1 hour ago, RW1 said:

Asobo Nerfed the clouds shortly before Xbox was released. They were fantastic on initial release. Cockpit even went dark when you flew into them.

At least on my end they still look identical to pre-SU5, and the cockpit still goes dark when entering them.

Edited December 29, 20214 yr by Tuskin38

The clouds are a mess now.  Worse performance for sure, more weird morphing and noise, less realistic, more strange layering, too many weird lava lamp clouds.  Can anyone show me a picture of a cumulus cloud below a cloud deck and that cloud deck is reaching down to the top of the cumulus cloud?  The live weather haze is terrible, the weather generally doesn't seem accurate. I keep going back to make sure my setting is on ULTRA and it is.. it just looks bad.  Also the clouds are super grainy and dark now. Sometimes when passing though them you get this layered moiré strobe effect.  I keep thinking its the Nvidia driver but upgrading them several times nothing has changed over several new drivers since Xbox release.  Also, the TAA artifacts are everywhere and they annoy me so bad.  I notice them in the clouds really bad or against a dark cloudy back drop I do not remember seeing them until X box release.

Edited December 30, 20214 yr by aniiran

6 hours ago, KERNEL32 said:

the performance hit seems to come whenever the "transparent" clouds are there

Yes agreed. There was always a significant performance hit with certain cloud types. Here were a number of similar observations on the official forums (though not enough replies so the threads auto-closed):

Low FPS with certain cloud layer - Bugs & Issues / Install, Performance & Graphics - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

High level clouds absolutely wrecks fps! - Community / General Discussion - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

I'd suggest posting and voting in these threads:

[BUG Reported]: Low FPS Weather (Clouds) in SU5 - Bugs & Issues / Weather - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

Crippled FPS - Specific Cloud Layer?! - Bugs & Issues / Install, Performance & Graphics - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

5 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

At least on my end they still look identical to pre-SU5, and the cockpit still goes dark when entering them.

Asobo acknowledged this was broken in SU5 (where light would still illuminate the external and internal model in / below dense cloud or fog) - looks to be corrected for the most part in the current beta.

 

1 hour ago, aniiran said:

Can anyone show me a picture of a cumulus cloud below a cloud deck and that cloud deck is reaching down to the top of the cumulus cloud? 

Like this?

 

Edited December 30, 20214 yr by DylanM

After xbox version release, msfs visuals have downgraded with every update and i'm sure it will not be as good as anymore before xbox release. 

12 hours ago, KERNEL32 said:

Sorry I am probably one of the very few it seems, but NOT a fan of the clouds in MSFS. I used to be - but Asobo changed them drastically, somewhere around SU2 or SU3. Never been the same since.

The clouds are now ugly and unrealistic, too transparent and there is no "snap" i.e. when going into or out of most clouds it's like a big change i.e. you can see, then you just see all white'ish. That's it. That is what a cloud is. But Asobo seems to think a cloud is some kind of semi-transparent "blobs" where you fly "through" them but can still see the ground (sometimes it will "fade" the ground out gradually as to not upset people so they cannot see the ground I suppose). Getting large "holes" in clouds no true overcast anymore.

Clouds are always the same type now too, just some kind of cumulus-like blobs that are always same height and no matter the temperature we just see these ugly cloud puffs everywhere. 

The best are in DCS now and with better performance. In MSFS they look like ton of … smoke from Independance day movie ;).

1 hour ago, YoYo said:

The best are in DCS now and with better performance. In MSFS they look like ton of … smoke from Independance day movie ;).

Totally agree with that, the DCS clouds are far above, as well as the "light atmosphere" ( washy white color on the horizon). Flying with real weather has become an anime cartoon.

The realism effect of being in a huge sky and realistic is not at all present in MSFS compared to DCS.

"Game of the year" is my biggest disappointment in this area not to mention the rest.

12 hours ago, Ixoye said:

I don't see any major difference between Ultra and High, but the difference in performance is huge, about 8,fps, especially when it is foggy, I have a 2080Ti.

I thought that ‘ultra’ were the best but they are not. I see them more fluffy/slightly blurry in ‘high’ and often ashy solid in ‘ultra’. The pyroclastic-looking clouds are here from the beginning by the way, and not from SU5 or 7, I remember really awful pre-release teaser pics. 

1 hour ago, filou said:

Totally agree with that, the DCS clouds are far above, as well as the "light atmosphere" ( washy white color on the horizon). Flying with real weather has become an anime cartoon.

The realism effect of being in a huge sky and realistic is not at all present in MSFS compared to DCS.

"Game of the year" is my biggest disappointment in this area not to mention the rest.

Sorry I don’t know much about DCS, but does it have METARS and live weather? Otherwise it would be scenario based and more comparable to MSFS Presets maybe.. They certainly look nice, especially their cirrus clouds. If they can do it I am sure MSFS could. Are cirrus in DCS also volumetric?

17 hours ago, ryanbatcund said:

I'm one who prefers METAR because that's what seems to work irl.  You can plan everything off TAF and METAR.  I was also one where flying in the sim wouldn't yield accurate results before they implemented the METAR system.  I

There are two issues or so it seems to me :

- Give the data to prepare a flight. MSFS does a awful  job here and we saw no improvement over the months which is a shame.

- The accuracy of the weather as described by the last METAR vs MB prediction from real data. 

If MSFS would give us the in-game data from departure, en route by layers and arrival, synchronize Atis and windsocks to them,  we could prepare our flights all right without the need to insert METAR in the engine.

Edited December 30, 20214 yr by Dominique_K

57 minutes ago, rayharris108 said:

Sorry I don’t know much about DCS, but does it have METARS and live weather? Otherwise it would be scenario based and more comparable to MSFS Presets maybe.. They certainly look nice, especially their cirrus clouds. If they can do it I am sure MSFS could. Are cirrus in DCS also volumetric?

No real-world wx, yet.  And yes, cirrus clouds are also volumetric, as are contrails.  Dipping through lead's contrail on a crossover is absolutely beautiful.  Tanking while the tanker is punching through the tops is also fantastic looking (though annoying lol.)  Yeah, DCS has clouds figured out. 

Performance if anything has improved in some regards now. 

Clouds from a distance can look quite decent, but the closer you get the worse they look to the point of even generating crude graphical artifacts when flying thru them under certain lighting conditions they are absolute visual showstoppers if ever there was one.  They are not 3D matrices but instead are made by using slices or ribbons, and very few of them to boot, superimposed on each other to generate volume--and it really shows.  It may overall be a performance friendly but it's just destroyed the quality that was there at launch and for a few SU's since.  And I always felt the originals just need a bit more tuning as they were decent already.  But now, I'm hoping they are essentially a placeholder for something visually commensurate with the rest of MSFS.

Here are some shots showing some of this laying of ribbons or slices--somehow they have to fundamentally change this architecture it would seem unless the method they are using allows for radical change in how they are constructed.  I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to use 3D matrices so that from any angles you would never see these quasi-discreet ribbons.  Plus, there are so few of them it really shows poorly from certain angles and lighting.

This one just reminds me of a certain almost blurriness or out of focus quality to clouds in the distance.  I understand clouds aren't discreet objects with clear borders but again these just to me look out of focus or blurry:

Hopefully 2022 will be the year of MEANINGFUL weather improvements. Clouds need a lot of work, at least once the new SU7 weather system bugs are ironed out. 

12 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

Yeah, DCS has clouds figured out. 

That DCS demonstrates it's clearly possible is the good news for MSFS--Go Asobo!!!!

20 hours ago, DylanM said:

Asobo acknowledged this was broken in SU5 (where light would still illuminate the external and internal model in / below dense cloud or fog) - looks to be corrected for the most part in the current beta.

 

Like this?

 

More or less.  Here is the current snowstorm over Minnesota as depicted in live weather.  I doubt it looks anything like that with such cold temperatures. Some clouds get strangely columnar with a floor and a ceiling and a puffy mushroom head.  And when you watch them they rise and then rip apart in the middle.   It's not a question of can the sky look like that.. yes.  It's the fact that it is almost always depicted exactly like this screen shot below:

I did find one real world depiction that looks the same after an eternity of searching:  This a grab from a 757 flying through the clouds. The funny thing is poster wrote these exact words: " The rare opportunity to fly between cloud layers provided this dramatic scene. I've been flying for 49 years and have seen this only a handful of times." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwFsDkUSfJs 

 

But the vast majority look like this:  SPECTACULAR!

Or This..  Mostly the cloud layers don't get entwined and the bottom layer rarely meets the top.

FS clouds look fantastic until you start looking at pictures of real clouds and then you realize how much further we have to go.