Why can I see the runway environment through overcast clouds?

Question

Am I the only one seeing things like runway lights, airport rotating beacon etc. through solid cumulus and sometimes stratus overcast clouds? This defeats the purpose of practicing IFR work and takes away from the realism.

This happens when I update X-Plane to a recent version from 10.02r1. Current version installed is 10.42. Its like  cloud bases or tops I configure in weather settings are ignored.

X-Plane 10.02 r1 properly depicts multiple overcast cumulus/status layers configured so I can break out of the clouds at any cloud base and I can't see runway lights etc. while in the clouds.

Answer 1

I do loose visibility of ground and airport lights when in a cloud in 10.45b1. Try increasing the number of cloud-puffs in the rendering settings, at the expense of framerate, of course.

When setting limited visibility, this only affects a band below a certain altitude, so you can see far while above it, then suddently loose visual contact when you enter it.

There is a bug in that you can see the "glow" of streetlights through the clouds. I filed a bug, if you want to help, do so as well (the more reports, the sooner it gets fixed). Google X-Plane bug report form.

Good luck, Jan

Comments

Thanks. I also lose 'visibility' as well. However, when I'm in an overcast cloud thousands of feet thick I expect to see zero visibility. This is not the case in XP 10. I can still see the lights and ground when on approach miles away. I even upgraded to 10.45 and increased the cloud puffs to 100% to no avail. I'm going to resubmit a bug report. I guess I'm the only one with this problem?  Here is an image of what I can see in the soup.

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Yes, go ahread and file a bug report - the whole cloud/visibility thing is still a bit quirky and needs dev review.