Morning all. Despite following online recommendations to fix pixelated clouds i still have this issue no matter what i do. Hopefully someone has an idea. My sim looks amazing and smooth but the clouds look really bad sometimes. I wonder if its my monitor at this point !!! Cheers and thanks in advance.

https://imgur.com/a/LNB2Ywv

 

While those images are too compressed to see properly, this "pixelation" we see is visibility of the voxels making up the volumetric clouds. The extent to which voxels become noticeable will vary according to the lighting conditions and, I believe (and demonstrated, a long time ago), the complexity and performance impact of the current rendering scenario; the voxels are larger, therefore more noticeable, when more is happening on screen as part of an adaptive process to limit negative impact on performance.

Edited February 17, 20233 yr by March Hare

42 minutes ago, ZMLM79 said:

Morning all. Despite following online recommendations to fix pixelated clouds i still have this issue no matter what i do. Hopefully someone has an idea. My sim looks amazing and smooth but the clouds look really bad sometimes. I wonder if its my monitor at this point !!! Cheers and thanks in advance.

https://imgur.com/a/LNB2Ywv

 

It's probably not your monitor, the graphical fidelity of the Clouds was reduced in SU5 which is when this pixelation issue first arose. An update (I forget which one) thereafter did improve the situation but not back to how good they were pre-SU5, it's much more evident in VR.

Using TAA as opposed to DLSS seems to improve it a bit for me and I believe turning film grain off in the cfg can help too.

The clouds are nowhere near as good as they used to be though.

Thanks all. So this is an expected behaviour. Good to know 🙂

Also i have the feeling that it varies from user to user. Some have better clouds than others even when running on lower specs

4 hours ago, ZMLM79 said:

Also i have the feeling that it varies from user to user. Some have better clouds than others even when running on lower specs

Any kind of sharpening algorithm makes this worse.

These are my in game settings. maybe you guys can spot something

 

https://imgur.com/a/uCgwrBd

1 hour ago, ZMLM79 said:

These are my in game settings. maybe you guys can spot something

https://imgur.com/a/uCgwrBd

Try this:

Locate your file called UserCfg.opt and make a copy.

(MS Store users: %LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\UserCfg.opt)
(Steam users: %appdata%Microsoft Flight Simulator\UserCfg.opt)

Open the file in a text editor program like Notepad++
Find the following section of text:

    {PostProcess
        Enabled 1
        EyeAdaptation 0
        ColorGrading 0
        Sharpen 1
        Fringe 1
        LensDistortion 0
        Dirt 1
        LensFlare 1
        FilmGrain 1
        Vignette 0
        LensBlurMultiplier 1.000000
        FringeMultiplier 1.000000

 

Change the values of Sharpen, Fringe, FilmGrain to '0'
(Personally, I turn off all MSFS post processes except for the lines called Dirt and LensFlare)

 

If you are a VR user, you will need to repeat this process for an identical piece of text, but is repeated under the section:

{GraphicsVR
    Version 1.1.0
    Preset VRDefault

Also, consider turning your setting for Volumetric Clouds down from 'Ultra' to 'High'.
It gives your GPU some more overhead and I don't think it makes a noticeable difference to clouds on a 2K (or smaller) monitor like yours.

Let us know if that helps.

Theres nothing you can do about it. Its just how they are when the light hits them at certain angles/ time of day.  

Thanks. i will give it a go. Cheers

12 hours ago, F737MAX said:

Try this:

Locate your file called UserCfg.opt and make a copy.

(MS Store users: %LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\UserCfg.opt)
(Steam users: %appdata%Microsoft Flight Simulator\UserCfg.opt)

Open the file in a text editor program like Notepad++
Find the following section of text:

    {PostProcess
        Enabled 1
        EyeAdaptation 0
        ColorGrading 0
        Sharpen 1
        Fringe 1
        LensDistortion 0
        Dirt 1
        LensFlare 1
        FilmGrain 1
        Vignette 0
        LensBlurMultiplier 1.000000
        FringeMultiplier 1.000000

 

Change the values of Sharpen, Fringe, FilmGrain to '0'
(Personally, I turn off all MSFS post processes except for the lines called Dirt and LensFlare)

 

If you are a VR user, you will need to repeat this process for an identical piece of text, but is repeated under the section:

{GraphicsVR
    Version 1.1.0
    Preset VRDefault

Also, consider turning your setting for Volumetric Clouds down from 'Ultra' to 'High'.
It gives your GPU some more overhead and I don't think it makes a noticeable difference to clouds on a 2K (or smaller) monitor like yours.

Let us know if that helps.

+1 for that suggestion.  It can certainly help in some cases and you can always change them back if you don't like the result.

On 2/17/2023 at 11:41 AM, ZMLM79 said:

Also i have the feeling that it varies from user to user. Some have better clouds than others even when running on lower specs

I am a user that has not seen pixelated clouds for a while.
Running 8700K and a 1080ti.

9 hours ago, tgsweat said:

Theres nothing you can do about it. Its just how they are when the light hits them at certain angles/ time of day.

Maybe this.

 

Edited February 18, 20233 yr by bvdboomen

On 2/17/2023 at 6:24 PM, F737MAX said:

Try this:

Locate your file called UserCfg.opt and make a copy.

(MS Store users: %LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\UserCfg.opt)
(Steam users: %appdata%Microsoft Flight Simulator\UserCfg.opt)

Open the file in a text editor program like Notepad++
Find the following section of text:

    {PostProcess
        Enabled 1
        EyeAdaptation 0
        ColorGrading 0
        Sharpen 1
        Fringe 1
        LensDistortion 0
        Dirt 1
        LensFlare 1
        FilmGrain 1
        Vignette 0
        LensBlurMultiplier 1.000000
        FringeMultiplier 1.000000

 

Change the values of Sharpen, Fringe, FilmGrain to '0'
(Personally, I turn off all MSFS post processes except for the lines called Dirt and LensFlare)

 

If you are a VR user, you will need to repeat this process for an identical piece of text, but is repeated under the section:

{GraphicsVR
    Version 1.1.0
    Preset VRDefault

Also, consider turning your setting for Volumetric Clouds down from 'Ultra' to 'High'.
It gives your GPU some more overhead and I don't think it makes a noticeable difference to clouds on a 2K (or smaller) monitor like yours.

Let us know if that helps.

Thank you greatly for this post!

This totally transformed the look of my clouds!

I would suggest everyone try this it worked miracles for me. (Of course make a backup of your .cfg file)