhanced Live Weather will be the surprise this year, as much I doubt it.
The key for me is the announcement that they are rethinking their “first party only” approach regarding the weather simulation and opening the API write access for third parties. For me that hints in the direction of: “Hey, we admit that we are way over our head with implementing what we have promised and we have no intentions for further investments in that regard. Let others do it!”
I hope I’m wrong, but in any case I have reconsidered my attitude towards the involvement of third parties. I’m all for it, because it won’t take away what is already present and it adds options and choice.
Topic moved from General Discussion.
This is what we paid for not the weather we have now.
Glad to update on this buzzed about topic (it’s clearly a topic a lot of us care about and we need to see it better implemented via Meteoblue and the sim – at least in the southern US, we get lightning storms all year round).
Today, I was at KATL and was PLEASANTLY surprised to see lightning in live weather!!! (apologies, you also will hear me scream at my puppy for ■■■■■■ on the carpet. 
)
yeah, I saw lightning near KMEM about a week ago and I saw it at one other location but I cant remember where right now. I’ve also noticed that all clouds seemed to gotten a bit denser in the past week. Low clouds - especially the soft foglike clouds - are looking pretty good. Even high clouds got a tiny bit thicker but still, everything above about 20,000 feet needs help.(maybe 15,000?)
Busy making a new minigame addon coming soon*
That may be Meteoblue data but they for sure add the METAR data into the mb model since su7 with some kind of postprocessing. Some of us users noticed that instantly and for us it makes the weather feel generic and boring.
I want the 2020 release mb weather model back again. I miss it so much.
