Another month another MSFS clouds debate 🤣

36 minutes ago, Bobsk8 said:

Here are all the cloud types in the real world. 

 

Cirrus (Ci) Detached clouds in the form of white, delicate filaments, mostly in patches or narrow bands. ...
Cirrocumulus (Cc) ...
Cirrostratus (Cs) ...
Altocumulus (Ac) ...
Altostratus (As) ...
Nimbostratus (Ns) ...
Cumulus (Cu) ...
Cumulonimbus (Cb)

 

+ Regular Stratus (st, also known as "fog clouds")

Those you usually see in wintertimes due to snow covered and cold surface making it impossible for convective clouds to form, at least around here at 60degrees north

Depicted alright in MSFS if you create a large spread, thin cloud layer.

I am sorry but I just don't know don't know how any anyone can say this looks good or realistic.

1 hour ago, abennett said:

I am sorry but I just don't know don't know how any anyone can say this looks good or realistic.

No one has said that specific example looks good.

Not all clouds in the sim look like that.

Edited December 12, 20232 yr by Tuskin38

Yup not all clouds look like volcanic ash and it happens less than all the times they do look normal.. also good to keep in mind what Seb said about this particular issue on an earlier Q&A below. Bottom line, it comes down to light scattering/reflections processing and how much of that to do vs being mindful of performance (and also I think the effect is more pronounced when the sun is lower/closer to the horizon?). With the overall performance improvements coming in v2024 along with weather re-write, let's see if they're able to improve this particular issue.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/live-dev-q-a-april-27th-2022/516747

Forum question – There are complaints about clouds looking too dark at high altitude, can you adjust the clouds shading to reduce the volcanic ash look?

Seb – I can confirm, it’s been brought up a lot. In a lot of occasion, clouds look great and sometimes it’s looks like you’re flying over a volcano. I spent about 2 weeks on it, I try to change the brightness and the problem is that with dynamic lighting whenever you make something twice as bright in the sim it doesn’t twice as bright at all. In order to have the ash effect go away, I turned the clouds ten times brighter and then in so many occasions there were over exposed.

With real clouds, light goes in and it scatters around and get reflected and comes back out. There’s more energy conserved in cloud than in ash. There’s a little more occlusion and energy taken away because it’s darker. To get the formula right with our cloud system (which is fully 3D), we need to have perfect shadow casting internally of clouds but that would cost a lot of computational power. For the amount of performance, we dedicate to clouds right we get the quality we have right now and it works well in many occasion but when the system is a bit complex it just gets the lighting wrong.

As Martial said, it’s a system, if we do an overhaul of the system at some point and invest more performance into clouds, we can probably get this better but it’s more complicated than just adjusting the brightness.
 

Edited December 12, 20232 yr by lwt1971

2 hours ago, abennett said:

I am sorry but I just don't know don't know how any anyone can say this looks good or realistic.

From when is that screenshot (I mean which version of the sim does it show)? And, how long did you have to search for it?

And again, the color is not unrealistic. Depending on countless conditions, clouds can have exactly this color.

2 hours ago, abennett said:

I am sorry but I just don't know don't know how any anyone can say this looks good or realistic.

Can you tell us where you took that screenshot and the precise conditions so that we can try to reproduce it please ?

Took it just as I posted it. Flight from EGLL to EGPH with live weather. So about 3 hours ago.

I'm sorry but I'd take volcanic ash clouds over xEnviro's blue sheep wool any day!

Someone tell farmer Joe to clean his wool clippings off the terrain, because the visuals are simply...bahahahaahd!🤣

Edited December 12, 20232 yr by blueshark747

6 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

Here are all the cloud types in the real world. 

 

Cirrus (Ci) Detached clouds in the form of white, delicate filaments, mostly in patches or narrow bands. ...
Cirrocumulus (Cc) ...
Cirrostratus (Cs) ...
Altocumulus (Ac) ...
Altostratus (As) ...
Nimbostratus (Ns) ...
Cumulus (Cu) ...
Cumulonimbus (Cb)

 

Cumulus itself has four subtypes - congestus, fractus, humilis, and mediocris.  There are ten main cloud types, which are further divided into 27 sub-types according to their height shape, colour and associated weather.

xEnviro live weather will render more cloudtypes than MSFS live weather.  xEnviro will layer and display those clouds in more realistic fashion.  MSFS live weather is great, but xEnviro beats it if cloud depiction is the main concern.

xEnviro is not for everyone because of its global weather model, but if that is not a deal breaker  then xEnviro is an excellent weather alternative.

On 12/11/2023 at 1:36 PM, lwt1971 said:

we take for granted just how much fidelity we now get in the default base sim, from scenery and world depiction, to avionics, to aircraft, etc et

Hehe.  Speak for yourself. 😉 Every time I load this freaking sim I think back to little-kid me, playing the Sublogic flight sim and thinking it was the most amazing thing ever, having no idea what was in store for me in the future. Almost makes the creaky knees and receding hairline worth it. 😉

 

4 hours ago, blueshark747 said:

I'm sorry but I'd take volcanic ash clouds over xEnviro's blue sheep wool any day!

Someone tell farmer Joe to clean his wool clippings off the terrain, because the visuals are simply...bahahahaahd!🤣

🤣🤣🤣

22 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

🤣🤣🤣

🤣😂

12 hours ago, eslader said:

Hehe.  Speak for yourself. 😉 Every time I load this freaking sim I think back to little-kid me, playing the Sublogic flight sim and thinking it was the most amazing thing ever, having no idea what was in store for me in the future. Almost makes the creaky knees and receding hairline worth it. 😉

 

Right there with you 🙂.. started with Sublogic FS II on the Commodore 64 as a kid, when its big advance in tech was to go from wireframe 3D to solidly-filled-multi-color 3D lol. It def was amazing for the time.
 

Would you rather have a 1 frame every 5 seconds slideshow or 'not quite realistic' clouds? Clouds are continuous soft and subtle gradients of light and hue. It doesn't take much to imagine how much computing power it would take to render that 'accurately' in real time and the limitations of the color palette on a computer to even be able to do it as you may like. Even photos of clouds tend to not look as great as your eye saw them due to the limitations of computer graphics.

Edited December 13, 20232 yr by rjquick
Typo