Bad Rain Rendering in SkyMaxx Pro

[dvanwig]

Rain rendering is not realistic.  See pictures and video below...especially the video.  I am using X-Plane 11.35.  Fly With LUA scripts and other plug ins were disabled.  Only SkyMaxx Pro v4, FS Global Real Weather, and Real Weather Connector were enabled though I was not using real weather.  I used manually adjusted custom X-Plane weather for maximum precipitation and was flying the stock X-Plane Cessna 172.  Although not depicted in the pictures below, this same rain rendering problem also happens in other stock X-Plane and third party aircraft.  My computer configuration is Intel i9-9900k CPU at 3.60GHz, Nvidia RTX 2080Ti GPU, 32GB RAM and Samsung EVO 970 NVME 1TB SSD, 2TB Hard Drive, with Windows 10 Pro.

Can you help?

[sundog]

That's odd; it worked the last time I checked. I'll have to look into it.

Meanwhile, set the rain setting to "default" and it should behave as you expect.

 

[sundog]

OK, I think I see what might be happening. Basically we are running out of rain particles because you've set the precipitation intensity all the way up. Obviously that shouldn't happen; the reason is that we lowered the max number of rain particles for SMP in the name of performance, and this was an unintended side effect.

We'll fix it for our next release, but for now set our precipitation mode to "default" if you'll be flying in extreme conditions like this.

Thanks for reporting this.

 

[dvanwig]

Sundog,

I did further testing.  I think the problem I had was with a wonky conflict between FS Global Real Weather, Real Weather Connector and SkyMaxx Pro.  When I removed FSGRW and RWC, SkyMaxx Pro did a very nice job rendering rain as set in the custom weather setting of X-Plane...up to and INCLUDING severe precipitation.  So I don't think you need to generate more rain particles.  See new video below.  Then after I reinstalled FSGRW a second time I could successfully ignore real weather and use manually generated rain which SkyMaxx Pro rendered correctly (including severe precipitation).  Then I reinstalled RWC and the only change I could see was the additional menu option in SkyMaxx Pro to include FSGRW or not.  Do I need both FSGRW and RWC?  FSGRW injects real weather into X-Plane all by itself and then SkyMaxx Pro renders that weather from FSGRW.  Is there an advantage from using RWC?

All the best,

Doug VW

Edited September 2, 2019 by dvanwig
Include video

[sundog]

Well, I suspect you hit some sort of edge case where FSGRW may have been sending in even heavier precipitation than X-Plane's "severe" setting. But I'm glad it's cleared up for you, whatever the cause.

You do need RWC if you want to use SkyMaxx Pro with real-world weather with good results. FSGRW just changes the source of the weather data from X-Plane itself to FSGRW. RWC serves as the "glue" between real world weather - wherever it's coming from - and SkyMaxx Pro.

[dvanwig]

Well, it was a rainy day in Illinois today and rain rendering is not working again.  Flying along at altitude and rain streaks were intermittently displayed vertically and then horizontally.  It seems like as I passed through rain, it would start displaying vertical streaks and then switch to horizontal streaks before disappearing altogether even though rain sounds were still coming out of the speakers.  Sky was overcast over a wide area so it wasn't that I was passing in and out of rain columns.  Also I noticed when parked on the ramp, there were tons more rain streaks out the side windows than in front.  Still intermittent though.  The only thing that works is the default X-Plane rain.

Edited September 8, 2019 by dvanwig

[sundog]

13 hours ago, dvanwig said:

Well, it was a rainy day in Illinois today and rain rendering is not working again.  Flying along at altitude and rain streaks were intermittently displayed vertically and then horizontally.  It seems like as I passed through rain, it would start displaying vertical streaks and then switch to horizontal streaks before disappearing altogether even though rain sounds were still coming out of the speakers.  Sky was overcast over a wide area so it wasn't that I was passing in and out of rain columns.  Also I noticed when parked on the ramp, there were tons more rain streaks out the side windows than in front.  Still intermittent though.  The only thing that works is the default X-Plane rain.

I'm still pretty sure you're running out of rain particles. Our next release will fix that.