FS Clouds 2000

The Good
The first thing I have to put in the "What did you like about this game?" category is that it's free. I paid for my copy, which is OK because it means I got some documentation, but for something that improves the appearance so much getting it for free is a great plus.

I've been pottering about with flight simulators for a while but I have never given the weather options much thought. Most of the time I want a clear sky so I don't hit anything and the flight simulator's default clouds work well enough for me.
When playing with other flight simulator add-ons I had seen adverts for this product and some of its earlier incarnations and I wondered what it would be like. When I loaded FSClouds I was pleasantly surprised at how good the sky looked, so the second plus point is that it does make a noticeable difference.

The odd thing about clouds and weather is that, like wallpaper, I just didn't notice them at all. So when I initially loaded FSClouds I had a problem deciding whether it was making any difference or not, the sky looked 'right' but then it always had.
As a result I paid more attention the flight simulator's default clouds and find that they're OK but they're just not as realistic, they look far too solid from a distance and they look quite granular close up.
With FSClouds 2000 the sky looked, well, natural. The clouds were far more ragged and diaphanous with the ground appearing through patches just as I recall from the times I had a window seat in tourist class.
The supplied 'Nice Sunset' flight is a good example, I flew this scenario and it just felt right, it wasn't spectacular, there was no 'WOW factor, no vivid pinks,purples and oranges but it felt 'right'. This left me with a quandary, "Were the new clouds in use or was this what I'd always been seeing?". I had to stop my flight and restart it without using FSClouds to convince myself that the new clouds were making a difference. That's when I became a convert.

The Bad
I do not like the way the product interacts with the host flight simulator. While the pre-loading of the weather files before launching the flight simulator works well it assumes that I know what I want to fly before I loaded the flight simulator. I like to load the simulator and browse for a flight to try, playing with a few before settling on one I want to complete. Not a big problem but it takes a bit of getting used to.
The menu allows the player to load existing flights. I could only get it to look at flights that came with other 3rd party products and flights I saved especially to test FSClouds. It should be possible to search the flight simulator's libraries to find it's in-built flights but whenever I tried I got a memory error. This is probably because a modern machine has more memory that older software can cope with but it was still a minor restriction.
The biggest problem I had was my own desire to tinker. FSClouds works by replacing the default cloud files when the flight simulator starts. This is fine and the flight loads and runs very well, however any attempt to change the weather mid flight, because there are too few / too many clouds, caused the flight simulator to revert to the default cloud set. This is a pain because it means that the weather cannot be adjusted to produce a better screenshot without first amending the flight, then saving it, then exiting the simulator and loading the new flight via FSClouds. I found this to be a real pain while in the 'Let's explore what this package can do' phase. Once I've built up a set of weather files that I like I must concede that this probably won't be much of a problem.

The Bottom Line
I like the idea, don't like the interface but do like the effects. It works, it's free and it makes the sky more realistic.

I found the need to configure the flight from outside the simulator to be a nuisance but then I'm not much beyond the 'jump in and fly' stage. There are, however, many e-pilots who invest a lot of time in flight preparation and for them, what is an inconvenience to me will be just another tick box on their pre-flight checklist. These people will appreciate the added realism of the skies as will anyone who takes screenshots of their aircraft. With a good aircraft model I think FSClouds could produce results that are hard to tell from the real thing and that, as they say, is about as real as it gets.