One of the issues I have with the current MSFS clouds is that they sometimes look like ash clouds instead of clouds. I've always thought if they adjusted contrast level/brightness/luminosity values, they could be much better. Recently, in the screen shoot forum, @Alaska738 posted some great screenshots of his flight. One of them was a perfect example (at least to me) of the clouds looking too much like ash. So, I dragged it into photoshop and applied a curve to the image which lifted the tonal values of the blacks and 3/4 tones of the image. I feel just by making that quick adjustment, they look so much more believable. I know programming is hard and it's not as simple as a quick adjustment as it is in photoshop. But, maybe it is? Here's the difference.

ORIGINAL

NEW

What do you guys think? 

I think it looks better, the NEW.

Thanks! Yeap the second pic is better and more realistic! Hopefully this will be improved in the next sim update? 😉 

Don't like the adjusted picture as there is no contrast to the image - the shadows have almost gone.  I agree the current clouds look like ash in some circumstances, but the answer isn't to get rid of shadows.

Doing clouds, on a budget, is very likely a very tricky task to get right.   

Adjusted pic looks more real. Shadows are subtler so more suitable for water vapour, and not, erm, ash.

1 hour ago, Bdub22 said:

What do you guys think? 

Much better! The shading in MSFS is dependent on cloud density. If you set low density they are too light - set high density and they resemble ash or dark cotton wool. As with many Asobo things, exaggeration seems to be preferred from nuanced variation.

You can easily tone down the volcanic ash clouds by selecting the Cloud icon, available for selection from the top bar while in flight. This will give you the Weather and Time window, which unsurprisingly is exactly the same window available in the World map when setting your flight. The difference is that you can change details in this window while in flight and actually see the results in real time. What may be less obvious is that if you mouse select a specific layer of cloud on the left of the window, another (different) menu pops up on the right. Included in that menu is a 'density' option.  Playing with this density slider, you can choose your cloud layer to be light and white or heavy and volcanic and many happier places in between.  And you don't have to use photoshop. 🙂 

Hope that helps someone. 

Cheers

Terry     

7 hours ago, Kyuss said:

I must be doing something wrong because I've never seen the clouds look anything close to the first pic on my setup with clouds set to high in the options. They've never looked as bad as the second pic even.

Maybe not on ultra then?  If you reduce clouds from ultra they do have less 'components', so they can look smoother.

I agree with the OP anyway.  This 'grey ash cloud' issue has been talked about for a long time.  They really do look like volcanic ash clouds in certain conditions.  
Certainly Asobo could look at making them whiter, and also reducing the granularity so that they look a bit smoother.

Along with the cirrus patterns, I expected them to update the clouds with a big fanfare, as a few months ago, they said we were going to love the upcoming changes to the weather they were making - I haven't seen that yet.

2 hours ago, Lord Farringdon said:

You can easily tone down the volcanic ash clouds by selecting the Cloud icon, available for selection from the top bar while in flight.

How does that work with Live Weather?

1 hour ago, SubtotalGuide said:

How does that work with Live Weather?

It doesn't.  It's easy to get amazing screenshots with custom weather - I do it all the time lol.  But sometimes "live" weather offers some of the most natural scenes - unless you have the volcanic ash look 😞

I use reshade with several custom settings. It takes ages to tune it but eventually you can eliminate the over-bright clouds and balance them with the over-dark cockpits so you get a reasonable balance between the two. Has anyone noticed that if you delete a wind layer so there are none you cannot then create a new wind layer, for which there is an option, but it doesn't work. You have to reload a set piece cloud scenario over again. Several updates ago you could create a new wind layer from any existing weather preset after you deleted an existing one.

Edited March 23, 20224 yr by robert young