Cloud Shadows - blocks (errors)

[pcemerikic]

Why do I get square blocks instead of shadows ?  I tried a zillion of different settings without success...

 

Realism is different with Cloud Shadows

 

Please look at my Screen shots...

 

Config is x-plane 10.31 , iMac 5K, SkyMAXX Pro 2.1

 

Thanks, Predrag 

 

1.tiff

2.tiff

 

 

[JohnMAXX]

I'm trying to see what you are talking about but I cannot open tiffs on my phone can you throw some png's up?

[sundog]

My only guess is that it has to do with the extreme resolution you are running at. Cloud shadows depend on us making a copy of your depth buffer, and at that resolution perhaps there wasn't enough VRAM left over to make that copy successfully.

 

If you run at a more typical resolution like 1920x1080, does it work?

 

If so, it's all about conserving VRAM until enough is left over for the cloud shadow effect. If you're running with HDR, custom scenery, and 5K resolution, I doubt much is left over.

[pcemerikic]

well I run on 1920x1080, and what I just noticed it works ok when HDR rendering is enabled !? but not on regular

[sundog]

I think X-Plane might use different anti-aliasing techniques depending on whether HDR is on or off, so it's possible that HDR off could actually use more VRAM if you have multi-sample anti-aliasing going on. Admittedly I am just speculating - I've never seen what you're seeing myself, but lack of video memory would explain it.

 

I spent a little bit of time to see if SkyMaxx Pro could somehow deal with VRAM running out more gracefully. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a good way to handle this case, and it does seem more prevalent on Macs. See https://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/showthread.php/183930-glTexImage2D-doesn%C2%92t-report-error 

 

At the end of the day, you just have to make sure your configuration isn't such that you're cutting it too close.

Edited December 30, 2014 by sundog

[kjhkent]

Hi I'm getting exactly the same issue, reported in a post elsewhere in this forum. Im also running Xplane on an IMac. Retina 4ghz, 32 gb ram and 4gb graphics.

[sundog]

Are you on Yosemite by any chance? It seems there are a lot of problems with Yosemite and X-Plane in general from what I've read, some of which manifest themselves as graphics driver problems. X-Plane 10.35 is expected to resolve at least some of them.

[kjhkent]

Hi Frank. Yes running in Yosemitie. Thanks very much for the information. Another great forum to share information.

[sundog]

This might be a problem with Yosemite itself; just found this article describing all the problems with this latest release of MacOS.

 

...there's nothing in the way of a fix or a workaround just yet. The same is true for many of the other graphics issues that have been reported, from Yosemite not identifying the right graphics card to weird colors and shapes appearing on screen. It looks like you're going to have to wait those ones out.

 

 

Laminar has been warning users about upgrading to Yosemite as well. See the "Yosemite" section in this post from them:

 

While we’re talking about stability, I have to mention Yosemite: on OS X the vast majority of bug reports we’re getting that involve “weird stuff” and crashes involve Yosemite.  We’re still trying to sort out the issues, but Yosemite is definitely the most disruptive OS X major version release we’ve had in a long time, and because it’s free, a lot of people downloaded it.

• If you haven’t updated to Yosemite on you’re using X-Plane, consider waiting until things settle down.  We’ll work around problems, and Apple will issue patches.
• If you have an older machine, consider never updating.  Perhaps this is heresy but often the maximum OS version your machine can run is limited by hardware requirements, e.g. this is the OS that just about knocks your machine over.  How well is it going to run X-Plane?  How much of the hardware resources are left for us?
• When a new OS comes out, don’t just click “download” even if it’s free; wait a week or two and see how well it works for other people first.

A major OS upgrade is when the OS vendor can make major changes, drop old technology, etc.  On OS X it also means new OpenGL drivers (because the drivers are always packed with the OS), so it’s a potentially disruptive update.

 

 

For now, all you can do is wait and hope that either Apple or Laminar finds a solution, or roll back to Mavericks using Time Machine if you can.

 

Bottom line however, every indication is that these graphical anomalies are not a SkyMaxx Pro problem but something more general with Yosemite.