Skymaxx Pro 4 no overcast?

[Aquilam]

I'm using Skymaxx Pro 4.0, real weather and Real Weather Connector with X-Plane 11 under Windows 10 and while the results are beautiful I'm realizing that I never see a full, dark overcast. 

For example, I live in Chicago and we're currently experiencing heavy thunderstorms with plenty of lightning and rain. While KCGX in XP11 is receiving real weather and it's showing lightning and and heavy rain, per the attached screenshot the Skymaxx sky yet looks like a cheerful summer day with just a few cloud puffs in the sky (not what I'm seeing when I look out the window here in Chicago). 

I've tried various Skymaxx Pro settings, but nothing gives me a true overcast under any conditions, especially a dark overcast. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Edited July 20, 2017 by Aquilam

[sundog]

Try setting your strauts representation to "HD Cloud Puffs", and if you always run with real weather enabled, you can set RWC to "Always" to avoid any potential conflicts with other weather add-ons you may have installed.

[Aquilam]

Thanks for the tips sundog. I've been playing around with settings and I can get decent (decent for X-Plane that is, which appears to have inherent cloud coverage and layering limitations when compared to FSX) stormy weather when I configure it manually, otherwise I'm having disappointing results when using XP11's built-in real world weather engine.

For example, today I'm looking at current storm maps for the US which is showing significant activity in the upper Midwest, however selecting an XP11 airport in the heart of such activity is giving me mixed results. Maybe the METARS are slow to update? Or maybe I need to look into an alternative real world weather reader? Not sure what's going on.

Thanks again for the fantastic products--wouldn't fly without them. 

Edited July 21, 2017 by Aquilam

[sundog]

We use the same METAR source as X-Plane itself, so I do think it's probably just the delay in METAR data that you're seeing. Typically there is a 1-2 hour delay, so what you see out the window may not match what's in the sim when we're dealing with quickly-forming summer storms.

There are products such as FSGRW that provide an alternate weather source - SMP/RWC will work with it when set to "automatic" mode. 

[Aquilam]

Thanks again for the info. That makes sense, though I was just assuming that the METARs were as current as the latest Doppler radar. I know that METARs are time stamped, though I don't know if there's any way to view this in XP11.