Night Sky with SkyMaxx looks "pixelated"

[linkito87]

Hi.

I did two screenshots. 1 with SkyMaxx Pro 4 activated and other with it disabled... And the night sky with SkyMaxx Pro activated looks so bad... Anybody can help me?

I have HDR+SSAO, textures at maximum and antialiasing at 4x SSAA.

My PC:
i7 87000
GTX 2070
16GB DDR4

Thanks!

[Cameron]

Your night with SkyMaxx Pro shot shows clouds above the plane against the sky and stars. Aside from that I can't see any difference of pixelation difference between either image in the dark sky on my monitor.

[linkito87]

Yo dont see the rectangular marks? See the circles in this image:

[Cameron]

Full brightness on an OLED I cannot see anything but the black sky in your circled areas.

[linkito87]

OH sorry, wtf... this forum is compressing the image. See here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1nt24s15wvwmm8c/AAA_4BPWiiqT0o1O7YGJQl8ra?dl=0

There are the 3 images (1 with SkyMAxx activated, 1 without and last the same of without with marks in the rare polygon forms in the sky) 

[Cameron]

Same thing in your Dropbox images. Nothing but black sky on my end, even in circled regions. Even when I zoom in.

[sundog]

I can't see it either. But what I would try is selecting a different sky color set in the SMP configuration, and then restarting X-Plane to ensure it's picked up.

[Cameron]

Have now checked on my second computer. Still do not see any kind of polygons.

[linkito87]

Omg... I swear i see them. Now I attach two pictures made by mi iPhone. The lines in the sky are the same I see in my monitor (BenQ XL2411Z). Now you see them?

[Cameron]

I believe what you're seeing here (aside from the fact an iPhone captured images of it even brighter than you're seeing it in person, so makes it look even worse) is the result of 32-bit colors being portrayed best they can on a monitor vs thousands or even millions of colors and proper shading in certain scenarios in things like photos or everyday life as a whole.

There's no pixel issues, just harsher gradient shading when less colors are allowed.

[Jakob Ludwig]

@linkito87 are you running some sort of modified skycolors, Lua scripts which affect atmosphere scattering or some x-vision stuff? If so disable them, revert to default skycolors and compare.

[shaved_ape]

From the long history of XP11, those "bands" that are prevalent in the last shots (enhanced to really see them during a full night sky) have always been an issue.  Try a dusk or dawn flight and you really see them, without any need to use an extra camera either.  I believe Cameron is on the right track here.  @Jakob Ludwig also makes a good point that to troubleshoot this, disable any and all plugins that deal with post-processing or modifying sky colors, to see if this issue is still prevalent (on top of the already known issue with sky colors from the base sim by LR).

One tip, and one I am not sure how to fix without the aid of the plugin, is to adjust the raleigh scaling.  I have an old plugin that was once offered for free from Github, that allows the user to adjust that, which can make a difference in how the base colors are rendered.  I sometimes bump that setting up or down to see if I can dial in a more realistic sky.  Also, try bumping the setting you have at HDR+SSAO back down to just HDR and see if that helps too.

[sundog]

I would also recommend calibrating the brightness and contrast on your monitor. I think you just have things turned up way too high.