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SkyMAXX Pro


JohnMAXX
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I just saw this for the 1st time and was wondering , what is driving your cloud creation?  Are you emulating thermals that end up generating cumulus clouds?  Or Are you just drawing clouds based on the generated weather pattern?  I'm asking because after all as we all know cloud movement and rotation is driven directly by the wind and air currents so how much of that is here?

 

Thanks

Jim

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Thermals have no effect on cloud generation, also the cloud rotation is a static effect.  But wind speed determines the shape of the cloud systems, as the wind speed increases the clouds will elongate into a realistic pattern just as in real life.  We decided to tie into the default weather engine since I didnt see a need to reinvent the wheel here.....

 

I have a control in the UI to adjust the cloud rotation, since this is a static effect I wanted the user to have some control over this.  Not everyone is going to like it ;)   Also users will be able to drop their own sky colors into the plugin, I did this for Tom K since he is never happy :P (but seriously he is the reason why I added that feature)  There are already a bunch of nice sky colors out there and this is a subjective topic....

 

Here is an early look at the UI:

 

jWKHcM9.jpg

Edited by JohnMAXX
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Something as complicated as this is going to require some help from LR.

With that said the basic integration is complete but not a viable product until we have the ability to tweak performance.

Also we made strides with hdr but more time needs to be dedicated to clean this up...

Overall we are confident that we will have a fantastic add on. But I cannot out a timeframe on it....

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Amazing, John. Take your time, I'll be there with the credit card when you are done :)

Questions - do the ACF's strobe lights interact with the clouds at night (lighting them up)? Also, have you worked out a way to provide smoother weather transitions than X-Plane's as updated METARs are downloaded? I don't know if it relates to your comment about how scattered clouds disappear suddenly.

Congratulations!

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Amazing, John. Take your time, I'll be there with the credit card when you are done :)

Questions - do the ACF's strobe lights interact with the clouds at night (lighting them up)? Also, have you worked out a way to provide smoother weather transitions than X-Plane's as updated METARs are downloaded? I don't know if it relates to your comment about how scattered clouds disappear suddenly.

Congratulations!

No currently we have no plans for strobes to interact with the cloud puffs.  Additionally during testing the default weather engine will cause the clouds to disappear, we developed a transition to help with that problem, which only happens with real world weather selected.

 

But to combat this problem there is another free plugin out there: http://x-plane.joanpc.com/plugins/xpgfs-noaa-weather

 

In testing SkyMAXX with this plugin I havent seen the abrupt transitions typical to the default weather engine.......

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hmmm... I'm not sure if I like this particular screenshot. It is very colorful and with lots of contrasts ... It somehow reminds me of FSX clouds and of video games. (Sorry to say that, but that's my honest opinion. You've shown more realistic shots earlier, though.)

There are quite a bit of controls in the UI that make a big impact on the overall look and performance of SkyMAXX Pro, for instance in this shot I increased the minimum and maximum size of the cloud puffs, used a lower contrast sky color and set the visibility CAVOK (inside the weather dialog).  Is this more of what you are looking for?.....

 

  Z0RC5Sw.jpg

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And thats why we gave you control via a UI ;)   Personally I think it is a very subjective topic, scenery that is,  some people may like the first SS some may like the last.  We are trying to have everything in between :D

 

From what you have shown us here, you have done a great job. Keep up the good work, looking forward to its release.

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