I rarely desire Wx stuff but would mostly appreciate a cool looking Cirrus cloud layer.

Am I wrong?

ns

You are wrong.  Most of us prefer to see only cumulus clouds since they are obviously the prettiest.

Cirrus would be nice in addition to Altostratus, Altocumulus, Cirrocumulus, Stratocumulus. But the makers of MSFS only know Cumulus and Cumulonimbus and maybe, if I am generous Stratus....

The cloud types need A LOT of improvements....

At least we have popcorn clouds in clear skies….

Edited March 18, 20224 yr by RaptyrOne

Even without the Cirrus you gotta admit that MSFS really gets the clouds right sometimes.

ns

2 minutes ago, bean_sprout said:

Even without the Cirrus you gotta admit that MSFS really gets the clouds right sometimes.

ns

Not anymore, no.

Where I fly the clouds are generally gorgeous. Better than where I live. lol

ns

2 hours ago, bean_sprout said:

I rarely desire Wx stuff but would mostly appreciate a cool looking Cirrus cloud layer.

Am I wrong?

ns

I agree you are not wrong 🙂

Rex Weatherforce gets the closest...

 

Edited March 18, 20224 yr by MrBitstFlyer

40 minutes ago, KERNEL32 said:

43 minutes ago, bean_sprout said:

Even without the Cirrus you gotta admit that MSFS really gets the clouds right sometimes.

ns

Not anymore, no.

LOL - I tend to agree.  There are occasions, if the real sky only has cumulus in it, when MSFS looks good.  However, the complete absence of other cloud types tends to make the sky bland in many cases.  To give MSFS weather some credit, it does lighting and haze very well which does lead to some great looking skies.

Quite often I load MSFS and just go straight to Rex Weatherforce to get a more believable looking sky - those occasions where there should be several layers of different clouds but Live Weather can only really portray one level - other levels are often nothing more than very transparent flat cumulus things trying to be Stratus, Altostratus, Cirrostratus or cirrus.

Probably showery weather is the best portrayed by Live Weather because of the rain sheets interacting with the lighting.  MS/Asobo have promised weather upgrades and some surprises this year, so I'm hoping for cloud improvements (ahem MS- volcanic ash pixelated cumulus!), different cloud types and a visibility slider.

It will look nice in the end,

ns

Rex WeatherForce does indeed offer stunning skies and much more variety in cloud layers, often accurate enough to my liking. That is when and if I am lucky enough to be away from my screen when the darn transitions break the whole thing 😕 

Cheers.

2Low2Slow

Can agree with that sentiment. There used to be good attempts at stratus layers, but somehow that disappeared since SU5. Good idea if they could reinstate high stratus and cirro-stratus OVC, However I do feel at a basic level weather depiction and accuracy has dramatically improved even if cloud types are lacking. I've seen up to four layers of clouds at times though and  that can look fairly spectacular. At other times (I'm looking at you popcorn!) it's ridiculous.

On a related and equally frustrating subject I really cannot stand the snow depiction - where it is very low resolution and where water bodies automatically freeze. There could easily be a snow line slider or better res coverage. Water bodies rarely freeze outside Canada, Siberia, Baltic, Antarctic and Alaska. And of course all taxiways and runways cleared of snow. 

I live in hope... 

For now those pixelated clouds are really annoying and immersion killer. Hope ll be fixed... With Rex weather are there pixelated clouds? 

2 hours ago, rayharris108 said:

Water bodies rarely freeze outside Canada, Siberia, Baltic, Antarctic and Alaska.

Having lived in the Finger Lakes region of New York for decades, I can assure you that they freeze in the northern US as well, although in a few decades more that may well not be the case.

In reading this thread, it seemed that contributors were referring to different sims and/or different versions. Just for fun, I used badbadweather.com to identify a few airports where there was heavy snow/rain going on with poor visibilities this morning. The native MSFS Real Weather depiction seemed (to me at least) significantly better than that of WF in those cases. WF did not produce precipitation, which was surprising I also pulled a few airports off of skyvector.com looking at clear conditions where WF just went with totally clear skies. Real Weather provided a depiction with highly scattered clouds, that were consistent with a CLR report (less than 1/8 cloud coverage). In the intermediate case of scattered or broken clouds with multilayers, both weather engines seemed to provide reasonable depictions that looked different, but neither seemed superior. 

I am unaware of any weather prediction model that provides reports of cloud types. METARS only report significant cumulous cloud formations of various subtypes, but I'm not sure if automated stations are capable of producing these reliably. It may be asking a lot of desktop flight sim systems to accurately depict these ephemeral atmospheric phenomena, but maybe it would be nice if the cloud types were more diverse than they are now.