35 minutes ago, Ridvan Celik said:

Very good indeed!

Very nice picture.

It would be great if MSFS could make clouds like that.  😏

3 hours ago, abrams_tank said:

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.

 

Good grief!  I am beginning to understand!  Good Grief!  Just good grief!

11 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

Very nice picture.

It would be great if MSFS could make clouds like that.  😏

I was thinking the same thing too as I trailed behind the 320 in a chase plane 😆

Edited September 25, 20223 yr by Ridvan Celik

28 minutes ago, fppilot said:

Good grief!  I am beginning to understand!  Good Grief!  Just good grief!

No problem. If you're not from a software development background, it's harder to understand the process and difficulties that Asobo goes through.  But at least you kind of get the rough idea now.

We want live weather with all sorts of variation of clouds, and we also want high FPS 🤣.  We customers are so demanding 🤣

.

I just saw this picture in r/flightsim on Reddit. One is a real photo, the other is MSFS with live weather (I'll let you guess which one is real and which one is MSFS):

Live weather in MSFS is pretty impressive at times, IMO.

Edited September 26, 20223 yr by abrams_tank

That's not hard to guess. The upper one is real.

On 9/25/2022 at 7:06 AM, Kopteeni said:

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.

It was so cute watching the little 2d cloud textures do the nimbus woozy spin once close up in FSX/P3D🤣

The bottom one is MSFS

and the top one is XP12...:D

(I'll get my coat)

 

Can't get enough of it...

 

4 hours ago, Konterhalbe said:

Can't get enough of it...

I know, it's... splendiferous 😋

Edited September 26, 20223 yr by Cpt_Piett

On 9/23/2022 at 9:48 PM, fppilot said:

Mentioning a successful developer does not justify such twisting.  I badly want volumetric clouds as well.  But I want them to be realistic.  Volumetric for the sake of bragging volumetric is nothing until all cloud types are rendered, in realistic color, shape and with each type rendered at reported and appropriate altitudes.  That is clearly not the current state and Silicus summarized that very well a couple of pages back in this topic.  Until then I would take realistic  2D over unrealistic 3D, but I do not have that choice. I would welcome that choice in the interim

 

I'm jumping in here to say ... sorry, but this is nuts. 

The "current state" is so mind-bogglingly beyond what we had with REX and 2D billboards it's almost difficult to explain to a non-programmer what we're talking about here.

I'm a real life CP/ME/IA who has found himself a senior software engineer.

This stuff blows my mind at how complex it is.

And it's not just about "bragging rights".  It feels right when you fly through it.  That's all that matters, right?

Hats off to Asobo for the current state of what we have and we're only going up from here!

Edited September 27, 20223 yr by Gulfstream

I myself am not hunting for realism, weather it be clouds or anything else in the sim. If it's looking convincing to me than I'm happy.
And all of MSFS is looking very convincing to me.

10 hours ago, Konterhalbe said:

Can't get enough of it...

same

 

Loving it too. Approaching Key West.

 

Edited September 27, 20223 yr by Alvega

On 9/23/2022 at 6:48 PM, fppilot said:

  I badly want volumetric clouds as well.  But I want them to be realistic.  Volumetric for the sake of bragging volumetric is nothing until all cloud types are rendered,

I would have to disagree here.  If it's a choice between volumetric clouds or perfectly shaped clouds, the more realistic option from a simulation standpoint is the volumetric aspect. 

It really doesn't matter what clouds look like, in terms of shape. That's just eye candy.  Clouds in level D sims... I think you might not believe how bad they'd look to you.   ;)  But they are volumetric... because the experience of flying in and around weather with continually changing visibility and the visual illusions and disorientation that creates, when breaking out near mins in low light, that has to be correct for the experience to have actual simulation value. 

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with wanting pretty clouds, we all do. But you can't claim that volumetric clouds are less realistic in a simulator than even the most perfectly shaped 2d clouds. They just can't be