Japo32 Posted January 5, 2015 Report Posted January 5, 2015 Hi! Finally I bought the product. Have to say that I like a lot more the clouds than the ones I did (yes I did them for Xplane default. The graphics.. not programming of them). Sooo I like them a lot.. BUT only at low altitudes.I set an overcast and with the camera I go up (not with the plane) and I see a square of clouds.. but nothing extended of the borders. Is there anyway to show the overcast until my visión limit to the horizon? (of course if the overcast covers all the area possible) If there is a way I don't know how show it. Any clue is welcome. By the way... where is the manual installed? Thanks! Quote
Cameron Posted January 5, 2015 Report Posted January 5, 2015 Clouds are drawn based on your cloud draw distance setting. You can play with that some.The manual is located in the SilverLining folder in your plugins folder. Quote
Japo32 Posted January 5, 2015 Author Report Posted January 5, 2015 great! Thanks about the manual direction! About the distance I suppose you mean the inside plugin one. I think I made it totally full to right but have to checkout because I didn't restart xplane. Anyway.. this one is a must! Quote
Cameron Posted January 5, 2015 Report Posted January 5, 2015 About the distance I suppose you mean the inside plugin one. I think I made it totally full to right but have to checkout because I didn't restart xplane. Yes, inside the plugin. SkyMaxx Pro does not require you to restart X-Plane to see any changes. It should just work after you click the "Apply" button in the SkyMaxx Pro settings menu. Quote
alexcolka Posted January 5, 2015 Report Posted January 5, 2015 Hi, does the team considered a visibility limiter option inside the plug in? You set say 40 nm maximum visibility regardless of altitude. Don't know if that is hard to code but perhaps it could improve the aesthetics of many things flying higher. Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk Quote
sundog Posted January 6, 2015 Report Posted January 6, 2015 Right now the cloud visibility is determined by the cloud draw distance set by the user in SMP's configuration, and visibility information received from X-Plane - whichever is lower. So, the existing cloud draw distance control basically is a cloud visibility limiter already. Right now the cloud draw distance maxes out at 40 nm, and it would be nice to increase that limit. When we've tried doing that in the past however, it just results in a ton of tech support complaints from people with 512MB video cards who can't handle that many clouds. Not sure what the best solution would be, but I'm open to ideas. Quote
Jose Almeida Posted January 6, 2015 Report Posted January 6, 2015 Hi, On this subject, most likely outside the scope of SMP, I find annoying the sudden way the ground texture rendering stops some distance away; is it 40 nm? I know Laminar has been talking about increasing that distance but I'm sure it will have an impact on VRAM usage. What I think would be a reasonable compromise would be for the visibility to fade out around the same distance where xplane stops rendering the ground texture.Now, I don't think SMP controls visibility and I don't think it can place any sort of artificial clouds ou there, just to mask that sudden transition. Increasing the cloud draw distance beyhound that would likely do the trick, if there are clouds, but then again we will be faced with a VRAM problem. Sometimes there are things you have to accept as they are. José Quote
alexcolka Posted January 6, 2015 Report Posted January 6, 2015 Yes, that would be great, the fade out around the same distance XP10 stops rendering ground texture a la XP9 style. Sent from my GT-I9500 using Tapatalk Quote
alpilotx Posted January 7, 2015 Report Posted January 7, 2015 (edited) Last line in latest version-update-blog-entry:http://developer.x-plane.com/2015/01/try-x-plane-10-32r1/ Right now it looks like fixes for Yosemite will go into X-Plane 10.35 and improved DSF loading and longer DSF visibility will go into X-Plane 10.40 if the code is solid enough. And no, it will be less heavy on VRAM, but very heavy on RAM usage! The plan is to load 4x3 (=12) instead of 3x2 (=6) DSF tiles at once ... as such, it will also - approximately - double the RAM needed to keep it all in memory (so, in places where 8 GB RAM were enough, you should rather have 16 GB RAM at hand)! For this reason, it will - almost 100% sure - be an optional setting (and by default disabled). Interestingly, its not extremely heavy on FPS (because in the distance, it really only draws the basic, textured mesh ... but no other 3D clutter, texture overdraw, etc.). But this might largely vary depending on your GPU! PS: I know this, because some - longer - time ago, I had an internal dev release of Laminar running, which already had the first, experimental implementation of this feature Edited January 7, 2015 by alpilotx Quote
Japo32 Posted January 7, 2015 Author Report Posted January 7, 2015 about the idea of show more clouds far away from those 40nm. When I was making the textures of the clouds I had to make some textures for the far distance clouds.. Those ones where not texture but sprites so they are planes far away so in that situation I used real photos of clouds. I don't know if Skymaxx is using that far sprites clouds already.. but if not.. that could be a solution. For sure we do not need 3D clouds a certain distance from the plane. 2 Quote
AnonymousUser68 Posted January 8, 2015 Report Posted January 8, 2015 (edited) about the idea of show more clouds far away from those 40nm. When I was making the textures of the clouds I had to make some textures for the far distance clouds.. Those ones where not texture but sprites so they are planes far away so in that situation I used real photos of clouds. I don't know if Skymaxx is using that far sprites clouds already.. but if not.. that could be a solution. For sure we do not need 3D clouds a certain distance from the plane. That sounds really useful for those of us who spend lots of time at high altitudes with huge visibility! Here are Ben's comparison shots regarding the new high altitude code: http://developer.x-plane.com/2014/03/better-long-range-visiblity-in-x-plane-10-30/ Edited January 8, 2015 by X-Plane Australia Quote
3saul Posted April 19, 2015 Report Posted April 19, 2015 Another idea that would work for all people (and card types) is to allow the user to configure the draw distance to suit their needs. Quote
sundog Posted April 19, 2015 Report Posted April 19, 2015 You can. There's a cloud draw distance setting in the SkyMaxx configuration screen. Quote
3saul Posted April 25, 2015 Report Posted April 25, 2015 Right now the cloud visibility is determined by the cloud draw distance set by the user in SMP's configuration, and visibility information received from X-Plane - whichever is lower. So, the existing cloud draw distance control basically is a cloud visibility limiter already. Right now the cloud draw distance maxes out at 40 nm, and it would be nice to increase that limit. When we've tried doing that in the past however, it just results in a ton of tech support complaints from people with 512MB video cards who can't handle that many clouds. Not sure what the best solution would be, but I'm open to ideas. Sundog I was referring to your quote above re cloud draw distance maxing out at 40nm. My question was enable us to extend that in settings. Or have a I confused the discussion here? Quote
sundog Posted April 25, 2015 Report Posted April 25, 2015 Ah, I didn't know that's what you meant. But if you read the rest of that paragraph: When we've tried doing that in the past however, it just results in a ton of tech support complaints from people with 512MB video cards who can't handle that many clouds. So, I'm saying we've tried letting people extend that in the settings, and it just resulted in more problems. Many people just go in and max out every setting they see, and then complain to us about their low framerate. SkyMaxx Pro 3 will help with this in some situations - stay tuned for details. Quote
3saul Posted April 26, 2015 Report Posted April 26, 2015 How long might we have to stay tuned for?... Quote
sundog Posted April 26, 2015 Report Posted April 26, 2015 Not too long, I hope! I have a working build of SkyMaxx Pro 3 here, so it's not just vaporware. Quote
saied45 Posted April 26, 2015 Report Posted April 26, 2015 Not too long, I hope! I have a working build of SkyMaxx Pro 3 here, so it's not just vaporware.can you tell us what features skymax pro 3 has that 2.0 doesn't have? Quote
sundog Posted April 26, 2015 Report Posted April 26, 2015 can you tell us what features skymax pro 3 has that 2.0 doesn't have? Not yet! Watch for an announcement from X-Aviation once we're closer to beta testing. Quote
3saul Posted April 27, 2015 Report Posted April 27, 2015 (edited) Looking forward to the announcement. I imagine SM3 will look something like this: (great job btw) Edited April 27, 2015 by 3saul Quote
CaptCWGAllen Posted April 27, 2015 Report Posted April 27, 2015 Good detective work, 3saul Wow Silverlining 4 is looking magnificent. On the other key subject Frank (and I know it has been asked a number of times) - but do you think you will ever get any traction with Laminar to introduce Triton? Is there even a slight chink of light? Can we pester them en masse to push it along?CheersPeter Quote
CaptCWGAllen Posted April 27, 2015 Report Posted April 27, 2015 Members28 postsPosted Today, 07:14 AMLooking forward to the announcement. I imagine SM3 will look something like this: (great job btw)Looks just like this and we will be able to recreate it - amazing. http://youtu.be/7mxmFCw-DigCheersPeter Quote
sundog Posted April 27, 2015 Report Posted April 27, 2015 do you think you will ever get any traction with Laminar to introduce Triton? To be honest, it's not something I've ever mentioned to them myself. It would require a fair amount of effort to integrate Triton into X-Plane, and I suspect they have more pressing features on their list that are less work. If people want to lobby Laminar for it though, I certainly won't stop them! Quote
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