Hey all, so something that is really bothering me with P3D is how my clouds look... They just look really flat & outright bad. I've tried both ASCA clouds & REX clouds, same thing on both. Any way to solve this?

Oh, and I inject my weather via P3DWX, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it...

 Here are two examples of what I mean: (1st screenshot is REX clouds, second is ASCA clouds)

 

That is how they are supposed to look.  Keep in mind that these clouds are not volumetric, and are 2D sprites that rely on coloring and shading to appear to be three dimensional.

Agree with Exeodus. He could try volumetric clouds to see if those are more to his liking.

3 hours ago, Travel said:

Hey all, so something that is really bothering me with P3D is how my clouds look... They just look really flat & outright bad. I've tried both ASCA clouds & REX clouds, same thing on both. Any way to solve this?

Oh, and I inject my weather via P3DWX, so I don't know if that has anything to do with it...

 Here are two examples of what I mean: (1st screenshot is REX clouds, second is ASCA clouds)

 

Unfortunately clouds are not flat or correct depicted in P3D.

Aside from that with ASCA there is a disclaimer that if you have EA on (which is not fully compatible) you will not get all the categories of clouds. 

See this please.

 

*Notice: ASCA content is partially compatible with Prepar3D v5’s EA mode (Enhanced Atmospherics).  When using EA mode, only cloud structures and cloud textures will be (optionally) available for depiction from ASCA, and all other graphics categories are replaced by P3D’s internal EA depiction.  When using EA mode with Volumetric Clouds on (slider at any setting other than full left), cloud structures and cloud textures are also replaced by EA mode’s trueSKY depiction.  When not using EA mode at all (Enhanced Atmospherics unchecked), all categories from ASCA are depicted.  

I see, thank you. However, I still don’t believe that my clouds should always look as flat & uggly as they do. This is more or less what I want my clouds and sim to look like: 

In the screenshots above, ASCA clouds were used with EA turned on, so it should be possible to make it look better than mine. I just don’t know how… If anyone would be able to help me make my simulator look similar to the photos shown above it would be appreciated.

 

Regards.

Edited January 9, 20224 yr by Travel

IMHO in P3D with EA on needs work unless there is something I'm also missing.

 

At the same location, altitude etc............

 

EA OFF

 

EA ON

 

Well you either use 2D Clouds (REX or ASCA) or you use TRUE Sky and EA. I only use EA and True Sky with AS as my weather engine only. Depends on what the real world met is reporting. The high level cirrus is sitil not quite right with Vol Clouds but in my simple view Cirrus has more variability and shape change than any other cloud you see because of the impact of high level temp and wind gradients and I do no think this can ever be modelled (firstly the way it is reported the forecast or met report might say Cirrus but it could have anywhere's up to a dozen or more different appearances which is not reported even though the met people may know the cloud and record it separately) 

This is what I see:

Looks fine too me one is off the coast of Morocco the other afternoon and the other is over the French Alps some weeks ago. What I have done - absolutely nothing that is standard EA with Vol Clouds on and set to ultra or its maximum range!.

Two more examples - this a what a low level flight beneath broken cloud off the coast of Australia looked like

On top at FL's of a solid overcast 

Again stock standard EA and True Sky with AS providing the weather input to the sim. 

How about the look of these dynamically lit clouds in my P3D v4.5.

10 hours ago, Vlad Tepes3 said:

IMHO in P3D with EA on needs work unless there is something I'm also missing.

 

At the same location, altitude etc............

 

EA OFF

 

EA ON

 

Interesting results… However, I did try turning EA completely off with the same flat clouds as if it was on. Turning EA on/off seems to make no difference.

On 1/10/2022 at 7:21 AM, Rogen said:

How about the look of these dynamically lit clouds in my P3D v4.5.

I love the look of those! Where can I get them?

Only with Photoshop....i guess

I've given up on a single solution. Having tried different combos it seems sometimes it looks best to me one way, sometimes another. I am usually pretty happy with ASCA dynamic clouds with EA on and Active Sky. Keeping in mind I'm still on v5.2 volumetric clouds remain hit or miss for me... I like to see the wispies ASCA gives me. Sometimes I'll be riding in the car with my wife and I'll comment, "those clouds look really unrealistic." She thinks I'm crazy. (But they really do. Sometimes.)

On 1/29/2022 at 3:42 AM, Travel said:

I love the look of those! Where can I get them?

Check out the below threads by Kiwi_Biplane.

 And this one.

 

 

On 1/29/2022 at 6:29 PM, Whenmaker said:

Only with Photoshop....i guess

Actually the pic is totally dynamic and taken direct from the flight, I took off from 11S and those were the clouds at the time.

The cloud textures themselves are from Rex Texure Direct with Soft Clouds.

And the dynamic lighting is provided by the cloud shader.

Essentually one file change was made, being "Cloud.fx" to provide the pic as was shown.

Cloud.fx is basically just a text file written in the lauguage of shaders, my original Cloud.fx was 672 lines in length.

And the dynamicaly lit version is 1371 lines in length, meaning it performs a lot of extra work for that dynamic lighting output.

Cheers