d tsakiris - My assessment is yes different conditions are realised or shown with true sky - depends on the weather engine your using. True Sky gives you an approximation but its cloud definition is poor - I mean it does not capture the variances in cloud type very well, say stratus v cumulus and it cannot do normal Cirrus at all.The other issue is the interaction between the weather engine program you use and True Sky - that is LM does not have a weather engine but P3D is programmed to take real time data and convert it. The crux of all this is True Sky and EA are mathemetical constructions - compiling and using very complex mathematical programming - they are not texture programs like all the older weather sky programs. All the weather programs still rely upon texture or effects art work to create the skies and clouds they do (by the way not bad at all either) but they cannot do that with True Sky so you either have one or the other for clouds (at least LM allow you the option via the volumetric cloud slider control in the World GUI of the program - to turn it off or on). Rex, Active Sky etc, still use textures which they load and they cannot communicate or alter the volumetric cloud config file or use the LM True Sky Volumetric cloud configuration file (Not yet). You cannot mix or match not even partially. Neither Rex or AS have access to the True Sky coding that LM has as far as I am aware. 

I will be honest and say I have been testing True Sky vigorously along with a variety of weather engines - to see if I could get reasonable replications of clouds and sky under certain condtions namely mixed layers and types  (a frequent and common occurrence in the real sky) - my sober conclusion I really like what true sky does but the most realistic skies are still generated by REX or Active Sky Cloud Art. 

So I use REX or AS and a freeware program called P3DWX as weather engines. I have EA and HDR ON in the sim and depending on what sort of simming I am doing I will use True Sky or Volumetric Clouds ON and maximum OR I will turn off Volumetric Clouds and use the REX or AS textures instead. 

At the moment I am in a jet phase so I am using the clouds supplied. When I go back to low and slow (piston) I will revert to True Sky and Volumetric Clouds and let the weather engines just be simple interfaces to give weather data to the P3D program for me!.

Alas there is no straightforward and simple answer to your question - EA and True Sky are significant computing changes compared to the older system. There is a way to go for both I am sure it will but this is complex stuff now!

I'm not a fan of the clouds that this particular implementation of volumetric clouds produce either. I can deal with the billboard clouds, because the edges are quite defined and the shapes are decent. 

As far as shaders are concerned, the EA shaders are considerably better than the old shaders, but I really hate the sunset/sunrise in EA, it seriously is way too yellow and isn't too pretty to look at. I know that this may look realistic some times but in my opinion, whether or not it's realistic I still think it's not very great to look at. So much so I just reverted to the old shaders and made some adjustments to the scattering colors. 

There is also the issue of waffle clouds and homogenous shapes, making the sky look a little boring, but honestly if the sunrise/sunset had been reworked I could probably use it.

 

Personally I love the look of volumetric clouds, but can't stand the vanishing act they do, only to re-appear. So ActiveSky and ASCA for me, not as nice to look at, but far more consistent.

EA on though....

 

G

Forget who it was, but someone in this chain suggested lowering Volumetric Clouds down to Medium and upping the cloud layers in Active Sky to 8.  Wow!  That did the trick and somehow increased FPS without compromising on the visual quality.  Thank you for that tip!

On 10/28/2021 at 10:39 AM, coastaldriver said:

My assessment is yes different conditions are realised or shown with true sky - depends on the weather engine your using.

Different conditions - yes. But are you sure the current implementation can show several different conditions at once, i.e. displaying bad weather further away one is going to fly into? In my experience, it can't do that at the moment. I use Active Sky, and on the weather radar I  see a lot of red and purple, but not out the window - until I'm upon in, then the clouds outside suddenly change match what's on the radar.

d.tsakiris - All the cloud systems do that I am afraid. The only way I know to improve that is to speed up the time for injection or weather changes to a few minutes but that puts a hell of a load on your video card. All in all it is the same old problem of how weather is reported and tabulated by the weather people which is effectively grid by grid square across the globe, There is just not enough data to do what you would like or should I say to give a totally realistic view outside! It comes close most days but it is still a compromise.