Praise, gripes and a request

[3saul]

Firstly, great plugin. Hugely enhances the XPX experience. Well worth the money.

 

I've noticed a couple of things:

1. At dawn/dusk clouds change color rapidly, going from dark to light instantly
2. Clouds sometimes abruptly appear in front of you.

Now for the request. One thing I love when flying is being able to observe a distant thunderstorm in all it's glory. If visibility is good it would be awesome to have this feature rather than have a storm 'just appear' in front of you.

 

Great work!

 

Specs:

Mac 10.9

XPX latest

NOAA plugin

 

 

[Cameron]

At dawn/dusk clouds change color rapidly, going from dark to light instantly

 

Don't default clouds do this?

 

 

 

Clouds sometimes abruptly appear in front of you.

 

Are you running with real weather?

 

 

 

Now for the request. One thing I love when flying is being able to observe a distant thunderstorm in all it's glory. If visibility is good it would be awesome to have this feature rather than have a storm 'just appear' in front of you.

 

This would not come from SkyMaxx Pro. Weather patterning is dictated by the X-Plane weather generator. The only way you'd see something like this in the future is if a professional weather injection product came to market. In other words, SkyMaxx Pro is already capable of doing this, but it only renders what X-Plane tells it to. It's X-Plane that cannot yet do this properly.

 

 

 

Great work!

 

Thanks!

[geofa]

Curious-I've already seen many distant Tstorms in their glory appear? In fact this is something this add in has done that no other weather add in any flight simulator has done yet. Am I missing something?

[3saul]

Yes default clouds also go from dark to light instantly, I was hoping Skymaxx wouldn't! It's very unnatural and ruins the atmosphere.

 

I am using real weather using the NOAA plugin.

[3saul]

Curious-I've already seen many distant Tstorms in their glory appear? In fact this is something this add in has done that no other weather add in any flight simulator has done yet. Am I missing something?

 

Perhaps it's my settings. I've got distance for cloud drawing set to max, but it's not until I'm within a few miles of a storm can I see it. It must be my settings.

[geofa]

Play around with them-took a little time but nirvana (at least for present flight simulation abilities) is attainable.

[zzap_v]

Distant clouds are not visible and it is no xplane problem.

The plugin has this problem.

It simply drows cloudw sudenly arround you and not infront or behind.

And it has nothing to do with METAR - Real weather - or NOAA.

[sundog]

Distant clouds are not visible and it is no xplane problem.

The plugin has this problem.

It simply drows cloudw sudenly arround you and not infront or behind.

And it has nothing to do with METAR - Real weather - or NOAA.

 

Make sure your visibility setting is high in your weather settings. Clouds will fade out at your visibility setting, or the cloud distance set in the SkyMaxx configuration - whichever comes first.

 

Thunderstorms are placed randomly within the cloud drawing distance, so it is somewhat luck of the draw whether they appear near or far from the camera. As Cameron pointed out, X-Plane does not give plugins any localized weather information - all it tells plugins about storms is "there are storms around you, and on a scale of 1 to 10, here's the overall intensity of them." SkyMaxx interprets that intensity as the number of randomly placed storm clouds it creates in response to that message. It would take a more sophisticated weather injector that can pass more information to SkyMaxx, or an update to X-Plane, to do something more precise.

[zzap_v]

Thank you sundog for the responce, but the cloud disapearing thing has nothing to do with visibility settings. Believe me I have tested everything.

Hope for a fix from x-plane

[JohnMAXX]

I'd like to see a video of your definitive claims. The reason I ask for such is this isn't even remotely how the cloud engine works and we are having a hard time trying to understand your issue.

If you give us some time we can help you and the community out.

[zzap_v]

ok John. I'll try to make the video 

[zzap_v]

John

here is the video.

 http://youtu.be/QS_-VcNre0U  ( the fadeout is at 2:40 )

Hope it helps...

Edited December 6, 2013 by vag66

[Cameron]

John
here is the video.
 http://youtu.be/QS_-VcNre0U%C2'>
Hope it helps...

 

Quite likely you are crossing a DSF boundary and because you have real weather enabled this is the source.

 

Not much we can do here on that one for the time being. X-Plane clouds would re-load and essentially do the same here as well (except instead of fade, they would be more abrupt).

[JohnMAXX]

Evangelos,

 

It is because of real world weather,  from the weather dialog did you see that big open area you were flying towards?  The default weather engine tells SkyMAXX that there are no clouds and SM responds by shutting them down this also happens with the default clouds.  You are essentially in an area with no clouds......

[zzap_v]

Evangelos,

 

It is because of real world weather,  from the weather dialog did you see that big open area you were flying towards?  The default weather engine tells SkyMAXX that there are no clouds and SM responds by shutting them down this also happens with the default clouds.  You are essentially in an area with no clouds......

I am sorry to disapoint you John and Cameron, but this does not happen with default clouds.

I uninstalled SMP and checked everything.

Clouds are there, and I can approach and fly in and out of them.

 

And I have checked it with another friends X-Plane. Same results.

 

Please understand that i am only trying to help here. 

 

Thank you.

[tomcat357]

Mine does the same as vag66. No X-plane weather does not. The clouds in SMP are beautiful in many situations, especially if you fly low, but at high altitude it's a no go for me. Clouds disappear and reappear in a small circle around the aircraft kinda spoils it for me. Maybe future development will iron things out. Back to default weather for now..

[JohnMAXX]

Actually the default do the same thing, be it a much slower fade.....

 

Noted guys......

[Cameron]

I am sorry to disapoint you John and Cameron, but this does not happen with default clouds.

 

No X-plane weather does not.

 

Yes, it does. It only looks different as it does it, simply because the rendering method for each is different. We're not making this up guys. I've seen it plenty with my own eyes.

[tomcat357]

You have something different than I have, or either I'm deaf, dumb and blind, which is very possible. Have fun..

[Cameron]

...or either I'm deaf, dumb and blind, which is very possible.

 

These things are only for you to determine. I can't judge you here, and won't.

 

 

Have fun..

 

You as well! Blue (or cloudy) skies, sir!

[qdavweb]

Would have to agree with other customers in this post, the "cloud pop" in SMP when flying the transition between a clear and cloudy area is worth working on for upcoming version(s), if this can be fixed it would make SMP the perfect add-on ! It's a must have already.

Default weather lets you see a cloud bank in the distance as you approach it from a clear area. And disappear in the distance behind you as you enter a clear area. SMP hasn't quite got this right yet.

[Cameron]

Would have to agree with other customers in this post, the "cloud pop" in SMP when flying the transition between a clear and cloudy area is worth working on for upcoming version(s), if this can be fixed it would make SMP the perfect add-on !

We will of course look into it more, though I make no promises. As it stands, for me and many others, SkyMaxx Pro is already such a huge enhancement over default. Improving things is natural. I'd say the jump from 1.0 to 1.1 was quite significant, and we're already cooking up some amazing features for 1.2.

 

It's a must have already.

Thanks, we think so too.

 

Default weather lets you see a cloud bank in the distance as you approach it from a clear area. And disappear in the distance behind you as you enter a clear area. SMP hasn't quite got this right yet.

True, but not entirely true. There's more to it than this, and we're pretty intimate with how it works in default in order to create this add-on.

As it stands, we need not continue to keep the repetition going in this thread, guys. As John has indicated already, it's been noted for review, so unless you have something NEW to add to this thread aside from a listed suggestion, please refrain from saying the same thing that was already posted before you. This isn't a bug, it's a feature request.

[Ben Russell]

I would suggest annotated(use YouTube, itll take 5 minutes to add some) video evidence of effects people are trying to describe.