sundog
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Posts posted by sundog
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It's a pretty mature product and we're not aware of any bugs that need fixing... we continue to monitor this forum for feedback though. Generally we only issue updates in response to bug fixes or features our customers are demanding. Right now people seem pretty happy, at least within the bounds of what we can do within X-Plane's plugin API. So our philosophy at the moment if "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
But we are still here.
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16 hours ago, Scotty60 said:
I installed Skymax Pro v5 and the cloud selection window is so large I can't close the window after my selection. Anyone know how to correct this minor problem?
That seems odd; even on a 1920x1080 display you should be OK (as that's what I use.) What is your monitor resolution? Can you increase it?
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On 8/5/2021 at 7:26 PM, Rockwell Lancer said:
Hi Frank!
Thank you for giving my log a look. You are indeed correct in suspecting it to be a plugin. It looks like the main culprit of the issues was the "iniDisplays" plugin, which is one of a few plugins bundled with the iniBuilds A310 being flown in the screen capture. Thinking back on it, I have primarily been flying both the A310 and the A300 over the last little while, both of which presumably use this plugin to render the PFD, ND, etc. in the cockpit. That would explain why I have only been seeing this issue recently.
I really enjoy both SkyMaxx though, and even though the A310 doesn't play nice with it, there are other aircraft I like to fly that evidently won't conflict with it. Is there a way to disable SkyMaxx without uninstalling it? That way, I can have my cake, and eat it, too, as it were (i.e., turn it on when not flying the iniBuilds airbuses).
Thank you again for your help in this matter!
Dominick
Glad you found it... you should definitely notify the developers of your A310 plane as I think this is indicative of an issue on their end, where OpenGL is being left in an altered state.
To temporarily disable SkyMaxx Pro, you could deactivate the SilverLining plugin via your plugin admin menu in X-Plane. (Note there's an issue in X-Plane at present that will prevent you from re-activating it within the same flight, so restart X-Plane if you want to fly with it on again.)
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OK, you do have several plugins I haven't seen before, and one that's been known to cause trouble in the past. As a first step, I would try temporarily disabling all plugins other than SilverLining (that's us) and Gizmo (which we need) via the plugin admin menu, and see if things render properly then. If so, start adding plugins back in until you find the culprit.
If that doesn't work, there are some specific combinations of anti-aliasing and HDR settings that have problems on AMD cards. Try changing your AA setting in X-Plane's graphics settings and/or the graphics quality and see if that clears it up.
Afraid it will take a little bit of experimentation, but there are lots of components here that can interact in strange ways. If you narrow it down, please let us know what you find here as it may help others.
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Like I said above, try switching your overcast representation in SkyMaxx Pro. You're probably hitting a very specific set of conditions where cloud layers of a certain type are getting repositioned to avoid intersections that wouldn't otherwise look good. If problems persist, please post your specific weather conditions and location so we can look more deeply.
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VR uses much more video memory, so my guess would be that you simply really are running out of it. SkyMaxx Pro might be pushing it over the edge.
I'd try reducing your resolution and/or anti-aliasing settings as a first step, or reducing the cloud draw area setting in SkyMaxx Pro. Switching between volumetric and non-volumetric cloud types might also help. Anything you can do to reduce VRAM usage a bit.
I can't speak to the Gizmo error you pasted in though. If you don't get a response on that here I'd try posting in the Software section.
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That's also a new one to us. Odds are it is a plugin conflict we haven't seen, with some add-on or third party plane that isn't restoring the graphics state properly. If you can post your log.txt it might tell us more.
Also make sure your drivers are up to date.
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I don't know. We certainly don't interact with the Zibo in any way. If you think there might be a conflict between their rain effects and ours, you can always disable SkyMaxx Pro's precipitation effects via its precipitation menu. But we don't do anything that should interfere with any other plugin.
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For what it's worth, I looked into this more deeply. I think what changed is that X-Plane no longer has a valid OpenGL context active at the point where our plugin is re-enabled in this case. So when we try to recreate our sky, clouds, etc. it crashes because OpenGL / Vulkan isn't in a state where you can operate on it yet.
It's more of a technical answer than you probably want, but the bottom line is: yes, it seems to be a new problem and it has nothing to do with your specific system.
For now, if you want to temporarily disable SkyMaxx Pro, I'd do so by using a plugin manager that moves the "SilverLining" plugin (that's us) before you start X-Plane, instead of enabling and disabling it on the fly.
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I don't know what you've selected for cumulus cloud type or what your cloud draw area settings are in SkyMaxx Pro, but experimenting with those settings is probably the key. If you are CPU bound (which I suspect,) you may find that volumetric clouds perform better on your system, or if you want to stick with the other cumulus cloud types, reducing the cloud draw area will also lower CPU usage.
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You might try experimenting with different setting in SkyMaxx Pro for its overcast cloud representation. Solid stratiform might do what you want.
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One other possibility is some sort of licensing issue with SkyMaxx Pro on your system. If it can't confirm your license for whatever reason, it won't display any clouds. If that's the case, you should be seeing some sort of message to that effect in your log.txt file.
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Also, make sure ASXP is configured correctly. From the RWC manual:
When using Active Sky XP, be sure to configure X-Plane as described in the ASXP documentation. In the ASXP application, under Options / Simulator Depiction options, you should find a “Use SkyMaxx Pro depiction mode” option in recent versions of ASXP. Be sure this is enabled. Weather in X-Plane should be set to “from custom METAR (rwx) file” pointing to the METAR.rwx file, not “match real world conditions,” when using ASXP. You should not use ASXP’s “global static” mode with SkyMaxx Pro.
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What happens if you select "Force Weather Reload" from the Plugins / SkyMaxx Pro menu? If that causes the weather to be picked up, I think the culprit is likely having "never change visible weather" checked in the RWC settings. If ASXP doesn't write its own weather to metar.rwx before your flight starts, RWC might pick up an empty metar.rwx and present you with clear skies. And if you have "never change visible weather" on, then it won't change to display the new weather data when it is published by ASXP (unless you were to fly out of the area and return to it)
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Your settings for SkyMaxx Pro are not very aggressive at all. But, I see you have a LOT of other add-ons installed. My guess is that you are running out of RAM or CPU power from all of these other add-ons, and SkyMaxx Pro is just the thing that pushed your system over the edge.
If you temporarily disable your other add-ons and leave only SkyMaxx Pro and Gizmo, how is your performance then?
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On 4/11/2021 at 3:11 PM, dlrk said:
Thanks for that information, that helps. I was under the impression that VRAM is only limiting if it's all used, that clarifies. That said, I still think their may be some sort of issue with SMP, since it's resolved by reloading SMP graphics
When you reload SMP, the video drivers purges all of the fragmented memory associated with its clouds and reloads it all in a less fragmented state. Tight VRAM leads to fragmentation. Really it's an NVidia driver issue; their memory management leaves a lot to be desired. A colleague of mine working in the military visual simulation industry has a bug open with NVidia about it.
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The problem is that X-Plane does not give us any information on which monitor is currently being drawn, and so we have no way of maintaining separate shadow maps for each monitor. We tried a workaround where we would identify different monitors based on their different settings for their field of view offsets, but this caused problems in cases where there are multiple views with the same field of view. As Cameron said, our hands our tied on this one. If it's an issue in your setup, disabling cloud shadows in the SkyMaxx Pro configuration screen is your best bet.
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88.5% VRAM usage is actually really tight, as the memory is likely fragmented to some degree and it becomes hard to allocate large blocks of memory at that point. I would still recommend backing off on settings that affect VRAM usage (ie, anti-aliasing, the cloud draw distance, terrain detail, use of photoscenery) until you find the right balance for your system.
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Hm, things must be in a worse state than I thought. Try this:
- Set SkyMaxx Pro to "default" and quit X-Plane.
- Remove everything in the Resources/plugins/SilverLining/skyColors/Default Sky Colors folder (if anything)
- Run the X-Plane installer to repair the installation again.
That *should* get everything back to normal, unless there is some weird disk permission or disk corruption issue going on with your system.
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At its highest setting, SkyMaxx Pro will draw clouds out to 350 km. I think what you're seeing is a false horizon caused by the blending of X-Plane's sky with our Hosek-Wilkie sky model near the horizon. If you set it to default sky, it might look more like what you expect.
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Yes, after restarting the sun should come back. if it didn't it means something went wrong while moving the sun and moon textures around. You may need to re-run the X-Plane installer to repair the missing files in this case.
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2 hours ago, flightyler said:
I don't think that's us... generally speaking, we don't mess with visibility at all in X-Plane. We just draw clouds (and optionally precipitation and the sky itself)
The exception would be if you are entering the bottom of an overcast cloud layer there. Visibility would start to drop as you go into it. It's dark so I can't really tell from the video if that's the case.
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Try using "fast" cumulus clouds and "soft SD" overcast clouds as they should perform best. Also, if you're not using Real Weather Connector, it can actually help performance. With RWC we don't have to render clouds out to the horizon in every direction, only where the clouds really are in real life.
And of course turning down your cloud draw area setting can help too.
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Try the new 5.1.0 update; there were a few bug fixes in there that might address the CTD's reported in 5.0.
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No clouds with SkyMaxx 4.9.6 on X-Plane 11.55
in SkyMaxx Pro v4
Posted
I'm sure you already did this, but be sure that RWC is set to "FSGRW / ASXP / External Injector"
There are a few settings in ASXP that need to be set - from the RWC manual:
You might also want to turn off the "never change visible weather" in RWC. Sometimes ASXP won't send weather data to X-Plane right away, and so SkyMaxx Pro starts off with clear skies because ASXP didn't send over new weather fast enough. If "never change visible weather" is on, then it will just stay that way until you fly out of the area.
You can also use the option in the SkyMaxx Pro menu to force a weather refresh if you think that might be what's going on.
Also, if you were using FSGRW previously at some point, make sure there isn't a fsgrwsmp.rwx file left over in your X-Plane folder. If so, it will interfere with the operation of ASXP. Delete that file if it's there.
Odds are it's one of those things.