On 4/2/2026 at 8:17 PM, ryanbatc said:

We really lack cloud structures and specific cloud types in msfs.

Completely agree.  I have had lengthy periods where I have only used MSFS or Xp12, but in the last six months I go back and forwards between them.  I think the lack of cloud types and visibility effects are the biggest items letting down MSFS.  To illustrate the point, here is the sky over the southern UK in XP12.  That sky and the cloud lighting could be a photograph.

if only MSFS could have a cloud overhaul!  As you say, the weather in MSFS is good, sometimes very good, but the weather in XP12 is mostly excellent.

1 hour ago, ryanbatc said:

Well according to my pics here it's not much better than msfs default.  Especially the sunny pic that was supposed to be IFR (2 1/2SM RA)

I'll clarify a bit more and say that it "portrays" inclement weather better, in the sense that the cloud structures seem more realistic...to me. Not even going to touch how "accurate" any of the weather is. Asobo or otherwise.😉

20 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

 

if only MSFS could have a cloud overhaul!  As you say, the weather in MSFS is good, sometimes very good, but the weather in XP12 is mostly excellent.

 

Typically yes - I still see the minecraft square edges though semi often.  Not sure why that is.  But yes I have seen live weather like your pic - vastly better than what msfs can look like in that case.

You can always count on MrBlits to Fly in and bring X-Plane up....

1 hour ago, Krakin said:

You can always count on MrBlits to Fly in and bring X-Plane up....

I wasn't the first to mention it in this thread AND I gave plenty of praise to MSFS.  Pity you can be relied upon to post nothing constructive.

Edited April 4Apr 4 by MrBitstFlyer

2 hours ago, Krakin said:

You can always count on MrBlits to Fly in and bring X-Plane up....

I brought up XP.  Msfs and xp12 are the only two real viable consumer simulators.  It's natural to compare and contrast them.  In fact I would highly recommend any serious simmer take a look at XP12.  But not just a one hour thing - I'd give myself a good week or two to fully evaluate it...maybe even try some addons before totally rejecting it.

The issue we've had at this forum is that people get quite nasty about the comparisons and or make personal attacks.  In this case both him and I have used dual sims for quite a few years.  There's no arguing or name calling here.

If Asobo ever read this post it would be a perfect opportunity for them to improve on the weather in MSFS 2024.

23 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I wasn't the first to mention it in this thread AND I gave plenty of praise to MSFS.  Pity you can be relied upon to post nothing constructive.

Yeah, Ryan mentioned it but you do it like clockwork. I've seen other people ask you to give it a rest before.

6 minutes ago, Krakin said:

Yeah, Ryan mentioned it but you do it like clockwork. I've seen other people ask you to give it a rest before.

I've never read a request from anyone to give it a rest.  However the topic is generally about weather in MSFS, for which we are still mostly on track.

How do you find the water presented in MSFS?  Do the inaccuracies bother you?

34 minutes ago, Krakin said:

Yeah, Ryan mentioned it but you do it like clockwork. I've seen other people ask you to give it a rest before.

And again you do not mention that most of my thread was being positive about MSFS.  I responded to Ryan's legitimate comments on MSFS weather in a positive way.  

13 minutes ago, ryanbatc said:

I've never read a request from anyone to give it a rest.  However the topic is generally about weather in MSFS, for which we are still mostly on track.

How do you find the water presented in MSFS?  Do the inaccuracies bother you?

Well obviously not in this thread lol but he has been asked to chill before. As for the topic at hand, I'm definitely bothered by Asobo's current depiction of live weather to the point of frustration. I am a regular in one of the threads in the official forum about it. I've posted screenshots to show how ridiculous their transparent clouds are and I don't think they do it to save on perf btw. I can go into custom weather and set everything to the thickest setting and still get good performance. Even Seb is on record saying there's enough headroom to allow for less of the transparent BS. I think the main issue is with the live weather team who seem to think it looks great. One of the weather depiction questions that was answered during one of the Dev Q&As was also submitted by me.

The reason I don't make as much noise as I used to is because Seb acknowledged the issues and said he would look at getting the code rewritten from the ground up to set things right. They're still getting bugs sorted so we just have to be patient. I don't want them to copy LR's implementation because while it looks nice, it is too low resolution for my taste. So they should chase reality and not the competition in this case IMO.

6 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

if only MSFS could have a cloud overhaul!  As you say, the weather in MSFS is good, sometimes very good, but the weather in XP12 is mostly excellent.

In MSFS2024 this scene would be rendered with those high, nebulous, gaseous, farty clouds that I have never seen the like of in real life.

MSFS2024 is crying out for a major overhaul of all things connected to the weather. Considering the often proclaimed size and resources available to the Asobo team, it's time for Jorge and Microsoft to start leveraging these assets and give us a weather dedicated SU.

@Krakin totally agreed about performance or XBox *not* being the blocker here. It was SU7 and the introduction of METAR blending for live weather that degraded clouds depiction in 2020 rather than SU5 (Xbox support and performance focused SU).

Now that said they've improved live weather a lot since that SU7 update and especially in 2024, but it's still not as good/amazing as the early 2020 days.

The weather rendering engine itself in MSFS is certainly capable of great and varied clouds depiction as can be seen in manually configured weather. They just need to fix or overhaul the code that processes live weather data (and/or get better or more data), METAR blending, etc.

Yup, waiting for a weather improvement or overhaul focused SU once they get past the bugs fixing and stabilization  phase.

Edited April 4Apr 4 by lwt1971

4 hours ago, Krakin said:

Well obviously not in this thread lol but he has been asked to chill before.

Good grief.  

Can we please refrain from criticising others just because they dare to mention the term "X-Plane" in the MSFS forum?

Edited April 5Apr 5 by Christopher Low

15 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

 To illustrate the point, here is the sky over the southern UK in XP12.  That sky and the cloud lighting could be a photograph.

if only MSFS could have a cloud overhaul!  

 

Hi, funny that you mention the cloud lighting in XP 12.  Because XP 12, since it was released, and for all subsequent versions of XP 12, have constantly had issues with lighting and shadow with its clouds.  Here is a good example from a thread about clouds in the official MSFS forum:

 

Specifically, the lighting/shadow of the clouds in the top 2 photos just look unnatural and weird.  Something looks a little off with the lighting/shadow in the bottom photo too.  But this is an ongoing issue with XP 12, LR still hasn't fixed it.  MSFS 2020 used to also have major lighting/shadow problems, as known with the "volcanic ash" looking clouds, but these "volcanic ash" looking clouds have been greatly reduced by MSFS 2024, because they rewrote the lighting/shadow algorithm for the clouds. I personally think the lighting/shadow algorithm for the clouds in MSFS 2024, is superior to the XP 12 lighting/shadow algorithm, because I see far fewer videos & screenshots of clouds with odd lighting/shadow in MSFS 2024, than I see in XP 12 (to be fair, that's not to say MSFS 2024 never has odd lighting/shadow in the clouds - it does too, but just far fewer instances than XP 12).

Furthermore, I have mentioned this many times before, the XP 12 clouds are blurry.  But it was Ben Supnick from LR, who said that clouds are very resource intensive. This is my educated guess, but I am guessing LR could be throttling the sharpness of the clouds, to help with performance.  But we know that XP 12's architecture is not as efficient as MSFS, because Torsten from Toliss said MSFS's architecture is more efficient than XP 12,  because MSFS is able to utilize more CPU cores, and because the architecture is more asynchronous: 

What MSFS lacks though is the variation of clouds, as many people have mentioned in this thread.  This is something that XP 12 does better than MSFS 2024 at the moment.  Having said that, for the clouds that MSFS are able to render, because you can make out the definition of those clouds because they are less blurry (clouds are not that blurry as XP 12 in real life, you can make out the definition in them), and because the lighting/shadows of MSFS 2024 clouds is better than XP 12, I personally prefer the clouds in MSFS 2024, despite the lower variation of clouds in MSFS 2024.  But I guess everyone has their own preferences.

Edited April 5Apr 5 by abrams_tank