X-Plane looks horrible. How to improve it?

[mSparks 2,086]

4 minutes ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

but my point was about clouds

but that's just it, each of those clouds is one quad, at least XP11 clouds are made up of enough quads to give them some volume as you fly by, and RW visibility is accurate, which is waaay more important.

We were only discussing this the other day

 

[CFIJose 5,485]

37 minutes ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

The experience is sadly becoming the exact opposite for me. I'm increasingly shifting more and more towards P3D, especially after it got trueSKY out of the box - new lighting, sky and clouds look so natural and so far I can't find anything matching it in X-Plane, other than xEnviro. Combined with much more realistic airliner add-ons, being able to have nice ground textures without spending hours and gigabytes of disk space on orthophoto scenery, it's becoming a much better choice for me.

Hence my constant struggle to make X-Plane look as good as P3D instead of just giving up on it, so I can keep airliner add-ons I love to fly, namely FlyJSim 737 and FlyJSim 727. And of course helicopters, which goes really well with X-Plane's flight dynamics engine.

I still think X-Plane has the potential to look as good as P3D, it just needs right art assets and configuration. I already developed a custom sky for X-Plane, but it's no use as it overrides default clouds and I don't like how Enhanced Cloudscapes looks.

When I tried P3D v5, TrueSky did not offer me the same experience as REX SkyForce & AS. Those two add-ons gave me the best looking clouds and the most realistic weather I've ever experienced in a sim.

xEnviro 1.16 is the best weather add-on right now for X-Plane 11 Vulkan. The clouds could look a little better, but for how I'm using X-Plane 11, is good enough. I'm really looking forward to how xAmbience Pro will depict clouds. xEnviro is usually spot on when it comes to depicting the weather.

On the other hand, MSFS does a better job depicting clouds with a dynamic theme than with their buggy live weather feature. It's so BAD that, for me, it never matches real world weather conditions. Sometimes even the windsocks do not show proper wind direction. They have a long way to go before they get the weather to display in the sim accordingly.

As for FS9 clouds, they look awful and should not even be in this discussion. FS9 is not in the same league as XP or even MSFS.

Edited April 28, 2021 by DJJose

[Biology 1,347]

15 minutes ago, DJJose said:

When I tried P3D v5, TrueSky did not offer me the same experience as REX SkyForce & AS. Those two add-ons gave me the best looking clouds and the most realistic weather I've ever experienced in a sim.

While REX has more defined clouds, they lack "volume", which is a big deal. But the main benefit going for trueSKY is well... sky. Rayleigh and Mie scattering is spot on, same story for aerial perspective. This is why I can't return to 2D clouds of REX.

26 minutes ago, DJJose said:

As for FS9 clouds, they look awful and should not even be in this discussion. FS9 is not in the same league as XP or even MSFS.

Why? FSX/P3D (and even X-Plane) are still using the same cloud rendering technique with FS2004, I don't see any reason why FS2004 would look worse in terms of clouds.

[GoranM 3,764]

1 hour ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

You have got absolutely no idea how good FS2004 can look with lots of add-ons such as Orbx Global, REX and other shader modifications.

As a matter of fact, I have a very good idea.  I go back to FS5.  And every iteration until FSX.  Along with purchases from Flight 1, simmarket, aerosoft and all the different developers.

 

1 hour ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

Especially given that OP seems to be obsessed with clouds, his claim makes perfect sense to me

You might want to go back and read his post again.  It looks like you read just the last part.

Apart from that, I really don't care.  I can't be bothered wasting my time with petty arguments about a flight sim.  

[GoranM 3,764]

Double Post

Edited April 28, 2021 by GoranM

[Biology 1,347]

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

but that's just it, each of those clouds is one quad, at least XP11 clouds are made up of enough quads to give them some volume as you fly by, and RW visibility is accurate, which is waaay more important.

Regardless of how unintuitive it sounds, many people prefer FS2004/FSX/old P3D clouds because of this exact reason. While repeating frustum-aligned quads through rotation along an axis gives a volume feeling, it reduces definition. I've even seen people prefering 2D clouds over volumetric clouds just because of this sole reason - a single frustum-aligned quad is able to show the most detail, compared to other methods.

While I find that 2D look worse, there are indeed people who prefer it.

Edited April 28, 2021 by BiologicalNanobot

[mSparks 2,086]

8 minutes ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

many people prefer FS2004/FSX/P3D clouds because of exactly this reason.

I don't disagree with that.

In fact, I think most of the dislike of xplane clouds and env is the design to look more realistic than gamey, and in the real world horrible weather looks.... well.... horrible.

[Biology 1,347]

26 minutes ago, mSparks said:

In fact, I think most of the dislike of xplane clouds and env is the design to look more realistic than gamey, and in the real world horrible weather looks.... well.... horrible.

That's for sure - trueSKY got a similar response when it was first added to P3D, people didn't like the washed out look caused by haze. Even in X-Plane you can see people who try to disable the haze, for the exact same reason.

For clouds, it's all about definition. Again rotating a quad around an axis will destroy the definition, which is a huge loss for some.

This is REX Sky Force. You can see how detailed the cloud texture looks like, but it is still 2D, so lighting will be wrong and they will rotate around the camera. Placing multiple quads rotated around an axis would prevent that issue, but it would also eliminate the sub-pixel details like cauliflower shapes and baked self-shadowing information.

Here's the most interesting part - I've seen people setting first_res_3d to 3 in X-Plane, which will reduce the amount of overlayed quads, just to get more detail from clouds. To me it looks really bad, but there are many going for it. So I can understand OP's claims about FS2004 and X-Plane, the former lacks haze so it doesn't look washed out, similarly the former has more detailed clouds even though they look a lot more 2D.

Edited April 28, 2021 by BiologicalNanobot

[CFIJose 5,485]

2 hours ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

That's for sure - trueSKY got a similar response when it was first added to P3D, people didn't like the washed out look caused by haze. Even in X-Plane you can see people who try to disable the haze, for the exact same reason.

For clouds, it's all about definition. Again rotating a quad around an axis will destroy the definition, which is a huge loss for some.

 

Why? That's the answer to your question. I don't care if it's 2D or 3D,. I just want the clouds to look good. That looks good to me from any distance.

[jarmstro 2,402]

What part of the sentence 'You can't have realistic looking volumetric clouds with a 100% draw distance in X-Plane don't people understand? Get over it.

[CarlosF 1,241]

Dang, It seems no one can post a valid point (XP does look awful out of the box, like it or not) when suddenly there's the XP dev-police with their sarcasm-criticism weapons.

[ShortFinal 41]

Well I certainly didn't mean to cause an argument. I am brand new to X-Plane and have spent little time with it and know hardly anything about modding it. I made a few flights with the sim and yes, the clouds were pretty bad. You all seem to be mad at me for mentioning that FS9 clouds look better, but they aren't stock. they actually use new textures and sprites and compete with any modern sim (minus MSFS)

That said, X-Plane's clouds just don't convince me at all. I am trying to find an addon or texture or something to at least make them seem a bit better, and hence why I posted here, but that only seemed to cause an argument. I am also trying to get ideas on ways to improve the ground. I'm not looking to improve systems, as they are already good, unlike default MSFS, though the aerosoft CRJ changed that stereotype. I am not a big VFR flyer in flight sim, as I can do that in Real life. what I DO want however is a lifelike environment that at least looks presentable and immersive. I have seen people with their X-Plane setups that just have a wow factor with a slower PC than mine. ALL I am looking for is what I need to do to get my X-Plane setup to somewhat look like that. This includes CLOUDS and Sky environment, which X-Plane struggles in. The ground I'll probably build up Ortho tiles or get forkboys, But I am looking at mainly how to improve the Sky environment to the level that I can fly in some convincing IMC and not watch cloud textures just move around me in the fakest looking way possible. 

As for the title, it seems threads get lost quickly unless the title manages to draw people in. It seems to have worked, though it also drew in negative comments. anyways, maybe now there can be some decent suggestions and not one of the endless comment wars?

[ShortFinal 41]

20 hours ago, mSparks said:

My first thought was "well, xplane out of the box, depending on where you fly can look pretty awful".

but then I checked

And the only conclusion I can draw is the OP has definitely been smoking some microsoft, and probably hasn't even tried the free xplane demo.

But at least MSFS2004 has some planes that actually work, which is more than can be said for those trying to compare MSFS2020 to xplane with pointless, exaggerated, negative and untrue comparisons.

"and probably hasn't even tried the free xplane demo."

I actually own both X-Plane 10 and X-Plane 11, but didn't have the PC power to run them. Now I do, (not using 10) and am working on moving on from FS9. 

[ShortFinal 41]

On 4/26/2021 at 9:35 PM, DJJose said:

It depends on where you want to fly, but ORBX TE for XP are a must have. You can then populate the airports in each region. My favorite airports are from Verticalsim, MysterX6 (ShortFinal) ORBX, FlyTampa, etc. It's better if we narrow it down to a specific region or country. There are many freeware airports. Just do a search for the one's you want to try.

You can fill the rest of the world with SF Global by MysterX6 and you could try some free Ortho & Overlays.

Weather: ASXP with xVision or my current choice, xEnviro. Every time I load a flight and enable xEnviro I get weather that's as real as the one on my fltplan ap. Amazing!

I'm also using Reshade.

Perfect. thank you. any ideas on how to improve the water as well? Currently it has some very weird effect that looks horrible.

Also I have seen this that may look like my go to addon when it comes out. xAmbience Pro for X-Plane 11 - HST Simulations

[CFIJose 5,485]

32 minutes ago, ShortFinal said:

Perfect. thank you. any ideas on how to improve the water as well? Currently it has some very weird effect that looks horrible.

Also I have seen this that may look like my go to addon when it comes out. xAmbience Pro for X-Plane 11 - HST Simulations

Unfortunately the water leaves a lot to be desired. The best water is in MSFS and I doubt that we will ever see that in XP 11.

You can download some water animations for XP, but don't expect it to look as good as MSFS.

xAmbience Pro was supposed to be released this month. Maybe, May, June, July, who knows?