Hi.

No matter what weather engine I use, I have this very ugly, very thing cloud layer at FL300+. It kinda looks like a ceiling of some sort.

I tried REX weather engine, FSrealWX and just recently AS2012. They all occasionally give me this:

 

FSrealWX:

 

AS2012:

 

I don't have a screenshot of REX right now, but it's basically the same.

 

 

Any ideas? Should there even be clouds at this altitude?

Cirrus Clouds! Yes they do form at those altitudes. They are very thin, light layers of high altitude cloud.

Unfortunately they are a little ugly in flightsim, but i guess its something we have to live with.

I've never seen it look that bad, thatscreenshot looks like FS98. Looks like you need to upgrade your GPU or at least check AA and AF

I have the same...

 

The thing is, higher you fly, uglier it gets.

I am having it too, using REX textures and ASE

Any ideas? Should there even be clouds at this altitude?

 

They are cirrus clouds, a bit naff in your first pic, fairly realistically rendered in your second one. So yes, there can indeed be clouds way up there, in fact, clouds can form at altitudes of up to around 280,000 feet, although at that height they would mostly be over polar regions. A cirrus cloud's extremely thin and drawn-out appearance is mostly due to the very high wind speeds which can be encountered at higher altitudes. They can indicate that storm activity is on the way if there are a lot of them about.

 

Al

The second pic is as perfect as FSX gets without some haze or visibility tweaks (which looks like you have going for you). What makes it so ugly is the botchy draw distance which just makes it look like a dinner plate of clouds hovering above you. I'll kill to have my upper atmospshere cloud layers look like your second pic all the time.. Most of the time AS2012 does a good job though.

You want Pablo Diaz's HDE v2 cloud set. It's free and blows away anything that is payware.

vololiberista

Problem is they aren't thin as in only couple of meters.. it's more like it has no depth at all when i fly through them. Also the whole layer is 100% flat, surely this can't be true in real life? I mean okai there are cirrus clouds at this altitude... but why not scattered like the rest of the clouds instead of looking like a cealing?

 

also i don't remember ever seeing clouds in between the normal clouds and this ceiling. I mean look at the 2nd pic..

Also the whole layer is 100% flat

 

No, that is not the fact IRL. Clouds are never 100% flat :) But in FSX, I believe, Cirrus clouds are.

 

but why not scattered like the rest of the clouds instead of looking like a cealing?

 

Maybe ask this in REX forums, where devs of clouds reside?

Well why can all clouds have depth but not cirrus clouds?

Ye maybe i'll make a topic in rex forums..

The best person to answer these question might be AS dude, Damian Clark or the REX dude, Tim Fuchs.

I know in Active Sky's program you can simply turn them off and you won't see them anymore. There's a slider for Cirrus cloud occurance.

I believe that FSUIPC can generate them as well.

You want Pablo Diaz's HDE v2 cloud set. It's free and blows away anything that is payware.

vololiberista

For FS2004. (Avsim Lib) Why do people give an addon a plug, but no information of where to find it. Waste of time posting to be honest. The only Pablo files I found @ avsim was for FS9.