54 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

IRL the without is way overdone from reality as I see it.

Yes, I agree. It looks much nicer with your settings/edits. I don't know why it's so exaggerated in the default and I wish they would fix it. Otherwise, unless you are flying every day and keeping up with all the required third party tools and settings, you get a sub-par experience. If you have a busy life  and can only use a sim once in a while, it takes too long to try and catch up!

1 hour ago, Litjan said:

LR is on it, but instead of a quick fix, they are going for a profound and sound solution...so it can take a bit.

Great news, thank you for this. As long as they fix it within a reasonable time (this year, say), that would be amazing. 

56 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Have you got a picture of the settings you’re using in haze adjust please? 

My Settings.

Turbidity 150 - Visibility just short of horizon, with some nice haze at the horizon.  A setting of 200 is nearer XP12 default.
Single = 15 - this is the setting that tames the overblown sky around the sun - look towards the sun to set (sunset/sunrise good).
Multi = 125 - This setting deepens the colours, best set looking towards sunset/sunrise.  I leave mine at default as a lower setting can make the scene too dark and unrealistic.

Thank you @MrBitstFlyer

12 hours ago, Brian Mackie said:

Sadly, the sun sets rapidly here, so it didn’t last long – and I missed a screenshot opportunity.

That sounds too familiar.

 

2 hours ago, Litjan said:

LR is on it, but instead of a quick fix, they are going for a profound and sound solution...so it can take a bit.

12.4? Or some smaller release after 12.3?

Edited July 14, 2025Jul 14 by Bjoern

I wrote the haze rendering code so I believe I can add some input too.

As Janov said, currently we believe the issue is not haze rendering but the accuracy of the visibility setting being injected into the sim in live weather. So the sim correctly renders x kilometers of visibility when it's told to render x kilometers of visibility (like when you manually set the visibility in the weather configuration), but the live weather engine tells the sim to render a visibility which doesn't reflect the real visibility. In other words, the live weather believes it's x kilometers of visibility when it's not. At least this is my understanding, however @Janov can correct me if I'm wrong.

However I want to be 100% sure that this is the case, so I'm asking for some feedback. Ignore the live weather, just set the clear weather preset, and then adjust the visibility slider to a specific visibility you know how it looks. Does it look accurate to real life when you do so? If not, I'd really appreciate some feedback especially with visual evidence.

The aerosol (haze) turbidities were calculated based on OPAC dataset (Optical Properties of Aerosols and Clouds, a dataset for reference atmospheric conditions which is used for everything from building lighting studies to reference radiance transfer simulations / renderers) and based on test approaches I did the visibility setting accurately reflected the visibility in the simulator, but I'd like to be totally sure.

Edited July 14, 2025Jul 14 by Maya2

Well not sure about the haze thing - overdone I see a glare issue not haze in the pics. In a past life I have flown from the equator to near the poles and in between spent years at low level over the oceans of the southern hemisphere only time you ever saw a clear blues sky day was in the Southern Ocean south of Tasmania (which is why they collect CO2 data from such locals) most days the haze was ferocious due to salt particles in the atmosphere. it could get so bad you had a frosted windscreen as a result and need to find a cloud any cloud to get a fresh water rinse, wipers don't cut it! Then there is dust and smoke in the atmosphere gosh in Northern Australia in summer you would be lucky to get 5 km vis and it was supposedly VFR the smoke and haze could be that bad. The passage of a good cold front was a great way to clear the skies for a while. So to my eyes clear days were the exception not the rule. In that aspect I find the current rendering in XP12 fine a tad glary from time to time but not hazed out. Oh and I use no addons and RW weather and my flights for the day in the sim are you take what you get weather wise.

Well this is a high quality thread ! Thanks to all who gave such detailed updates. 

Considering this is all based on minimal data, possibly out of date and a guess based on that info. It does rather well.

I'm with MrBitstFlyer and Maya2 on this visibility issue. Maya2 acknowledges that there's a systemic difficulty and, like MrBitst, I am using that LUA fix with good success while the issue is being examined. Coastaldriver's spot on, too: anyone with real life flight experience will confirm that a pure, clear atmosphere is next-to-unknown. "Haze" can be challenging for a real-world VFR pilot. For example, a hot summer's day on the ground near London can turn into near-IMC at 2000ft, what with the heat inversion trapping all that toxic rubbish from vehicle emissions etc.

Does XP try to reproduce air pollution haze caused by humans or smoke from fires? I have not seen that mentioned not sure how you would capture that data other than the vis being given in a local metar. I know it would be in forecasts if it was bad for area forecasts for instance and in the metars with vis reduced due smoke! Look at half the cities in Asia or elsewhere where you would be lucky to get 2000m vis due to the pollution in the atmosphere. My memories of the Phillipines it was so bad in Manilla it made your eyes sting (Not one of my favourite places on the planet). Southern Ocean area was always amazing crystal clear skies all the way to Antartica - amazing to experience really you got so used to it being hazy or polluted everywhere else. A low overcast over the ocean was as bad as the whiteout effect,  a grey out, the ocean colour became greyish as the sky and a real trap if your attempting to visually fly it. If they can reproduce that effect then I will be really impressed. 

46 minutes ago, coastaldriver said:

Does XP try to reproduce air pollution haze caused by humans or smoke from fires? 

I would love to see that over cities.  And the amount would depend on the size of the city and the number of scenery tiles it occupies.

@Maya2 Get on that.  😉

Smoke from fires is a good daytime indicator of surface wind direction - as my original flight instructor advised back in 1985.  Wouldn't it be great to replicate that in XP? Displaying human-induced air pollution over cities in realtime simulated weather might be a bigger ask...

1 hour ago, coastaldriver said:

A low overcast over the ocean was as bad as the whiteout effect,  a grey out, the ocean colour became greyish as the sky and a real trap if your attempting to visually fly it. If they can reproduce that effect then I will be really impressed. 

And so would I. Fly very low-level over any large expanse of water for a while, and you notice (unless you are unlucky) how the sky begins to merge with the water and interferes with what your eyes take in and how your brain interprets it. 

4 hours ago, Brian Mackie said:

Coastaldriver's spot on, too: anyone with real life flight experience will confirm that a pure, clear atmosphere is next-to-unknown. "Haze" can be challenging for a real-world VFR pilot.

This is definitely a factor. The majority of flight simulator users have no real world flying experience and what looks like a perfectly clear day on the ground with 10 miles visibility appears very murky and limited when flying at 3000 feet. We love clear and vibrant colors - there is a reason why postcards (for those who remember them) always look like that, never murky or hazy.

So just like when visiting New York City and standing on top of the Empire State for some great shots, we all love to see a crystal clear view of Manhattan, all the way to the Verrazano bridge - but that only happens once in a while.

So while I don´t want to sound too defensively, I know from my real-world flying that visibility CAN be great, especially in very dry air like the Southwest US or when you are at 30,000 feet looking at the peaks of the Alps some 200km away, but unfortunately in most places most of the time...it isn´t. Also don´t let yourself be fooled by the "oh, but I have been on an airplane when I went on vacation to..." effect - as a passenger you look mostly down at a sharp angle - at some city or other sight you pass overhead. This will make your gaze go through a lot of clear (cold dry) air and then STEEPLY through the murky layer below 5000 feet. The total attenuation is therefore lower than when looking with only a few degrees angle down like you would when sitting in the cockpit where the instrument panel blocks anything below maybe 10 degrees down angle.

This "it´s too hazy" is very much like the "the cockpits are too dark" issue Laminar faced. There is truth to the issue - but also a lot of user misconception and preference for the "prettier, easier". I consider it my job at Laminar to stem against "giving in" in these cases to appease the laymen majority in the user base - at the expense of those with real aviation experience.

So expect the visibility to get closer to real world values - but don´t expect X-Plane to turn into a postcard screenshot simulator. There are other options for those who prefer that.

Edited July 15, 2025Jul 15 by Litjan