22 minutes ago, blueshark747 said:

Clear skies until I approached MYNN into a zero visibility thunderstorm only hanging over the island with clear weather ocean surroundings.

 

As a boater, I can tell you that this is a very realistic and common occurrence.

The thunderstorm happens because the surface of the island heats up from the sun significantly during the day, and then at night when the air cools the heat will rise up in a thermal, taking water vapor with it until the storm forms. High humidity is required, as shown in the pic. Doesn't happen every time, thank God. I've seen these things wreak havoc on anchorages full of boats. They tend to be very powerful, and thankfully, short lived.  

Edited September 5, 2025Sep 5 by MDFlier

Agreed.  I doubt Active Sky "thought that through" and it was probably just coincidence, but over land is a good place for an isolated thunderstorm to be in the middle of the ocean 😉.  Isolated towering CU / thunderstorms is one visual cue the Polynesians used to use to find an island just over the horizon.

6 minutes ago, MDFlier said:

As a boater, I can tell you that this is a very realistic and common occurrence.

The thunderstorm happens because the surface of the island heats up from the sun significantly during the day, and then at night when the air cools the heat will rise up in a thermal, taking water vapor with it until the storm forms. High humidity is required, as shown in the pic. Doesn't happen every time, thank God. I've seen these things wreak havoc on anchorages full of boats. They tend to be very powerful, and thankfully, short lived.  

Oh ok good to know!

It seriously looked like the entire island was engulfed in an atomic weapon explosion cloud.

With clear as day weather over the surrounding ocean. 

Edited September 5, 2025Sep 5 by blueshark747

13 minutes ago, blueshark747 said:

Oh ok good to know!

It seriously looked like the entire island was engulfed in an atomic weapon explosion cloud.

With clear as day weather over the surrounding ocean. 

Worst one I ever saw was over Barbuda. Fortunately, I was 20 miles away on land in Antigua at the time. Beautiful day, about one hour after sundown I saw a small cumulus cloud hovering over the center of the island, I went to visit a friend in Boons Bay, and when I came out of his house an hour and a half later, there was a full blown thunderstorm in progress over Barbuda. Where I was standing, there was a strong breeze, but otherwise it was perfect. Not sure why Antigua didn't get one too.  

Edit: I don't know if it was the "worst" one I ever saw because I wasn't in it. I meant that from the perspective that I had never seen one develop from a tiny cloud to a giant storm in such a short time frame.  

Edited September 5, 2025Sep 5 by MDFlier

A nice example which I have as poster on my wall:

That's a great example. The clouds are forming over the dark areas where the land is the most dense. Not sure which island that is, but it looks like there's some marshland, and some areas with some sort of light colored vegetation in the middle that stays cooler. Fortunately, there appears to be a breeze blowing the tops off of the clouds off to the right, so they won't get towering thunderstorm clouds out of that. 

Edited September 5, 2025Sep 5 by MDFlier

I don't remember anymore where it is. However, I think that also the wind has an influence - in this case coming from the left and kind of deflects the clouds by blowing the warm upstream of air to the right.

Yep. If the air is still, there's gonna be trouble. 😊

I was actually editing my post to mention that while you were typing.

We use the clouds as navigation aids sometimes. They're usually above land.  

Edited September 5, 2025Sep 5 by MDFlier

3 hours ago, Seth2021 said:

Laminar Research is trying to emulate the modern weather visualization style of MSFS,

XP12 weather is more advanced visually than MSFS after V12.2 and now V12.3.

Weather in MSFS took a downturn after SU5 and it has yet to get back to that standard 

MSFS weather is very good, not denying that at all.

3 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

XP12 weather is more advanced visually than MSFS after V12.2 and now V12.3.

Weather in MSFS took a downturn after SU5 and it has yet to get back to that standard 

MSFS weather is very good, not denying that at all.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. While it's true that X-Plane has made progress compared to its older billboard-style clouds, I still find the overall platform visually outdated. In particular, the cockpit visuals feel quite behind the times (not to mention the ground scenery, which speaks for itself). There are also noticeable issues with antialiasing that detract from the experience, in my opinion ( always!). 

10 minutes ago, Seth2021 said:

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree. While it's true that X-Plane has made progress compared to its older billboard-style clouds, I still find the overall platform visually outdated. In particular, the cockpit visuals feel quite behind the times (not to mention the ground scenery, which speaks for itself). There are also noticeable issues with antialiasing that detract from the experience, in my opinion ( always!). 

To be fair to him, he was speaking specifically about the weather. I also much prefer how clouds look and are lit in XP12 but the drawback is really low resolution so they look very blurry, especially up close. One of the LR devs actually acknowledged this to me and indicated it was a compromise made to preserve performance. 

Regardless of what XPlane is doing (and I’m not denying it’s doing sone very good things at all), what is an absolute certainty is that MSFS is doing nothing.

We haven’t had any tangible improvements to the effects on flight or the visuals of weather since the absolutely awful downgrade of SU5/7 several years ago.

The devs treat it as a curious afterthought, not a core element of the flight experience, and the official forums get more censorious about it by the day. Not simming much at this point in my life, but some initial enthusiasm over 2024 has given way to some real frustrations over the total lack of effort from the devs with weather and clear censorship when this comes up recently from the official forum mods.

51 minutes ago, Seth2021 said:

 I still find the overall platform visually outdated

This. 

 

13 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

We haven’t had any tangible improvements to the effects on flight

What? We have a whole thread dedicated to the improvement in the flight dynamics for MSFS 2024 over MSFS 2020 (and some of the real life pilots quoted in that thread even like MSFS 2024's flight dynamics more than XP 12): 

 

Edited September 5, 2025Sep 5 by abrams_tank

19 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

What? We have a whole thread dedicated to the improvement in the flight dynamics for MSFS 2024 over MSFS 2020 (and some of the real life pilots quoted in that thread even like MSFS 2024's flight dynamics more than XP 12): 

 

Sure, crosswind effects on takeoff / landing might have improved, but I can still slam any plane into massive dense storm clouds (well, massive collections of puffballs, I guess they’re supposed to be storm clouds) in 2024 with absolutely no change to the still, calm air I flew miles through to get there. The weather might look imposing as you fly into it (as imposing as yet more puffballs can be), but once inside, it’s utterly inconsequential.

Edited September 5, 2025Sep 5 by scotchegg