Weather has largely gone ignored in 2024. Not only are there bugs affecting overall visual fidelity, etc, there has been no real innovation in this area in 2024, and as far as I know, there’s been no real interest shown by Asobo to innovate further in this area.
Increased number of cloud layers
New cloud layer types (e.g. variety of altocirrus / cirrus layers, where’s the high-altitude cirrus clouds??)
Improved graphic translation of Live Weather data
These are just a few things that could go a long way in taking the weather to the next level.
You can create some really stellar realistic looking conditions, but….as long as you create them from scratch using the custom weather settings.
However, when it comes to Live Weather…whatever translation system is being used to render the live data into the visual weather seems broken or far underwhelming compared to what you can create with the custom settings. Which is odd. Live or Manual are both using the same graphical elements! It’s the translation being done with Live Weather that seems broken or just needs more work.
Hopefully this sparks more user feedback for the product team to take notice and prioritize. MSFS is about flying….flying within our earth’s atmosphere. The weather is and should be MAJOR part of the flying experience, yet it seems to be treated like a side-project, while other areas like Career Mode continue to get center stage….
Better cloud density in general and for live weather so we can actually feel like we are in the clouds (i.e. wings disappearing in the clouds, see the cloud movement on the wing and plane)
Humidity/dewpoint, atmospheric particles are taken more seriously and can have an impact not only on the ground but also on the horizon, at elevation and perhaps even result in dynamic coloring of the sky.
Haze layer is currently very weak in the Sim. A bubble of haze over an airport is a sad representation and I know Asobo/MSFT can model this better based on the overall humidity, particles (i.e. smog) and atmospheric conditions. Seems like they have the data, they need to model and implement it.
Better turbulence modeling especially near ground. Not too bad right now, but it should be revisited. In real life, it is very rare that planes don’t experience any turbulence near ground.
Better cloud formations/types. The clouds themselves don’t look bad. They look good for the most part. But the cloud coverage and real-life representation of the cloud coverage need significant improvements. I see a lot of posts from people showing the clouds in the competitor’s platform, claiming the clouds look better there. In reality, I don’t think the clouds look better in that platform, rather, the formations, shadows and lighting are modeled better. MSFS is capable for sure, it just needs better implementation.
Wet ground should be revisited. It’s disappointing that after a few second of no rain, the ground dries up. In fact, the program is most likely capable to show wet grounds even if the rain occurred in the past.
In MSFS 2020, we got condensation, particle effect on the wings through 3rd party (Parallel 42) and seems like they are no able to produce such product for MSFS 2024. I hope the team can work with them so they can provide such capabilities to MSFS 2024. It would be nice to have those effects by default but if not, at least help the developer and provide them with what they need.
Sim Update 5 Beta is out. Cool. Testing is underway. But once again — nothing meaningful has been done to the weather system. Clouds, rain, snow, atmospheric depth… same story.
And honestly? That’s not okay.
We’ve been asking for real weather improvements for years now. Not a couple of patch cycles. Years. Thread after thread, feedback after feedback, comparisons, detailed breakdowns — and yet this core part of the sim keeps getting pushed aside.
Weather isn’t some side feature. It’s the soul of a flight sim. When the clouds look flat, when rain feels disconnected from the world, when snow coverage doesn’t behave naturally — immersion takes a hit. Big time.
At some point, staying quiet just signals that we’re fine with it. And we’re not.
If this matters to you, speak up.
The devs need to see that this isn’t a niche complaint — it’s something the community genuinely cares about.
We’ve been patient. Very patient.
But years of waiting with no real movement doesn’t send a good message.
This sim has insane potential. We all know that.
But fundamentals like weather can’t keep being treated like background noise.
I agree with everything said above, however since I don’t have the time to write down all of my feelings on the matter for the 1,000th time, I will link some of my past posts on the subject:
@Microsobo, it’s time to come out of hibernation. Winter is almost over (in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway. In the South, it’s never over). We’ve let you cook, now show us the meal. Remember: you effectively closed the door on any assistant chefs who offered to help. So, it’s your recipe, and your responsibility to make sure we aren’t hungry. Geez, I’m going to get a snack .
I’m not sure how much more noise we can make. It’s clearly not a priority for the devs.
One small glimmer of hope; I’ve had a couple of flights over the weekend where the visibility effects were fantastic, really realistic. Just shows the engine is actually quite capable when fed suitable data.
As a recently retired research scientist in meteorology and atmospheric modeling, and a private pilot, I think the weather engine does a fairly decent job. The troposphere is an extremely complex place during active weather. Even the best computer models struggle with clouds sometimes, especially shallow-layer clouds like fair-weather cumulus and low stratus. I’ve just flown some IFR flights in the NW US over the past week, and the simulator did a good job reproducing the widespread IFR conditions, including an IFR approach to KTVL during the heavy snow event. Visibility and snow were accurately modeled (1/4 mile, 300ft OVC). Yesterday, I did an IFR flight to KSEA, and multiple cloud layers were present, as IRL. I will frequently scout for challenging conditions by looking at real-world weather first. IMO, the 2024 clouds and weather are MUCH improved over 2020, which were terrible. In 2024, there are cirrus-like clouds (needs improvement) at the correct levels, and sometimes, even deep convection with clouds reaching high in the troposphere. Not always, though, and deep convection still needs some work. Lightning also needs work, as it is sometimes too frequent, and there are occasional “bolts from the blue” when there are no nearby storms.
Remind again, why did Asobo took away the great feature to add and adjust haze/humidity by removing the slider?
It was such a great feature in FS20.
Now we pretty much always have maximum visibilty which negates a lot of the depth and scale of landscapes, let alone looks kind of silly when you have a big broken cloud layer and you can see the layer’s flat bottom until the end of the horizon.
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