SkyMaxx Pro and SWC startup problem on iMac

[SWD]

I purchased SkyMaxx Pro and SWC several days ago. I have X-Plane 11.50 on an iMac with OS Catalina. When I start a new flight, I get a solid blue screen, with nothing on it, except the menu bars at the top left and right. I have turned Metal off.
I purchased Maxx FX, also, and it works well.

 

Thanks for any assistance.

[sundog]

@Cameron have you seen this issue before? I don't know if this might be related to the issues mentioned at https://www.x-plane.com/kb/macos-catalina-x-plane/ where the new security requirements in Catalina are impossible for many plugins to satisfy.

[Cameron]

No, definitely not the security issue.

Can you please post your log.txt file from X-Plane and a picture or screenshot of what you're seeing?

[FlightDoc]

Hi Cameron,

Not to waste your time, or be confusing. I am also SWD, who posted this issue. I tried to get a forum account for several days, but I think something may have become corrupted, when we lost power for an extended period of time, due to Hurricane Zeta. I finally got an account on my wife's email address, but then this afternoon, was finally able to get my own account to work. It will be much easier for me, if I can continue this discussion on this account. Sorry for any confusion.

I have tried to attach the requested files... I'm new to this.

Thanks for your assistance.

 

Log.txt

[sundog]

Quite honestly I can't think of any scenario that would result in your entire screen turning blue.

The only thing I see in your log is that SkyMaxx Pro is noting that you are almost out of memory. I suppose it's possible that this is getting your video driver into some sort of bad state.

Start by deleting the settings.dat file in your resources/plugins/SilverLining folder, which should revert SkyMaxx Pro to its default settings. They may be less memory-intensive than what you had changed them to. Failing that, see if lowering your graphics settings in X-Plane has an effect.

[FlightDoc]

Thanks for your reply. I spent about 2-3 hours this morning, trying various scenarios, and found several things. I did delete the settings.dat file, but nothing changed.

1. A second problem surfaced during my trials... the cockpit screen would freeze at times, and would not respond or move to any key, switch or mouse. However, as with the blue screen, appropriate sounds can be heard, such as the throttle increasing, or inside vs. outside the plane.

2. I worked by changing the Visual Effects, Texture Quality and Anti-aliasing sliders in X-Plane.

3. I uninstalled Maxx FX, SMP and RWC, and then restarted by installing just SMP and RWC. No matter what settings I changed, or how high or low, there was never a bluescreen, or a frozen screen. Some losses of FPS rate at times, but still no screen problems.

4. I then re-added the Maxx FX installation, and tried many, many scenarios. The following is what appeared to surface: when Visual Effects is set to LESS than High (HDR), and Antialiasing is 2x or more, and a Maxx FX effect has been selected (ie., not Default)... then a problem occurs. If the scenario is to start X-Plane fresh, and an effect has previously been selected on Maxx FX, then the blue screen will occur. Disabling the plugin on the Plugin administrator will then let the program proceed normally. If X-Plane is started with Maxx FX on Default, the program goes normally... but if an effect is subsequently selected, the screen will either go blue, or will freeze. This seems to depend on whether Antialiasing is 2x or 4x or 8x, as to which occurs.

5. If Visual Effects is set to High (HDR) or greater, no problem ever occurs (other than losing FPS, obviously), no matter what any other rendering settings are selected, or whether a Maxx FX effect is selected.

Maybe this will help. Thanks!

 

 

[sundog]

I think you hit the nail on the head there. The issue seems related to when hardware MSAA is in use, which happens if HDR is off and AA is on in X-Plane 11.50+. It affects our ability to copy the framebuffer and modify it.

There is a way for us to get around this, at least under Windows - so we'll have to put out an update to MaxxFX to fix this. In the meantime, avoid MSAA (preferably by enabling HDR) when using MaxxFX.

 

[FlightDoc]

Glad my research helped. It's way above my pay grade as to what it all means, such as hardware MSAA. Hopefully, the update to Maxx FX may help MacOS, also.

As an aside, I finally got to work with SkyMaxx Pro yesterday, and enjoyed it. Thanks for the good work.

Cheers!