About This File
Hello, and welcome to Environment+, or Enviro+ for short! The new and improved mod for your sim environment! The Enviro is what we've done to make the sim so much more immersive, and the + is your contribution to it! We love seeing what people will add on top of it! From skycolours, to cloud textures, to tweaks of the .lua itself!
This mod primarily came about when I noticed that most other .luas had their clouds placed as much as 7,000+ feet above where they were supposed to be! To bring the weather back down to its proper layer and keep it looking nice was a difficult, time consuming task, but with the help of MagikarpDrowned (Creator of the famous Project Better X-Plane), we've crafted an amazing new environment.
This of course isn't simply a .lua tweak, which is why it's not called any old .lua tweak. It's an environment tweak, and that means it comes with cloud textures! Courtesy of FSEnhancer's amazing work laying out the clouds, and Magikarp's tweaks to their already fantastic puffs, we've got some perfect fits for the new environment! I greatly encourage using the skycolours from the aforementioned mod, or Soft Cloud Art's similarly stunning skycolours!
But, you may be wondering, "What if the textures tank my FPS? What if it doesn't perform as well? What if I just don't have the VRAM for it?" Well, I had thought about that a lot, and that's why the .lua was primarily built to focus on making the DEFAULT cloud textures as magnificent as possible. If you have performance issues, or just prefer the look, I greatly encourage you try out the default X-Plane 11 cloud textures with this .lua!
Which leads me to tell you to MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR DEFAULT CLOUDS. They can be found in Resources/bitmaps/world/clouds.
Now, the .lua was designed to be the tweaking man's .lua, so if you encounter issues, performance or visual, dive into the .lua! I've written down some notes and suggestions within it for you to be mindful of, and I highly encourage you toy around with the various settings to see what sticks with you!
To install Enviro+, dive into the Enviro+ folder and place Resources in your X-Plane installation folder, right where the .exe is! It'll ask you to overwrite some cloud textures. If you use vanilla or other cloud textures that you don't wish to replace right now, simply choose not to overwrite, and everything else will install as planned!
I hope you enjoy Enviro+, and I can't wait to see how it might evolve in the future! Take care, and have at 'er!
Requires FlyWithLua
Clouds courtesy of FSEnhancer, without it I wouldn't have such fitting clouds to go with the .lua! Do please check out their Skycolours too! Ooh and ESPECIALLY their sun textures! Their sun textures in particular are stupidly amazing!
https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/41411-fsenhancer-alpha-version/
Shoutout to Soft Cloud Art for inspiring me to finish up the finer details of this .lua, and also having some amazing Skycolours of its own!
https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/40952-soft-cloud-art/
What's New in Version 1.1 See changelog
Released
This version features improved shading of the clouds, improved cloud shadows, increased shadow resolution, and removal of the whiteout in clouds (May have to reload scripts to apply final feature)
This build has been tested quite heavily, but if you encounter any issues, send us a PM and we'll do what we can to help!
