SMP3 Cloud Draw Distance Problem...

[FlyBaby]

I just purchased SMP 3 and the cloud draw distance does not seem to extend to the horizon. Attached are photos of what i am seeing.

To me, there is not much difference than the earlier version of SMP, but i have seen pics and vids where SMP3 draws farther than on my system.

Is there a setting or config that I am missing?

Log.txt

Edited August 24, 2016 by FlyBaby

[sundog]

Try flying to a higher altitude, above the clouds. I think X-Plane is just limiting visibility due to the low altitude in that scene. You can see the clouds are getting faded off a bit there, which usually mean they are constrained by visibility instead of any limits that we are setting.

I know your visibility slider is all the way up, but the way X-Plane computes cloud visibility distance is a bit more complex.

 

[FlyBaby]

3 hours ago, sundog said:

Try flying to a higher altitude, above the clouds. I think X-Plane is just limiting visibility due to the low altitude in that scene. You can see the clouds are getting faded off a bit there, which usually mean they are constrained by visibility instead of any limits that we are setting.

I know your visibility slider is all the way up, but the way X-Plane computes cloud visibility distance is a bit more complex.

 

I fly at low altitudes (5k and below) given that I only fly Helis and small GA aircraft (SR20, Tecnam P92). Are you saying that low altitude flying does not render the cloud distance settings picked in both SMP and XP Weather visibility options?

[sundog]

We base our cloud visibility on the sim/private/stats/skyc/fog/far_fog_cld dataref provided by X-Plane. (If it's not available, then we fall back to what the visibility slider says.) 

I don't know what algorithm Laminar uses for this value, but the reason we use it is because it gives us higher visibility distances at higher altitudes - even higher than what the visibility slider may indicate.  Basically it tries to account for the fact that visibility improves with altitude, generally speaking.

Beyond that, cloud draw distance is also limited by the size of the cloud draw area. At 40,000 square km, that works out to 100km distant at most. We will be raising this limit a bit in the upcoming SMP 3.3 update, though.

 

 

[gpb500]

Is it possible to add an option to override whatever XP is telling you?  If performance is an issue, I'd vote to let end users worry about that since everyone has different hardware.  It just feels unnatural as it is now.  Also I assume you are doing some type of interpolation between METARs?  Reason I ask is just seems like I see a group of clouds over there and there, but nothing in between.  Thanks!

[frontendrob]

30 minutes ago, gpb500 said:

Is it possible to add an option to override whatever XP is telling you?  If performance is an issue, I'd vote to let end users worry about that since everyone has different hardware.  It just feels unnatural as it is now.  Also I assume you are doing some type of interpolation between METARs?  Reason I ask is just seems like I see a group of clouds over there and there, but nothing in between.  Thanks!

Try lowering your visibility to around 15-25nm, it will look better (less aliasing, smoother edges of night lighting, more FPS) and clouds will fade into the horizon. With visibility like yours, you will never have clouds extending to the horizon while maintaining good performance. Bottom line is X-Plane offers unlimited visibility, it's just not very good at it.

Edited August 24, 2016 by frontendrob

[sundog]

> Is it possible to add an option to override whatever XP is telling you? 

Well, what you've got me thinking is whether we should always treat the visibility setting as a lower bound for the cloud visibility. That is, retrieve both values from X-Plane and use whichever one is higher. I think that's a good idea for SMP 4.

>   Also I assume you are doing some type of interpolation between METARs?

SkyMaxx Pro doesn't do anything with METAR data directly, but if you also purchased Real Weather Connector, then we do. Cloud systems do tend to have distinct boundaries, so I lean away from blending the reports together and try to preserve those frontal boundaries. If you prefer your weather to be more uniform, you might consider using FSGRW together with SMP/RWC - we'll honor the weather data it outputs, which is more blended.

[gpb500]

Thanks for the replies...I'll look into FSGRW.

[Richdem]

On 8/24/2016 at 3:08 PM, frontendrob said:

Try lowering your visibility to around 15-25nm, it will look better (less aliasing, smoother edges of night lighting, more FPS) and clouds will fade into the horizon. With visibility like yours, you will never have clouds extending to the horizon while maintaining good performance. Bottom line is X-Plane offers unlimited visibility, it's just not very good at it.

I am sick at the moment so my brain isn't functioning properly so sorry for the stupid question but how do you reduce the visibility to 25nm in Xplane?

I have a pretty decent system but whenever I touch the draw distance in SMP beyond 2,500km I run into FPS issues

[frontendrob]

16sm = 25700 meters. Go to the Weather screen, there is a slider. It will only work below the first cloud layer though.

[Richdem]

1 hour ago, frontendrob said:

16sm = 25700 meters. Go to the Weather screen, there is a slider. It will only work below the first cloud layer though.

Thank you,

By going into this screen and adjusting the visibility slider are you not then disabling real world weather? I assume it takes the last weather snapshot for where you are then applies to the rest of the world

[frontendrob]

Correct, that is what it does. I became so frustrated with these restrictions (combining real weather with personal preferences) that I wrote a script to deal with these issues. Find the link in my signature.