Before MSFS 2024 came out, I had assumed that I would upgrade to it shortly after launch - perhaps a month or two. I've got 2020 working really nicely at the moment, and so wasn't in a rush to hurry over on day one. After the tough launch last month I thought it best to wait it out a little longer than I'd expected.

But since then, I'm looking at the videos and screenshots from 2024 and I can't help but feel that the cloud atmospherics are a step down from what we have in 2020, and a huge step down from where we started in 2020 pre-SU5. I have yet to see examples of the newly improved low visibility mist/fog so I can't judge that part yet, but I'm interested to hear what others think about the clouds?

From what I've seen/heard, the following things are definite improvements:

• In-cloud turbulence is improved in live weather now (although I already have that solved with realTurb in 2020).
• The close-up voxel modeling of clouds looks to be improved, with better breakout of clouds etc on the videos I've seen.
• Volcanic ash clouds seem much reduced from 2020 (but again, I've got an even better solution by using Rex Atmos)

But I've found almost no examples where I think the clouds look better than before, or even half-way believable (and I've not yet seen any of these much touted cirrus clouds).

I find myself looking at screenshots of the latest XP12 betas and DCS clouds and atmosphere with increasing envy these days, sadly... I say sadly, because in my view we had it just right at launch four years ago...

The clouds are better in MSFS 2024. The lighting is way better for the clouds than MSFS 2020.  There are also cirrus clouds now in MSFS 2024.

MSFS 2024 has the best clouds among any flight simulator. But that is just my opinion.

Thanks. And I appreciate that it's all really subjective, with a lot of others finding flight dynamics or aircraft fidelity of much more importance than this as well. But here's a little food for thought...

I realize it's not a like-for-like comparison (military sim vs. a much broader more powerful flight simulator), and it's also a preview of unreleased updates, but this is what I want, and my own personal opinion is that MSFS is heading backwards in terms of cloud fidelity:

 

Waiting for Santa to bring me 2004, but from the videos I've seen, the lighting and sky do look a lit better and the TLOD looks to be improved too.

For me, it's going to be more a case of how well will my 5800X3d and RTX3080 run it at 1440, and whether my 150 mb internet connection and 32 gb RAM are going to be sufficient.

 

 

Personally I'm not impressed with the 2024 clouds.
Up close I can see the various layers when flying through them, even when on ultra setting. A bit of an immersion killer.
In 2020 this was better. Maybe to do with some TLOD/OLOD setting, need to play around with those.

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

The clouds are better in MSFS 2024. The lighting is way better for the clouds than MSFS 2020.  There are also cirrus clouds now in MSFS 2024.

MSFS 2024 has the best clouds among any flight simulator. But that is just my opinion.

I agree with this. And entering/exiting cloud cover is much smoother than compared to MSFS 2020.

I think the clouds are improved, but only slightly. Still no feeling of going into a layer of clouds (kind of fades where you can see the ground all the way through the layer, then once you break through the "top" of the layer then all the sudden the ground cannot be seen, and the top of the layer of clouds can then be seen, very strange and has been like this since after SU5-ish). Some clouds have a little better opacity, but not much. There appears to be more layers and variations as such, but overall it feels kind of the same to me. Aside from some lighting changes, I don't think they did any big overhaul on clouds. Cirrus feels "added on".

I also think lighting is better, same or worse depending on the situation, night lighting is mixed improvements, as one gets close enough to the ground it looks pretty good (the lights and how they light surrounding scenery seems better), but from higher up (where most of us are) the night lighting is not very good and I think 2020 is better. There's this weird "dot" thing going on that reminds me of FS4 and before. Roads are just these line of dots and goes so bright for miles and miles - just not realistic. The light pollution seems more organic now though. Stars, Sun and Moon are better.

3 hours ago, Redge said:

But since then, I'm looking at the videos and screenshots from 2024 and I can't help but feel that the cloud atmospherics are a step down from what we have in 2020, and a huge step down from where we started in 2020 pre-SU5. I have yet to see examples of the newly improved low visibility mist/fog so I can't judge that part yet, but I'm interested to hear what others think about the clouds?

It's all subjective, but for me, there is no comparison between the clouds in 2020 and 2024.  2024 is far superior.  Far from perfect, but far superior imo.

The question should be are default 2024 clouds and weather better than MSFS 2020 with Active Sky or another solid weather package supporting.  Cheers,

Calum

Edited December 13, 20241 yr by CBass

2 hours ago, Redge said:

Thanks. And I appreciate that it's all really subjective, with a lot of others finding flight dynamics or aircraft fidelity of much more importance than this as well. But here's a little food for thought...

I realize it's not a like-for-like comparison (military sim vs. a much broader more powerful flight simulator), and it's also a preview of unreleased updates, but this is what I want, and my own personal opinion is that MSFS is heading backwards in terms of cloud fidelity:

Your video of DCS World doesn't show the clouds long enough.  Here is a better video that spends more time showing the clouds in DCS World (jump to the 1:09 mark of the video):

This video was posted in the last 24 hours so it should be the latest version of DCS World.  No way those clouds at 1:09 are better than MSFS 2024 clouds. And the video creator is running a computer using an NVidia 3080 GPU, 128 GB of RAM, and an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, which is a decent computer.

I will go on record and say I don't want DCS World clouds in MSFS 2024, and definitely not the clouds you see at the 1:09 mark of the video above. What we have in MSFS 2024 is much better than the 1:09 mark of that video.

Mind you, I rank DCS World clouds up there, probably the 3rd best flight simulator with clouds.  My ranking for clouds would be:

1. MSFS 2024
2. MSFS 2020
3. DCS World

I won't bother with P3D and XP 12 clouds, they are not in the top 3 for me.

But this topic is subjective and it's a matter of preference. Everyone has different preferences.

Edited December 13, 20241 yr by abrams_tank

2 hours ago, cianpars said:

Waiting for Santa to bring me 2004, but from the videos I've seen, the lighting and sky do look a lit better and the TLOD looks to be improved too.

For me, it's going to be more a case of how well will my 5800X3d and RTX3080 run it at 1440, and whether my 150 mb internet connection and 32 gb RAM are going to be sufficient.

 

 

We have reasonably similar specs and mine runs 2024 in 4k like a dream!  I don't think you have anything to worry about.

DCS doesn't even have dynamic weather for their new clouds, all just a static template. Let's include it when it's actually a 1:1 comparison. 

50 minutes ago, CBass said:

We have reasonably similar specs and mine runs 2024 in 4k like a dream!  I don't think you have anything to worry about.

With 2020, my main problem is VRAM usage using addon scenery.  If 10 gb VRAM is not enough for 2020, I'm a bit concerned as to whether it will be for 2024. An RTX4000 series upgrade is pretty expensive at the moment.

4 hours ago, Redge said:

But I've found almost no examples where I think the clouds look better than before

Really?  Just the improvements to the lighting engine in 2024 transforms the clouds.  2024 clouds are MUCH better than 2020.  In the screenshot below you can see multi cloud types lit very realistically - I never saw a sky like this in 2020 default weather.

Look at the interaction with the lighting in this video.

I am currently using ActiveSky in passive mode, because default clouds, mist and fog look so good.  Here is an example of ActiveSkys own cloud depiction. Just look how great the new lighting improves cloud depiction.

 

54 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

This video was posted in the last 24 hours so it should be the latest version of DCS World.  No way those clouds at 1:09 are better than MSFS 2024 clouds.

The video I posted above was for an as-yet unreleased version with improved clouds and fog/haze rendering. Also, potentially running different lighting engines, as the video you posted does indeed look a lot less good than the first video.

 

33 minutes ago, Sethos said:

DCS doesn't even have dynamic weather for their new clouds, all just a static template. Let's include it when it's actually a 1:1 comparison. 

We're talking about two different things here. The rendering of the clouds—how the graphics engine is able to make them look—is what I'm talking about. How each sim then interprets the weather data and displays it in the sim is secondary. Even with custom weather themes, MSFS clouds and haze/mist don't look as good as those shown in the first DCS video above. Clouds in MSFS are unnaturally cut-off at the base (in 2020 preset weather such as scattered clouds, this is especially bad, and was made worse in one of the SUs. If you tweak the cloud base and top levels just a little bit you get far superior looking clouds).

I also have seen that the in-game lighting engine has been much improved, and that's one of the things I'm looking forward to seeing in action (along with the night-lighting), but again many of these improvements I already have with my optimized version of MSFS2020. 

For example, I've not yet seen a screenshot from 2024 that looks equivalent to these screenshot from MSFS2020, where the clouds don't appear to be cut/overly transparent:

Now, it could be that I just haven't seen them, and that everyone already on 2024 is quietly enjoying equivalent views. And it sounds from the replies in this thread that many of you seem to find the new skyscape to be far superior (which is why I asked the question). But I've been thoroughly disappointed by the clouds and skies since the SU5 changes, and the reduction in sky draw distances. I was hoping for more in this release to at least get us back to where we started in 2020.

5 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Really?  Just the improvements to the lighting engine in 2024 transforms the clouds.

Thanks for the examples! The second video where the camera looks up to the higher-level clouds showing the sunlight permeating through the thinner and thicker parts of it is especially impressive.

Edited December 13, 20241 yr by Redge