Did we have better visibility when we turned off the weather effects in FFXI? I haven't played it in a couple of years. From what I remember, the visibility wasn't really any better. I thought it just took the particles (w/e you call it) off, but kept a fog up so that everyone had the same visibility. It gives people with slower pc's a bit of a performance boost.

Even if you did get more visibility when turning weather effects off, I don't really think it gives you an advantage. Whenever I have low visibility, I just use my minimap more, which negates all the possible benefits of having more visibility. At least that is my opinion.