23 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

I would consider doing a reinstall of MSFS. I my experience weather is working well and corresponds well with weather forecasts. 

True here as well.

On 7/26/2022 at 3:39 PM, Mace said:

You know, where you fly thru actual THICK clouds to where it whites you out for second or two.

This happens to me right now in SU9 and did just the other day and for much more than a second or two, if by 'whites you out' you mean can't see anything out the glass by cloud at point-blank range.

19 minutes ago, KERNEL32 said:

What I think would be interesting is if Asobo could actually confirm that they made no changes to the clouds themselves in SU10, but instead only the layers system. Layers yes, but I see NO difference in the clouds themselves in SU10 versus SU9 or anything back to SU3.And what I mean by the no difference is the clouds generated shapes (still oddball strange puffs and especially the higher clouds), all cumulus puffs, mostly all transparent when close, see through to the ground overcast as you climb up through them, and mostly the same white color - then when they are dark they are really dark and look like ash or something. Something has always been off with the clouds since they changed them for xbox or performance changes since SU3. At release they were fantastic!

 

Before SU10 I would have agreed with you 100%, but wouldn't agree with you at all with SU10.  Clouds are more solid, have greater variety and are more solid.  Yes, a way to go yet, but the clouds have improved greatly.  For example, this image on the ground at Faroe.  MSFS is doing a much better job of layered types of cloud.

This anvil type cloud is solid and not made up of many cumulus puffs.

This shot shows the progress well.  A mid layer of stratus type cloud with an undulating top is over a lower cumulus layer - the cumulus layer itself looks like it has embedded stratus too..  However, those cumulus are hidden by the layer of stratus into the distance.  Top left you can see a high layer.

I just ran across this video and it made me realize that some of the things I didn't like in MSFS are true to life.

Like the haze. Looks like they duplicated the stuff in the video pretty well.

At right around the 2 minute mark for a minute or so, the clouds look exactly like they do in MSFS.

 

 

1 minute ago, MDFlier said:

I just ran across this video and it made me realize that some of the things I didn't like in MSFS are true to life.

Why I have only been watching this thread from afar, recently. I'm struck with the realization that we here would probably identify many many many perfectly fine pictures of real life clouds as "fake looking".

4 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

At right around the 2 minute mark for a minute or so, the clouds look exactly like they do in MSFS.

They certainly do!

I think all of the scenery throughout the entire approach looks just like MSFS.

16 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

At right around the 2 minute mark for a minute or so, the clouds look exactly like they do in MSFS.

I agree, but what is not shown is the plane moving through the clouds. At MSFS release they actually had it down and it looked great. There was a great sense of motion and the lighting inside and through the clouds was very realistic. The clouds had "density" and were opaque. For whatever reason they took that away and changed the lighting too after SU3. As it is now, the clouds are all very "large" and there is no sense of motion. It's like they are just large fog blobs maybe?

A look at this real world video shows we're getting much closer, but I think if Asobo can make tweaks to make the clouds more opaque and add some variation and it's hard to explain but the video shows good variation (and no it's not always like that in real world either, sometimes clouds are all the same level and type etc. So nature is really hard to replicate! But I don't think any of us would hold it to Asobo if they threw in some "randomness" to create unforgettable and unique scenes as we ascend, cruise and descend to our virtual locations.

 

 

Edited July 27, 20223 yr by KERNEL32

They'll get there. I think they just need to sort out the METAR blending between stations to get the transitions right before they can get to making the clouds better. 'm assuming that they need the current conditions to determine which cloud types are appropriate for the area.

10 minutes ago, KERNEL32 said:

As it is now, the clouds are all very "large"

MSFS seem to be making daily progress with the clouds - this flying over Iceland.  Many different cloud types at differing levels, rain falling and amazing lighting!

I think ultimately the problem comes down to low resolution and that for performance reasons of course.  Cloud rendering in MSFS seems to start with relative flat matrixes/grids, layered sheets of them, as it were.  Those are tweaked to give a sense of depth.   I would have thought volumetric clouds would actually be 3-dimensional densities of particles, like RW clouds, but that does not seem to be the case and I have to guess the performance hit was beyond the capabilities of current hardware and software for this method of cloud rendering.   So we have instead these essentially 3D appearing clouds made with 2D plates, tweaked to give each plate some thickness as it were.  Seems like it could be especially difficult to create realistic shapes with this rendering model, but as I say it may be the best we can do at this point in time.  I think there's more tuning ahead for sure, but ultimately I think we will not get to truly realistic cloud depiction, at least up close.  Distance solves alot of this and perhaps Asobo can use, or is starting to use an algorithm that says the closer one gets to clouds the more density is allowed, and out in the distance where it matters much less they can continue the current low resolution modeling.  

10 minutes ago, KERNEL32 said:

As it is now, the clouds are all very "large"

MSFS seem to be making daily progress with the clouds - this flying over Iceland.  Many different cloud types at differing levels, rain falling and amazing lighting!

Back when I was doing my instrument rating -

When the sim can achieve this, I can safely say we've made it.

22 minutes ago, Noel said:

I would have thought volumetric clouds would actually be 3-dimensional densities of particles, like RW clouds, but that does not seem to be the case and I have to guess the performance hit was beyond the capabilities of current hardware and software for this method of cloud rendering.   So we have instead these essentially 3D appearing clouds made with 2D plates

They are 3D and truly volumetric. They develop dynamically according to the weather data, built from voxels, which are 3D units of data (essentially 3D pixels). If they weren't 3D, they wouldn't work. Light scatters and bounces around, across and within them as realistically as possible, with real-world light physics. Again, if they weren't 3D structures, that wouldn't work.

Realistic volumetric cloud rendering is performance heavy, though, and there are indeed limitations with current hardware.

You will see a "low resolution/pixelated" appearance in attempts at volumetric cloud rendering in other games, but usually far worse than you see in MSFS. Asobo are doing wonders with their engine.

Entirely realistic clouds, however, are not within the reach of current real-time rendering.

2 hours ago, MNORM said:

Unfortunately I don't see how the weather is progressing when the only way you can get it consistently is to create it yourself. 

Monday I did a 4 hour flight in the US with great real weather.

Yesterday, I did two one hour flights (after full computer restarts) and zero clouds.  It makes no sense.  I've tried changing servers, restarting MSMS, selecting Live Weather AFTER loading the flight...…nothing seems to work.  It's getting rather annoying and I feel like this is a situation that maybe only I'm experiencing after reading all the great things others are posting.

Should I just reinstall the program?  I never had this problem with HiFi products using FS9 or FSX going back 10+ years.

When you load in the airport to start the flight press the cloud button on the top bar and then press metar and check if there is a metar for that airport. MSFS shows no metar if the metar is outdated for a couple of hours and you'll have the wrong weather. If it shows a metar you usually, in my experience, have the correct weather. But also depends on where you are flying. MYNN is one problematic airport and right now, even with the metar showing SCT025 there are no clouds at all. I was getting the correct weather there for the last couple of days though, but now I'm not again. I get the correct wind but no clouds at all.

Edited July 28, 20223 yr by Alvega