2 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

.  I had just passed through a low pressure system, just clearing the rain at the warm front.  Behind the aircraft is the low cloud at the warm front.  Ahead the cloud base can be seen rising to a medium overcast and then to a high overcast. 

Warm fronts are way more extended azimuth wise. astute pilots can tell an incoming warm front the day before it arrives. It's not as "condensed" in layering of clouds as in your image since the slope is very shallow.

Maybe a tad bit of confirmation bias?

11 hours ago, fppilot said:

So if clouds are volumetric but look unrealistic and do not include but a small percentage of cloud types that is better?  I prefer something that looks realistic, even if not volumetric, over what lacks realism other than volumetric.  These look like menacing creatures, something out of a video game nearing Halloween.  Time to call in Ghostbusters!

Long way to go.

I can see your point here, the volumetric aspect gets important when very close or going through clouds, but as you say later its all 2d anyway and makes no difference at distance.

Certainly I have seen  XP look more realistic than MSFS in some situations/

Conversely Ive seen some clouds IRL that looked very weird and unreal

This thread is turning into a big joke

1 hour ago, Krakin said:

This thread is turning into a big joke

Indeed. 🙄

4 hours ago, SAS443 said:

Warm fronts are way more extended azimuth wise. astute pilots can tell an incoming warm front the day before it arrives. It's not as "condensed" in layering of clouds as in your image since the slope is very shallow.

Maybe a tad bit of confirmation bias?

The confirmation bias in my post was confirmation I see the good in MSFS as well as the other simulator.  My video didn't show a perfect transition, but a good approximation of one. This video doesn't show perfection either, but its a great attempt in MSFS to show the transition into poorer weather.  The fact you even had to mention confirmation bias in a response to a post clearly stating I appreciate both simulators is rather ironic.

 

4 hours ago, Krakin said:

This thread is turning into a big joke

Indeed, if it wasn't for the rare and precious insight provided by your wonderous interjections it would hardly be worth reading

I think the clouds are great.

I still find myself on occasion looking at real clouds thinking how they look just like MSFS.

Before this thread gets locked. I have had my share of VFR flying through scattered low level cloud  (2000'-4000') and the state of the wispy stratus, stratocumulus and cumulus is pretty darn good! No, not all cloud types are represented in the latest version of this simulator. Does the recent SU10 update bring the cloud perspective/realism to a higher level? Absolutely. Let's keep that glass half full. We are talking about a $60 out of the box flight simulator that gets incredible updates from so many modelling aspects. 

4 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

The confirmation bias in my post was confirmation I see the good in MSFS as well as the other simulator.  My video didn't show a perfect transition, but a good approximation of one. This video doesn't show perfection either, but its a great attempt in MSFS to show the transition into poorer weather.  The fact you even had to mention confirmation bias in a response to a post clearly stating I appreciate both simulators is rather ironic.

 

I was not trying to be ironic. Just trying to say you seem to not understand the concept of warm fronts from a pilot's POV and how they can be distinguished from random cloud layers.

13 minutes ago, SAS443 said:

I was not trying to be ironic. Just trying to say you seem to not understand the concept of warm fronts from a pilot's POV and how they can be distinguished from random cloud layers.

Good grief, I was trying to point out the transition being depicted was from rain to clear skies.  Consider the video shows a large shower, or group of showers, if that helps you get past being pedantic.  Your replies are the irony as the thread is about realism in the simulated clouds, but you are more interested in suggesting simulator bias or ones meteorology knowledge.

On 9/24/2022 at 2:46 AM, fppilot said:

They choose Metroblue long ago as a vendor for live weather, so live weather should not suffer. Why would releasing the relevant portion of an SDK slow anything down?  One might otherwise believe it would speed other elements up.

Like I said, Asobo would need to spend time working on the weather SDK just for Rex and Active Sky, which may take them some time.  Look at Asobo's SDK for planes.  Asobo already had an SDK for planes on the release of MSFS in August of 2020, but it wasn't sophisticated enough for study level airliners in August of 2020.  Asobo then had to spend the next 8 months or so getting the SDK up to speed for the CRJ which was a mid-tier complex plane.  But it appears when the CRJ came out, the SDK still wasn't sophisticated enough for the PMDG 737 and other study level airliners. So Asobo kept working on the SDK. Looks like despite having an SDK for planes on release of August, 2020, to get the SDK up to PMDG's level of standard, it took another 1.5 years of work from Asobo.

What if the weather SDK is much less mature right now than the SDK for planes was back in August of 2020?  Then Asobo needs to spend 2 years working on the weather SDK for Rex and Active Sky. Then once the SDK is mature enough for Rex and Active Sky, Rex and Active Sky also have to work on their product, which may also take a few years. Like I said, we could be waiting until 2027 until we get the weather that you showed in your pictures.

But looking at the progress of live weather in the last several Sim Updates, I think Asobo is making tremendous progress with each Sim Update on live weather.  So I say let Asobo keep doing what they are doing, if they are making a lot of progress with each Sim Update. You may well see many of the pictures of the clouds that you posted, in MSFS, by 2024, if Asobo keeps up the progress they are making.  So we get to your pictures of the clouds in 2024, rather than waiting until 2027 if Asobo has to waste time working on a weather SDK for Rex and Active Sky.

By the way, one last thing you have to consider is performance and FPS.  I take it you are not a professional software developer. In general, the more add-ons  you tack on P3D or XP to enhance the graphics (including enhancing the weather), the slower P3D and XP will run.  The reason is, each add-on like Active Sky, has its own separate architecture, separate of the architecture of the flight simulator.  This is important because if the add-on has its own architecture, and the flight simulator it is being used for has its own architecture, the performance in general is not optimal.  How you get optimal performance is if both are under the same architecture - that is, the weather engine is a part of the flight simulator, under one cohesive architecture.  When it's under the same architecture, then the FPS and performance is more likely to be better.  If you separate the weather engine from the flight simulator though, such as an add-on like Active Sky being used on a flight simulator, the FPS and performance is likely to be worse.  I think Austin also knows about this and XP 12 started to do some stuff in house, like lighting, the 3D trees, etc, rather than letting a 3rd party do it.

So even if Asobo worked on a weather SDK for a 3rd party like Rex and Active Sky, if the final weather engine from Rex and Active Sky is pretty complex, because it is using a separate architecture than MSFS, the FPS and performance will likely be worse. On the other hand, there is a real benefit if the weather engine is done in house at Asobo. Let's say there is a team at Asobo that handles the weather engine, a team that handles the graphics rendering engine, and a team that handles CPU multithreading and other backend resources (I am just making these teams up for illustration purposes, I don't know if Asobo is structured this way for MSFS).  The weather team can talk to the graphics rendering team and both can change their architecture to yield higher FPS. Likewise, the weather team can talk to the CPU multithreading team, and both can make changes to their architecture to get higher FPS in MSFS.  This is the advantage of everything being under one cohesive architecture - everything is consolidated and everything is coherent, which leads to higher FPS and better performance in MSFS.  Generally in software development, if you want better performance, you generally want everything to be under the same cohesive architecture, rather than use two different architectures.  This is another big reason that Asobo should keep live weather in house.

In the end, I want you want (all the cloud pictures you posted), but I also want excellent FPS/performance, and I want to get there faster.  IMO, we get there faster, and we get there with better FPS/performance, if Asobo keeps live weather in house.

 

Edited September 25, 20223 yr by abrams_tank

On 9/23/2022 at 5:36 PM, Bobsk8 said:

Are you using live weather or a  preset, because I am not seeing  what you are stating. ?

Always with live-weather.

On 9/23/2022 at 5:52 PM, mrueedi said:

How do you know? Have you checked against the real weather? As I know that you didn't (how could you?) your remark appears just as unfunded criticism.

It was a known issue and i just made one test after SU10-release and you could see the runway from far away, although the metar was reporting BKN005 and 1000 visibility. 

Sure, you can get amazing screenshots of 2d clouds. That's where it pretty much ends. The magic is gone the moment you introduce movement.

Very good indeed!