Before anyone has a go at me. I am a meteorologist and RW GA pilot. 

My hopes for significant upgrades to the atmosphere and cloud dynamics have been severely dashed after watching the latest MSFS 2024 trailer. All very disappointing if you were wishing for a proper simulation of atmospheric haze/aerosol depiction and convective showers from realistic convective clouds. It is obvious from a meteorologist and RW pilots point of view the devs have very little to no understanding of basic meteorology regardless of the fact that live weather is based on NEMS output. 

1. I have seen little to no evidence of inclusion of atmospheric haze/aerosol density apart from patches of low level mist. Again, the atmosphere has no depth...with almost limitless visibility. For me, this is hugely disappointing as currently the atmosphere in live weather is too clean and never depicts haze.

2. I have seen no evidence of proper convective clouds, towering cumulus or cumulonimbus. In fact, the trailer image of Rio de Janeiro shows a heavy rain shower from a little piddly cumulus cloud just a few hundred (if that!) feet thick. Totally unrealistic. Heavy rain showers have a vertical extent of thousands of feet. Again....very disappointing. 

3. The in cloud lightning shown in the helicopter clip is seemingly produced from a stratiform layer of cloud...again totally unrealistic. Lightning is only produced from vigorous convective clouds...not from relatively stable layered cloud decks. Hugely inaccurate. 

I was really hoping for significant improvements in atmospheric aerosol depiction and proper convective clouds. Sadly, from a trained meteorologists point of view, I have seen little to no evidence of such in the MSFS 2024 trailer. 

We will have to wait and see the release product.  At the moment, ActiveSky has some excellent depictions of visibility/aerosol.

Is this not atmospheric haze? Or is it something else

Edited June 12, 20241 yr by Tuskin38

I can't imagine going over hundreds of posts like this one from here to November if MSFS2024 is finally released on that month 😄

hello guys, i think we have to realize this is not real life , ive been simming since 2001 , what we get now to what we used to get is totally different world , we cant expect perfection its just not possible  

Just now, sonny147 said:

hello guys, i think we have to realize this is not real life , ive been simming since 2001 , what we get now to what we used to get is totally different world , we cant expect perfection its just not possible  

XP12 does a better job with aerosol and haze in the default product, so it is possible to get a more realistic effect.  MSFS with ActiveSky is better in this regard, as are the other weather addons.

I am excited to see what atmospheric improvements we get in MSFS 2024.  There are still 5 months to release, so I don't think we can be too harsh at this stage from a short video.

1 hour ago, sonny147 said:

hello guys, i think we have to realize this is not real life , ive been simming since 2001 , what we get now to what we used to get is totally different world , we cant expect perfection its just not possible  

Yeah he make some valid points but things like rain curtains being produced by low density clouds is a bit of a nitpick and call me crazy but this looks atmospheric as heck to me. 

 

I also don't think live weather is actually being used in the trailer since MS would want to set the scene for each clip as they've always done.

56 minutes ago, Falconjet112 said:

Before anyone has a go at me. I am a meteorologist and RW GA pilot. 

My hopes for significant upgrades to the atmosphere and cloud dynamics have been severely dashed after watching the latest MSFS 2024 trailer. All very disappointing if you were wishing for a proper simulation of atmospheric haze/aerosol depiction and convective showers from realistic convective clouds. It is obvious from a meteorologist and RW pilots point of view the devs have very little to no understanding of basic meteorology regardless of the fact that live weather is based on NEMS output. 

1. I have seen little to no evidence of inclusion of atmospheric haze/aerosol density apart from patches of low level mist. Again, the atmosphere has no depth...with almost limitless visibility. For me, this is hugely disappointing as currently the atmosphere in live weather is too clean and never depicts haze.

2. I have seen no evidence of proper convective clouds, towering cumulus or cumulonimbus. In fact, the trailer image of Rio de Janeiro shows a heavy rain shower from a little piddly cumulus cloud just a few hundred (if that!) feet thick. Totally unrealistic. Heavy rain showers have a vertical extent of thousands of feet. Again....very disappointing. 

3. The in cloud lightning shown in the helicopter clip is seemingly produced from a stratiform layer of cloud...again totally unrealistic. Lightning is only produced from vigorous convective clouds...not from relatively stable layered cloud decks. Hugely inaccurate. 

I was really hoping for significant improvements in atmospheric aerosol depiction and proper convective clouds. Sadly, from a trained meteorologists point of view, I have seen little to no evidence of such in the MSFS 2024 trailer. 

I find the same...  ATC/pilot/NWS observer here.

There's lots to improve on - I hope they can get more cloud types (and not just voxels on voxels clumped together to form a towering cumulus or thinly spaced voxels to make cirrus).  Additionally I want to see dense stratus clouds so I can break out of the bases at the ceiling given on the metar.  Typically once you're in a cloud in msfs 2020, you can see through to the ground.  I shot an approach into KCRQ earlier and the bases were reported as OVC004 and 1SM vis.  I had the field about 4 miles out and 1000 ft or so higher.  With a consistent marine layer found in SoCal it was kinda a bummer to break out way early.  

There are a few times where 2020 can look quite realistic with its clouds... but mostly from a distance - near clouds are far too transparent especially in live weather (you can take more realistic screenshots in custom weather mode and control the density of the clouds etc).  The clouds in 2020 are still nicer than xp12.  Though I think the atmosphere in xp12 can surpass 2020.  It does appear Asobo have changed the atmosphere in 2024 and I believe its for the better.

29 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

 MSFS with ActiveSky is better in this regard, as are the other weather addons.

Right so this means it's at least in the core weather engine in MSFS 2020, but live weather is not using it as well as it could (likely due to insufficient or badly blended data with METAR).

And re: the OP, can't really come to any conclusions about weather based on a 2 minute trailer that was not showcasing weather. And absence of something in that trailer doesn't obviously mean it won't be in the sim. We might not know the full story until they do a specific deep dive on weather. They've said very little about weather improvements in v2024 except this bit (https://youtu.be/VPhScg_FINE?t=1146 "improve storms, simulate supercells & tornadoes, etc"). Hopefully they at least reveal more than that at this year's FS Expo.

And as Krakin said for all their trailers they always use manual weather and time of day to get the scene as they want it (otherwise it'd be live weather whenever they are recording the scene which is not practical). So whatever positives or negatives we were inferring on the other threads about the clouds really don't apply to live weather either very likely, come to think of it.
 

Edited June 12, 20241 yr by lwt1971

1 hour ago, Falconjet112 said:

1. I have seen little to no evidence of inclusion of atmospheric haze/aerosol density apart from patches of low level mist. Again, the atmosphere has no depth...with almost limitless visibility. For me, this is hugely disappointing as currently the atmosphere in live weather is too clean and never depicts haze.

This one is a major pain point for me. I am surprised people do not find it extremely immersion breaker. 

As i said on MSFS forums, fly in a place like India, where visibility is very rarely goes above 10km. You can see how the areas with metar coverage are a point of haze, and everywhere else is unlimited visibility. You can actually spot where airports are just by seeing a dot of patch fog. 

I'm convinced many people would even find real life weather unrealistic.....

42 minutes ago, sonny147 said:

hello guys, i think we have to realize this is not real life , ive been simming since 2001 , what we get now to what we used to get is totally different world , we cant expect perfection its just not possible  

Well, P3D + ActiveSky (way back in 2018) was pretty close to perfection in that one aspect, better than MSFS2020 is today with regard to visibility/aerosols.

I wouldn't put to much stock in a couple of trailers.  I expect MSFS2024 to be a step up in visibility depiction and we'll know more as time goes on.

Maybe there is a bit of confusion out there, with high expectations from a meteorologist and RW GA pilot? 

I have not seen any mention that FS2024 is a meteorological site, that shows a proper simulation of genuine weather, and it should be very obvious, as posted above by lwt1971 that what we have seen is only a 2 minute trailer that showcased a video game, and not a meteorological program.

46 minutes ago, Krakin said:

... this looks atmospheric as heck to me. 

 

 

To me that looks like a scene from a Disney movie. It doesn't look realistic at all.

 

1 hour ago, Falconjet112 said:

I was really hoping for significant improvements in atmospheric aerosol depiction and proper convective clouds. Sadly, from a trained meteorologists point of view, I have seen little to no evidence of such in the MSFS 2024 trailer. 

Agreed 100% with everything you said. People been screaming about weather and clouds since 2020. Typical Jorg probably has no clue it’s an issue and Asobo just stuck their collective head in the sand. 

Edited June 12, 20241 yr by B777ER