sundog

I almost missed your edit! Glad you got it sorted.

Try temporarily removing your custom scenery; even on your GPU the memory it consumes in addition to SkyMaxx Pro's volumetric clouds may be enough to make you run out of memory and crash. If you can get it up and running to the point where you can access the SkyMaxx Pro configuration screen, you can try reducing the cloud draw area or setting cumulus and overcast back to non-volumetric options to reduce its memory usage. Flying with a default aircraft might also help, or lowering your resolution and/or AA settings.

Yes, that's not a bad idea.

We actually do that already (it's called early ray termination.) It helps, but not as much as we'd like.

OK, so part of what is happening here is that the cloud layers at 2200 and 4600 feet are intersecting. Volumetric cloud layers cannot intersect, so we discarded one of them. However I think discarding the lower one is a poor choice, so I'm going to change that for the next build I do (that may not be the next release though, as I've already handed off a couple of bug-fix releases to X-Aviation) So the remaining issue is the layer at 4600 feet appearing to start closer to 5600 feet for you. That's at least partially a bug where we were applying a correction intended for non-volumetric clouds to the volumetric layer, and I've fixed that too.

Thanks, that's helpful. I'll look into it.

That's pretty weird. What is your cloud draw area set to? Increasing it may help.

So there is also some logic that will move volumetric layers around to prevent them from intersecting with each other, which might also be a factor. If there's a specific METAR report you're seeing this with it would be helpful to see it so I can reproduce what you're seeing.

Being inside a cloud is the worst case scenario for volumetric clouds, as every pixel on the screen needs to be ray-cast all the way through them all in this case. So it's expected that performance would be at its worst from this position. Not much to be done except the usual performance tips; lower your cloud draw area or rendering settings. Anti-aliasing and high resolutions make matters worse.

@FlyAgi I think that is a different issue that was introduced in 5.0.1. I do have a fix for it coded up already if it's what I think it is.

Hm... not sure why that would be, but I'll look into it. Are you using Real Weather Connector?

At present there's no good way to blend volumetric clouds with terrain, so we enforce a minimum height of 500 meters (AGL) on volumetric cloud layers for now. If it's below 500 we push it up to 500. That's probably what you're seeing. We do hope to refine this in subsequent releases.

The SkyMaxx Pro 5.0.1 release that went out last night should fix this... check your email!

Turning it off may not be enough. But let us know what you find.

Pretty sure xEnviro does not play nice with us. If that's not it, start removing some of the lesser used ones to see if you can narrow it down.

Well, what else do you have?

This looks like a known issue in 5.0.1 that will happen after resizing your window. Running X-Plane in full screen mode should work around it, but we do have a fix built and ready to go.

What other plugins do you have installed? It's possible something is fighting with us over these files. I think I remember hearing XOrganizer could cause this sort of thing.

I've seen that occasionally; it appears to be a sporadic bug in X-Plane's dialog box system. Try reinstalling SkyMaxx Pro in case it is caused by a corrupt graphics file. If that doesn't help, try switching back to OpenGL mode as I think it is a Vulkan-specific issue.

I think this is a known issue where mountains can appear inside cloud layers when using volumetric clouds under certain conditions. It is less of an issue when using Real Weather Connector. For now this is an intentional tradeoff we made for performance as it only happens in certain locations and with certain settings, but we may revisit that tradeoff in future releases. Fixing this would involve a framerate hit, and for now we're prioritizing performance.

OK, I'm thinking this is a side effect of the quick patch we made for version 5.0.1. Can I confirm that's the version everyone in this thread is seeing this under?

New theory: Are you running X-Plane in windowed mode, and increasing the size of the window after starting X-Plane?

If you are seeing this even when using Default sky colors, I'm pretty sure this is an issue with X-Plane itself and not SkyMaxx Pro. We don't control the terrain haze or the sky in that case.

AMD drivers and Vulkan don't always get along. Make sure they are up to date, and try experimenting with different AA settings. There are some specific combinations of AA and HDR that simply don't work in AMD due to a driver bug.

Screenshots would be helpful. They are definitely not billboards and not black and white, so something's wrong with your setup that we need to narrow down.