Less cumulus than by default, it's possible?

[Prosco]

Hello everyone,

First of all, I would like to say that I am very satisfied with SkyMaxx Pro v4.8.2.

But personally, for the X-plane option "few cumulus" I would like less cumulus (one here and there) than the default SkyMaxx Pro, here:

Is it possible ? If yes, how ?

Thanks in advance.

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2019 by Prosco

[sundog]

I'm afraid that value is hard-coded and there's no way for a user to adjust it. 

It's certainly something we could consider tweaking for our next update, though.

Does anyone else reading this thread agree? It's sort of an aesthetic choice, so I'd like to hear from more than one customer before we change it for everyone.

[Prosco]

Thank you very much for your answer and the consideration of my request.

[alexcolka]

More options without affecting functionality of the add-on is certainly welcome.

[FlyAgi]

I think the few cumulus are fine. I just did a quick test with a manual weather preset, changing clouds to few and there where some areas with lots of few clouds while right next there where huge gaps and some single puffs or smaller accumulations.

Same position, different heading:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[sundog]

21 hours ago, alexcolka said:

More options without affecting functionality of the add-on is certainly welcome.

If people didn't turn up every slider they see and then complain about performance to everyone they can, I'd agree! A "cloud density" slider would affect performance a lot, which is why I'm hesitating to add one.

[FlyAgi]

Do a slider with the current values as the max available value - this way people can increase performance by reducing the slider and those in the need of higher draw distance could possibly have more options to achieve that without sacrificing too much of their framerates (high visibility has a massive impact in FPS). 

 

 

[Prosco]

FlyAgi, I do not want to annoy you but your clouds do not seem realistic to me as proposed SkyMaxx Pro v4.8.2.

Here is X-plane option "few cumulus" by SkyMaxx Pro v4.8.2. :

So as not to cover the sky with clouds like "a field of salads", here is what I would like:

I know that sometimes the best and the enemy of good.

[FlyAgi]

Well... I'm going to take a video for proof, this just needs some time to record and upload...

:-)

[FlyAgi]

It's done - this is how the cumulus look for me in motion. I think it's pretty good actually, the only problem I found where some weather redraws which should not happen like this in XP11, even the default weather redndering does not suffer from this (except on mesh or weather loading). 

 

 

[Prosco]

Very well thank you.

Would it be possible for you to post your cumulus choices as I did in post 1 to get the same thing.

Thanks in advance.

[FlyAgi]

I always use 'puffs' for the cumulus.

[Prosco]

I think that with SMP, you use a weather injector because SMP + X-plane by default =

Edited August 6, 2019 by Prosco

[FlyAgi]

Just watch my video - you can clearly see I don't use a weather injector, the video shows my weather options and the manual clouds setup. Later in the video I also change clouds to scattered and broken in the menü and you can see the effect instantly, clouds fading in and so on. 

Mabye Real Weather Connector does have some effect (I have this installed) but I think Frank has to tell us if RWC has an effect on weather presets or not - in theory it should be inactive if I don't fly with real world weather. 

I checked this once again, deleted all metar files and removed RWC from plugins, still I get the results shown in the video. 

 

 

Edited August 6, 2019 by FlyAgi

[sundog]

I cracked open the code just to check for myself what exactly is going on. If you're not using RWC, X-Plane sends in a coverage value for the cloud layer that ranges from 1-6. We convert that to a percentage and honor it as best we can.

But sometimes, X-Plane doesn't send a coverage value, and in that case we default to 40% for "scattered" cloud layers, which I think is presented as "few" in the X-Plane UI.

I don't know what drives that coverage value through the API in X-Plane, but the unknown details of that is probably what explains the difference in what you're both seeing. My guess is that FlyAgi's setup is sending in a specific coverage value for the layer to us for some reason, while Prosco's is not.

So... I'm going to lower our internal fallback value of 40% to 30%, as I do think that's more appropriate for "few". I don't think this warrants a new release of SMP in itself, but it will go out with our next update.

[Prosco]

Great! Thank you very much.