1 hour ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I agree clouds in 2024 are not uniformly perfect in everyway, but many clouds are an improvement over 2020 in many ways.  It would be more accurate to say that some clouds in 2024 are not accurate, because that's where we are with the computing power to display the clouds - you yourself often mention this fact.

For me there are just too many wonderful cloudscapes to worry about a few poorer clouds.

 

 

 

Impressive lighting and weather representation. But it's live weather or a preset?

3 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I agree clouds in 2024 are not uniformly perfect in everyway, but many clouds are an improvement over 2020 in many ways.  It would be more accurate to say that some clouds in 2024 are not accurate, because that's where we are with the computing power to display the clouds - you yourself often mention this fact.

For me there are just too many wonderful cloudscapes to worry about a few poorer clouds.

 

 

 

@Noel Aren't you getting the clouds in the videos above from @MrBitstFlyer?  These are the types of clouds that I see in MSFS 2024 (albeit, I can only run clouds at High and not Ultra because my computer isn't strong enough), and these are the types of clouds that I see when others do a livestream of MSFS 2024.

Clouds and lighting in MSFS2024, live weather

 

 

Edited March 7, 20251 yr by St Mawgan

5 hours ago, phbordini said:

Impressive lighting and weather representation. But it's live weather or a preset?

All live.

On 3/6/2025 at 3:23 AM, Noel said:

One of the consistently expressed positives are changes in clouds and lighting, but TBH I see some good, and a fair amount of not good, compared to its predecessor.

The reason, why most are expressing positive changes in clouds and lighting, is because your experience is not shared by most.

Something is configured wrongly in your sim.

In 2024, most people get excellent clouds and lighting just out of the box. And as most of them did nothing, i.e. no tweaking, no manipulation, to get that, it is hard to point out what is different in your case.

1 hour ago, fsiscool said:

In 2024, most people get excellent clouds and lighting just out of the box. And as most of them did nothing, i.e. no tweaking, no manipulation

I was constantly using shaders to fix the lighting in 2020, but 2024 needs no filters at all. The lighting is a big step forward.

This is live weather too (near LPPT, not edited and no filters), It looks good to me and I never seen anything like this with MSFS 2020 live weather.

Edited March 7, 20251 yr by Alvega

And this is out-of-the-box live weather in my sim:

Great shots! 

2 hours ago, fsiscool said:

The reason, why most are expressing positive changes in clouds and lighting, is because your experience is not shared by most.

Indeed and understood and this is why I posted the thread and stated I was puzzled.  I also clearly stated it's not all bad, and it's not all good either.  The sharpening tools used here would be the only significant difference to some others since as stated I'm on the same GPU, latest NV driver, etc.  In your posted images you can easily see the so-called 'popcorn' construction and no question one sharpening tool in particular manifests that.  That same tool brightens up the VC just right as well as the outside world and I really like it.  When I turn it off it just look dull, flat, and dark in the VC.  This view you posted is post sunset but you can still see the small cotton balls.  Certainly not all bad and maybe that is how cloud layers of this type in the RW are constructed?

And truly, I'm very new at 2024 currently having only played with it for 3 weeks or so.  I have seen some of the changed lighting and overall it seems reasonably positive and a fair amount from underneath cloud layers look pretty good, or at least different. 

 

54 minutes ago, Noel said:

Certainly not all bad and maybe that is how cloud layers of this type in the RW are constructed?

 

I'm not a cloud expert, but it's possible for clouds in the real world to look like cotton balls. Here is a real life photo:

The clouds in MSFS 2024 look realistic enough. There may be some edge cases, but I think the edge cases are few and rare.

What MSFS 2024 is not capable of is rendering all the various types of clouds.  But no flight simulator is capable of doing that, to the best of my understanding, because modern hardware is not powerful enough to render all the various types of clouds.  For the clouds that MSFS 2024 can render, I think they look real enough to me.

31 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

But no flight simulator is capable of doing that, to the best of my understanding, because modern hardware is not powerful enough to render all the various types of clouds.

I think we will need a completely new method, rendering method, to get where we would all love to be.  I say that because the incremental increases in what hardware can do seem very limited.   I agree that both in 2020 and 2024 MS/A has done as good as anyone could w/ the tools they have to work with.  Here is the real gold standard that I'm afraid I'll be well n gone before this happens.  Out my back yard...

I searched and couldn't find anything here but for some reason the moon is absolutely tiny now, I mean pretty small fraction of what it was in 2020 and maybe the sun too not sure yet.  My sense is moon size in 2020 was too large but now I would say the 2024 moon in general might be 1/6th the size of the 2020 moon.  What might cause this, and does everyone else experience this?  I was hoping SU1 might change that but unfortunately not.    Camera zoom doesn't affect it much.

Edited March 7, 20251 yr by Noel

I don't like posting screenshots since I fly exclusively in HDR mode, and the Xbox game bar doesn't do the best job of translating screenshots to SDR, but even with the over-saturation I think the below screenshots are pretty stunning. I don't remember this kind of variety in 2020, but 2020 is also a distant memory for me at this point 😁

These were all in career mode pre-SU1, I'm assuming they were using real weather at the time (although stuck in spring since that was a career mode bug).

1 hour ago, Noel said:

My sense is moon size in 2020 was too large but now I would say the 2024 moon in general might be 1/6th the size of the 2020 moon.  What might cause this, and does everyone else experience this?

Maybe something to do with the moon illusion that is experienced in real life? The sim trying to simulate the actual size of the moon whereas we see it as larger than it really is in reality?

I didn't know this was even a thing to be honest!