X-Plane haze: an interesting change

I find the 12.4.4 changes to haze rather interesting when I think back to the discussions relating to the topic on another forum about six months ago.

A lot of us were complaining that XP12 was simply far too hazy, even in good weather. The response from some of the more senior and outspoken voices was basically that this was realistic and that perhaps we just didn't understand what real aviation looked like.

I never bought that argument. I said so on a popular forum fairly forcefully at the time, and let's just say the discussion eventually resulted in my forum participation being temporarily reconsidered. 😄

Then AutoHaze came along. I installed it and the difference was obvious. For me, it made XP12 look considerably more realistic, without turning it into some crystal-clear MSFS postcard.

Now look at 12.4.4.

The excessive haze has disappeared, and I have reluctantly removed AutoHaze, as the new XP12 haze fix is exactly the same as using Autohaze. More interestingly, LR says the new system now keeps haze, mist and fog in a more realistically modelled surface layer rather than carrying it upwards through the old fixed altitude range.

That sounds remarkably similar to the problem AutoHaze was addressing.

I'm not suggesting anything improper happened, or that anyone was deliberately wrong. Two developers can obviously arrive at similar solutions independently.

But it does make me wonder about those old discussions.

Perhaps the lesson is that even very experienced pilots, developers, moderators or long-standing community voices aren't necessarily right about how a particular simulator system is behaving. Sometimes the users saying “this doesn't look right” are worth listening to.

And in this case, it seems they may have had a point.