Will there ever be a developer such as ©REX Texture Direct© who will allow us to choose whispy cirrus, cumulonimbus, stratus etc…, clouds? I had it on my FSX and it was fantastic. Was able to set coral reefs, wind affected waves, all sorts of clouds, sounds, lightening, airport signs and markings, runway and taxiway lighting and so much more.
If any developers (are you reading this, REX team?) look at these posts, please chime in! I don’t mind spending $$ for such enhancements because the stock MSFS clouds are simply too bland! Even if they only did clouds, I’d be rapt.
The clouds in MSFS are volumetric and as I understand it generated, not a graphic text/file as used in previous version of flight sim. So basically they could not be replaced by a third party file.
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To my understanding, the technology of drawing clouds used in MSFS is completely different from previous versions. It doesn’t involve any textures. So 3rd party devs have to figure out how they can affect the appearance of clouds in the sim which is not that easy when the SDK is still incomplete a year after release. And even then if it is at all possible to affect them with a 3rd party product.
If they could do this in FSX and P3D
Surely they can do it for MSFS as well. They ought to have the smarts.
My 2¢ anyway…
Well, its not as easy as you think. Back in p3d it was just simple textures. Now the clouds are true volumetric and noise generated. You cant just replace them as a simple texture. And imho, there is also no need for it.
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Asbobo makes it clear in the deveopment updates that they won’t open up the weather system for 3rd party devs. It’s been saying “not planned” for months now so we have to wait for the ingenuity of the devs to find a way.
I still dont really understand why you guys would want to replace the clouds?
Asobo is working on the weatherengine and theres an overhaul planned for nex year.
Maybe just give them time before expecting 3rd party devs to “hack” a non documented part of the sim that will change in the future anyway?
Visually, theres not much to improve imho.
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IMHO it would be great to have realistic high attitude, wind whisped cirrus. That’s not possible here. I have tried to emulate whispy cirrus in sim and failed miserably every time.
REX had volumetric clouds. I understand that Asobo won’t open the wx section to 3rd party. They ought to add at least some variations to nothing but cumulus. It’s boring in my opinion.
But they are “fake” volumetric clouds. MSFS has noise generated, real volumetric clouds.
You definitely dont want to go back to P3D clouds. They are heavy on performance anyway.
Give it time, it will only get better.
If they could sort out the heavy pixilation, which seems worse than ever since SU6, that would be a great start. I’m looking forward to the weather improvements with SU7 anyway.
With SU7, there is now a cloud density slider. I moved it down really low and the pixellation went away. Click a cloud layer and you’ll see the slider. Not sure if this affects live weather though - haven’t tried yet. It sure helps with custom wx