SkyMaxx Pro v4.9.6 Update Released!

[Udo EDBM]

I also just bought SMP 4.9 and also think it is a great tool with beautiful 3D clouds.
It works very well with FSGRW and the many extra settings - raindrops, cloud rotation, snowflakes, rays of the gods and much more. Great work!
The only thing I really miss are stratus clouds.
SMP 4.9 cannot display them - that's a pity.
Stratus clouds are more often seen than Cumulus

I would like to pay 50% of the purchase price for version 5.0 but I would only pay if Stratus clouds are included.

Is it possible to say if SMP will display stratus clouds in the future?
Then the tool would be perfect for me

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[rawdmon]

So after some testing I've figured out that for whatever reason SkyMaxx will not draw the cloud shadows on the ground while in VR but it draws them fine while in standard non-VR mode.  I'm attaching two screenshots that I took, one is in VR and one is not.  They were taken with the exact same clouds at the exact same time of day in the exact same location (the simulator was paused while I was taking these).  Also note that when I switched back to standard mode from VR the shadows showed back up right away.  Can anyone think of any way to fix this or can we chalk this one up to being a bug?

Edited September 30, 2020 by rawdmon

[rawdmon]

Just to add to my previous post, one thing I noticed is that the cloud shadows appear to be drawn based on the position of the plane.  It seems like in VR it's possibly not doing this properly or something.  When the plane is on the ground in non-VR I can't see any shadows but once I get the plane up in to the air I can.  It's like in VR it's not even trying to draw them, almost like when the plane is still on the ground.  Although I suppose there could also be several other reasons why they aren't showing up in VR.  Too bad because I really like the look of them.  Hopefully someone can help figure out what's causing this.  I'm using the latest Beta of SkyMaxx and I'm using X-Plane 11.50 (the latest official release version, I have it on steam in non-beta).  The screenshots were taken running under Vulkan, though I noticed the same issue under OpenGL as well previously.

Edited September 30, 2020 by rawdmon

[Cameron]

This is not a bug, but as I recall a limitation of VR. @sundog will be able to answer for sure on that one.

[sundog]

2 hours ago, Udo EDBM said:

I also just bought SMP 4.9 and also think it is a great tool with beautiful 3D clouds.
It works very well with FSGRW and the many extra settings - raindrops, cloud rotation, snowflakes, rays of the gods and much more. Great work!
The only thing I really miss are stratus clouds.
SMP 4.9 cannot display them - that's a pity.
Stratus clouds are more often seen than Cumulus

I would like to pay 50% of the purchase price for version 5.0 but I would only pay if Stratus clouds are included.

Is it possible to say if SMP will display stratus clouds in the future?
Then the tool would be perfect for me

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

It displays stratus clouds already. There's a whole configuration screen for how you want overcast clouds to appear.

[sundog]

17 minutes ago, Cameron said:

This is not a bug, but as I recall a limitation of VR. @sundog will be able to answer for sure on that one.

Shadows in VR only work if HDR is active in your X-Plane graphics settings. We're not able to read the information needed from X-Plane to draw shadows in VR unless HDR is on.

[rawdmon]

I currently have my Visual Effects slider set to High (HDR).  I'm assuming that's what you're referring to?  Both of those screenshots were taken with that set like that.

[sundog]

39 minutes ago, rawdmon said:

I currently have my Visual Effects slider set to High (HDR).  I'm assuming that's what you're referring to?  Both of those screenshots were taken with that set like that.

Can you confirm what version of SkyMaxx Pro you are using? You said you're using "the latest beta," but we haven't released any beta versions.

In addition to HDR being required in VR for cloud shadows to work, you also have to be in an external view. I *think* you are based on that screenshot but it's something worth asking.

 

[rawdmon]

1 hour ago, sundog said:

Can you confirm what version of SkyMaxx Pro you are using? You said you're using "the latest beta," but we haven't released any beta versions.

In addition to HDR being required in VR for cloud shadows to work, you also have to be in an external view. I *think* you are based on that screenshot but it's something worth asking.

 

Sure, the version shows up as being 4.9.6.2.  I had selected the version in the installer that contained a couple of extra performance fixes, so I think that's what I was thinking of.

The screenshot was actually taken from a cockpit view (albeit I ended up with the headset poking out of the plane because I was just holding the headset in my hands at the time).  So from the sounds of it I can't see the ground shadows in VR unless I'm outside of the cockpit in an external view of the plane?  Is there any particular technical reason why this isn't able to work in the cockpit view as well?  Because most people using VR are going to be using the cockpit view almost all the time, so it kind of defeats the purpose not to have the ability to have that working in that view.

Edited September 30, 2020 by rawdmon

[rawdmon]

Not having ground shadows working in VR in the cockpit view is really the only thing that keeps me from giving this a 10/10 for VR use.  Otherwise it's amazing, so hopefully there is some way to fix that in a future release.

Edited September 30, 2020 by rawdmon

[rawdmon]

The weird flickering thing that happens alternating in each eye in the VR headset when flying through clouds is kind of annoying too but I can live with it since it would likely be pretty difficult to track that one down.  Disabling lense flare has no effect on it.

Edited September 30, 2020 by rawdmon

[sundog]

1 hour ago, rawdmon said:

Sure, the version shows up as being 4.9.6.2.  I had selected the version in the installer that contained a couple of extra performance fixes, so I think that's what I was thinking of.

The screenshot was actually taken from a cockpit view (albeit I ended up with the headset poking out of the plane because I was just holding the headset in my hands at the time).  So from the sounds of it I can't see the ground shadows in VR unless I'm outside of the cockpit in an external view of the plane?  Is there any particular technical reason why this isn't able to work in the cockpit view as well?  Because most people using VR are going to be using the cockpit view almost all the time, so it kind of defeats the purpose not to have the ability to have that working in that view.

Yes, that's a fair point - external views in VR aren't commonly used. The technical reason is because in VR the shadows will affect the cockpit when they shouldn't. 

We do need to test VR again for an upcoming release, so I'll take some time to see if anything within X-Plane has changed that would allow this case to work now.

[rawdmon]

Thanks, that would be great.  I really hope something can be done about that.  From what I've heard the X-Plane devs are kind of roadblocking you guys and making it harder to get your stuff working properly in general by not making the API open enough and by even closing some things off for no apparent reason.  I've heard similar complaints from other projects.

I just tested flying through clouds outside of VR and I can spot what's causing those flickers of light in the headset that I was talking about.  If you fly through a cloud outside of VR you'll notice that occasionally a cloud basically comes inside the plane for a split second and you'll see it quickly overlap with the instrument panel of the plane then disappear a moment later.  In VR instead of seeing that cover the dash you basically just end up with a flash in the bottom portion of the right or left part of the headset (probably because it's only there long enough to be rendered in one eye or the other).  In VR it kind of looks like someone is quickly reflecting some light in to your eye with a mirror out of the corner of your vision for a split second, or something along those lines.  If you've flown in VR I'd imagine you probably already know what I'm talking about.  That might be pretty difficult to fix though.  You'd almost have to create some sort of small "wall" in front of the plane that prevents those cloud textures from rendering inside of it.

Edited September 30, 2020 by rawdmon

[sundog]

We do have a potential solution to that "flickering" issue in VR, but don't want to make any promises until I've had a chance to really test it.

Laminar has actually been really good to work with. Yes, the API sometimes limits us, but it's usually for very good reasons that are often beyond their control. 

[rawdmon]

Cool, well I'll just hold on for now and see what happens then

Thanks for being so responsive. 

 

Edited September 30, 2020 by rawdmon

[rawdmon]

Something new that I noticed today when I switched to an external view in VR was that the ground shadows shift when moving my head around.  It's like they follow my head slightly left to right but then eventually settle back to where they should be.  I'm not sure why the position / movement of my head would be affecting the position of the ground shadows.  I would have thought those would just be based on the position of the sun in reference to the clouds and the ground mesh.

Another thing I noticed is that at dusk or dawn some of the mountains or large hills in the distance will vanish and re-appear as I move my head around.  This doesn't happen with SkyMaxx disabled and it doesn't happen with SkyMaxx during the daytime (and it's not noticeable at night).  It's not a subtle effect, it's very noticeable.  I noticed it a lot with the mountains / hills towards the left hand side when taking off from Seattle International flying towards Mount Rainier.

One final thing I noticed is that the sky color at dusk or dawn (with the Hosek-Wilkie sky model) doesn't match well with the colorization of the hills/mountains in the distance by default.  See the attached screenshots.  The first one is with the "Inscatter gain rayleigh" set to 2 and the "Inscatter gain mie" set to 1 (which are the defaults).  If I set both of those to 0 then it looks more natural (second screenshot).

With Rayleigh scattering set at the defaults it looks much stranger in VR than shown in the screenshot.  It's like the sky is a curtain that ends before the horizon (it looks closer than the hills do).  Without the Rayleigh scattering it looks much better / more convincing.  I personally think it looks better in non-VR that way as well.  If you look up photos of mountain sunrises or sunsets the mountains look fairly dark and are quite sharply defined against the horizon even when far off.

You might consider having SkyMaxx automatically change those Rayleigh scattering values based on the time of day.  They need to be set to the defaults that I mentioned during the day or it doesn't look as nice, but during dusk or dawn they look much better zeroed out when using SkyMaxx (it makes the hills/mountains blend better with the sky color).  At night it's not really noticeable either way but might be worth just zeroing them anyways for any non-daytime views.

I've been really putting SkyMaxx through it's paces since I got it and the problems I just mentioned plus the ones I mentioned in my last few posts are the only problems I've found with it.  Everything else seems to work perfectly as far as I can tell.  Hopefully you'll be able to sort some of these out in the next few releases.

Edited October 1, 2020 by rawdmon

[Cameron]

1 hour ago, rawdmon said:

You might consider having SkyMaxx automatically change those Rayleigh scattering values based on the time of day.

This is a no-no for plugins to do in Laminar's book. We do not go out of bounds when it comes to this kind of stuff.

When it comes to VR, things are very quirky and not universal between headsets. I don't think we can make major promises on this stuff other than attempts, but what you view as bugs may actually be out of our control.

[rawdmon]

26 minutes ago, Cameron said:

This is a no-no for plugins to do in Laminar's book. We do not go out of bounds when it comes to this kind of stuff.

When it comes to VR, things are very quirky and not universal between headsets. I don't think we can make major promises on this stuff other than attempts, but what you view as bugs may actually be out of our control.

I see, fair enough.  Thanks

[rawdmon]

The mountains appearing and disappearing happens even when I just move the camera around when outside of VR, so that's not a VR specific issue for me.  In terms of the lighting problem, I decided to just create my own flywithlua script to work around that.  Attaching it here in case anyone comes across this and has the same issue.

 

 

auto-rayleigh.lua

Edited October 2, 2020 by rawdmon

[sundog]

25 minutes ago, rawdmon said:

The mountains appearing and disappearing happens even when I just move the camera around when outside of VR, so that's not a VR specific issue for me.  In terms of the lighting problem, I decided to just create my own flywithlua script to work around that.  Attaching it here in case anyone comes across this and has the same issue.

auto-rayleigh.lua 1.61 kB · 0 downloads

Thanks for sharing that, @rawdmon. I have been spending the past couple of days addressing various VR issues including a few that you've flagged here, with some success. Stay tuned...

[rawdmon]

No problem.  I made a small change to the script since I originally posted it to make it a bit more efficient (it only runs once per second now instead of once per frame since that's all that's needed based on my testing).  I edited the original post and attached the new version of the script.

That's great news about having success addressing some of the VR issues.  I'm looking forward to seeing the results. 

Thanks.

[rawdmon]

I just noticed today that when I try to fly in Overcast, Low Visibility, and Foggy in VR the fog looks all wrong.  It looks like 3 layers and they move around as you move your head.  It happens when moving the camera too outside of VR, though not as noticeable as in VR.  I also find it kind of strange to really even have fog to the degree that it does when overcast, it seems like overkill.  When I go to Stormy there's no fog and it looks great.  It would be nice to have an option to disable the fog layers if they can't be improved.  It would then at least allow VR players to fly overcast without the distracting fog layers.  I really find they are overdone in general (the fog is too thick in most cases and doesn't look real).  I've heard the same comment made by several reviewers online as well.  Xplane already has built in fog levels, I'm guessing you're not allowed to manipulate those at all and you need to try to do it with texture layers like that instead?

Edited October 5, 2020 by rawdmon

[sundog]

Getting our own fog effects to work in VR is one of the things I've recently fixed here. Not sure if it's the same issue you're describing, though - you are touching on the larger problem of not having API access to influence X-Plane's fog effects. Instead we must disable them entirely and attempt to recreate them with cloud layers and our own fog post-processing effect.

[rawdmon]

Cool, well I guess I'll just wait and see what's still broken once the next release drops and report back.  If you need a beta tester I'd be all for it.

[paul_smith_gw]

 

This is the result everytime I start XP11 after installing RWC and SMP. Using Vulkan\Intel\Nvidia Hardware. I've attached my log file as well.

Log.txt