I remember seeing this topic and kept thinking that things were going slowly towards the right direction. But, here we are today after SU7 update. The whole live weather system is completely broken and a mess! There is no cloud variety whatsoever. Even stratus cloud layers are completely gone. Tested flying around the world and I could only spot cumulus in different quantities (BUT they don’t look right at all, they reach the ground due to wrong cloud base altitudes, they are very transparent and anemic, the cloud noise is a complete mess etc). So where do we go from here on?
Asobo should really try and test the weather/cloud formation engine, while seeing and comparing the generated weather to the ones that exist in real life. I mean, the sim should be able to generate in live weather mode : Cumulus clouds of every subcategory and possible size, believable Stratus clouds with their own variety of densities as they range from stratocumulus to cirrostratus, cirrus clouds with different shader patterns since they are extremely variable and depend on layer humidity and wind speeds.!
A list of most well know cloud formations. Even an 75-80 % of these in the sim would make it complete weatherwise. With an intelligent yet believable visibility system, it would be a dreamlike experience for every simmer. NOAA link with details on every cloud formation : NWS JetStream - NWS Cloud Chart
So, in the links below is what we currently have in the sim. It’s obvious that Live Weather is broken and can’t even generate half the variety we had before the last update. It is the same cumulus copy and paste all over again, just different density and clusters. I haven’t found completely overcast skies yet, since stratus clouds are non-existent. That is definitely not how the sky /weather system works.
Links to forum threads covering the current serious weather engine issues :
And these on cloud “volcanic” visuals / coloration issues.