Clouds only extend 5 km(?)

[kneighbour]

I had hoped that the Weather Connector would fix this problem, but no such luck!

I have only noticed this with 3.1 (and 3.1.1), but the range of clouds around my position is actually a square about 5km across. It could be 10, but I am guessing. It is very small.

 

I have set my SMP settings to Default. In XP, my render settings are mostly on max. I use extreme textures, World Detail Distance = High and Cloud Details currently at 91%.

If I zoom right out in XP - ie 20 mile sup or something, there is a large square located over my position. This (I guess) is the area that XP has loaded in. The area of clouds that SMP is drawing is a tiny portion of this square. AS I zoom down towards the ground, I see the small square of clouds appear - and it is tiny.

If I move (ie fly along), the square moves in front of me. The plane is basically positioned near the near of the square in the center of the back part of the square. If I rotate around, there are very few clouds behind me. Maybe a km or so. In front and to the sides is about 5-10km. As I move along, clouds appear at the front of the square, and disappear from the back - this is as you would expect - except these borders are almost within a rocks throw of the plane.

 

I am guessing that most people see clouds to the horizon? 

[Cameron]

23 minutes ago, kneighbour said:

I had hoped that the Weather Connector would fix this problem, but no such luck!

Don't be so quick to judge. Obviously something is amiss here, and there's no way you've spent quality time with RWC yet!

To be clear, where are you trying this out at, and is this with which type of selection active in RWC?

[Defiance_co]

kneighbour,

Helping me several days ago i am assuming you know way more than myself being a fairly newbie but if not .......

Goto badweather.c#m and the world's your oyster for trying differing weather scenarios

Hopefully my smp/rwc are setup correct, over ksfo i had a scattering of clouds then clear misty skies as such, now i took off from kctb (don't ask lol) and i have nice turbulence and clouds by the bucket load

Hoping to exit this weather front to see what it's like visual-wise, i think i am hoping for the same as you, weather front/clouds way off in the distance, though i have my radius etc turned up to around 4k i may need more but this i know will over-tax me ole r9 290x, and i've pushed her to the hilt as it is lol

Have Fun

Tony

 

Edited April 15, 2016 by Defiance_co
spellingz

[Markkku]

Good day!

Based on the quick test flight my setup with new RWC & SMP 3.1.1. & FSGRW runs fine...and produces amazing weather scenarios, and the actual weather changes are much, much smoother now. I am able to see weather fronts far away ahead or behind (to the horizon), pass them either side, fly through...and all that happens much more like in real life now.

So, it seems that RWC does what it is aimed for  Naturally it takes some time to find your optimal SMP configuration. I have changed settings all the way around to see the effects. And all this goes on.

Cheers, and happy flying!

[sundog]

kneighbor - the extent of the clouds is a function of what you have your cloud draw area slider set to, and the visibility data sent to us from X-Plane, whichever is lower. I assure you it can go much, much higher than 5km. 

[kneighbour]

12 hours ago, sundog said:

kneighbor - the extent of the clouds is a function of what you have your cloud draw area slider set to, and the visibility data sent to us from X-Plane, whichever is lower. I assure you it can go much, much higher than 5km. 

I am certainly hoping so! Other (to be frank) it will need to be disabled.

As always, I have my SMP set to default (ie press the Reset button). If I do wind out the cloud distance to about 5000 sq km, the tiny square of clouds I am in does get a bit bigger, but not by much. A 5x5 sqaure is only 25 sq km I just realised, so to work back from what I have set (2000 sq km, I think), I should be sitting in a square of roughly 45x45 km. That sounds more like it! But something is obviously stopping this from happening.

The scenery in XP seems to draw out a long way (I have the scenery detail distance set to HIGH), so it does not seem like XP is the limiting factor.

One question - does SMP draw clouds in a square? Because that is what is happening. And the square being drawn depends on where I am looking. ie as I rotate the view around, you see clouds being redrawn in the new area, and disappearing from the old area. It would be nice if this happened just out of view, of course.

When I get time, I will do up a video for you.

[kneighbour]

Instead of putting up my video, please check out this one on Twitch. This guy has a lot more distance than I do - he has his Cloud Draw distance way higher than I do, which may be the reason. As an aside, it is puzzling how he can do that and I cannot.

Anyway, you see most of the problem in this video. The system is drawing clouds in a square around your plane and it is obvious. You can see the square to your left being drawn, then the one to your right disappearing (as an example). This is not an issue if you cannot see it - but it is obvious. It seems it might be taking too long to do the drawing perhaps.

 http://www.twitch.tv/crzydmnd/v/60764432?sr=a

Certainly no hope of ever seeing clouds to the horizon. The guy make one good observation - perhaps SMP is only meant for low flying VFR use where this draw pattern is not so obvious (in my case it still is more than obvious). With a high flying jet this draw pattern is so obvious and non realistic you really have to turn SMP off.

[Cameron]

22 minutes ago, kneighbour said:

Certainly no hope of ever seeing clouds to the horizon. The guy make one good observation - perhaps SMP is only meant for low flying VFR use where this draw pattern is not so obvious (in my case it still is more than obvious). With a high flying jet this draw pattern is so obvious and non realistic you really have to turn SMP off.

Who the heck flies their jets at this altitude zoomed out to such a degree?

I about blew myself up just listening to this guys logic and voice. It's awful. The clouds he used as an alternative showcase are awful and the information he provided people about "infinity" is inaccurate.

I've no done MANY IFR jet flights (I do not fly GA aircraft). RWC has made it immensely convincing for me.

I'd rather see your issue in your video. Maybe even your voice (kidding). His is just cringeworthy.

[kneighbour]

11 hours ago, Cameron said:

'd rather see your issue in your video. Maybe even your voice (kidding). His is just cringeworthy.

I disgree. It shows the problem pretty well. In any case, I have made up a quick video that hopefully shows you my issue. On the ground, the square of clouds is rather small - about the 5km I originally estimated. When you fly, you seem to get a bit more, and since that is the typical scenario, that is what I will show in my test video. 

I simply opened up my Demo install of XP, loaded a plane and jumped to 20,000 feet. That is why the plane is complaining a bit!  I then show you my SMP settings (basically just default) and my XP rendering settings. The weather is whatever XP comes up with. Just random, I think, as this is the demo version.

You will see in the video that there is a small square of clouds around the aircraft. From the cockpit you are at 20,000 and can barely see the edge of the displayed clouds. If you look around the aircraft, you will see the limits of the square - not very far.  As you fly along, this square of clouds follows you. There are no other clouds in the sky, so this looks rather weird. Bit like a pet on a leash.

The clouds displayed have no bearing on the clouds that you see on the Local Map. I am guessing that this is the way it is meant to be, but make the observation anyway.

Please note this is not a polished performance level video. Just a quick and dirty upload to hopefully show the problem.

The Youtube video is at https://youtu.be/kLadLOv7gOE

I hope this is of some use.

 

Edited April 17, 2016 by kneighbour
PS. No RWC in this setup

[kneighbour]

Have added another video, which is probably easier to see. Still in the Demo XP version. This time I have RWC installed and set to overwrite XP weather all the time. Weather seems to be coming in ok. RWC does not seem to make any difference to the problem.

There is no scenery as I am out of the demo area so less to interfere, I thought. This time there are two cloud layers, which is nice. I guess that is due to RMC, so kudos there. The PC12 is flying at 20,000'. 

You can see the clouds are barely visible in the cockpit. They draw the square in front every so often, and drop off a bit at the back. I caught both redraws on this video.

You tube video showing SMP problem

Edited April 17, 2016 by kneighbour

[sundog]

I don't see the "problem". You've got the cloud draw area set to just the default 2500 square meters, which 50km on each side of the cloud layer - which is just 25km ahead of you. The manual for RWC recommends you set the draw area to at least around 10,000 for this reason.

If you want a larger cloud draw area, turn up the cloud draw area setting. Everything's working as designed as far as I can tell; new grid cells of weather are loaded as you approach them. With a larger draw area, they appear further in the distance and are less noticeable. You just need to turn that up if you're going to be flying at high altitudes. If you can't for performance reasons, that's a separate issue. I have to wonder if your 5 monitors are making your PCI bus into a bottleneck or something. 

[kneighbour]

Thanks for the quick reply. Do you think the square around that PC12 was 50km a side? Looked way shorter to me. I can certainly wind the distance up,  but the framerate loss is huge, and at cruise you would have to wind it out a LONG way.

The monitor thing... dunno. Have removed 4 of the monitors and no difference in fps. So it is not that. But I am pretty happy with the framerates in general. Getting around 40 + now with most things maxxed out.

If you say SMP is working as designed, then I guess I will have to remove this version as well. Funnily enough I never noticed this limitation with V2 for some reason.

Keep up the good work.

[Cameron]

2 hours ago, kneighbour said:

Getting around 40 + now with most things maxxed out.

Did you ever read the article from the XP devs that basically stated if you are getting more than 25fps in X-Plane you're basically not using your computer to its potential?

I'd re-evaluate your desire to want such high fps, Kerry.

[kneighbour]

9 hours ago, Cameron said:

Did you ever read the article from the XP devs that basically stated if you are getting more than 25fps in X-Plane you're basically not using your computer to its potential?

I'd re-evaluate your desire to want such high fps, Kerry.

Well, no, I haven't read that particular article. And I tend to agree - after all, we cannot see much past 24 fps anyway. But as I am sure you know, the (for example) 40 fps I quoted was at a particular moment. As you change scenery, aircraft, look around, fly through clouds, etc, the fps changes. I like to have a decent fps when I start as that gives me a buffer so that when I hit a critical flight phase (ie landing), the system does not start stuttering or time compressing. In my experience if you start with around 30-40, things should not be too bad later on down the track.

Moving SMP cloud distance up to even a semi decent distance drops my fps way down - into single digits. There is no way I can handle that, in fact cannot handle anything less than 20 in the worst case situation. Your experience obviously differs and good luck to you.

But not to worry, will pursue other avenues. Might even go back to SMP V2 as that never gave me any problems.

[sizziano]

we cannot see much past 24 fps anyway.

Yes we can, the difference between 30 and 60FPS is very noticeable doing anything that involves camera movement. Of course it is not necessary to have really high FPS in XP as it is in a first person shooter for example.

[kneighbour]

29 minutes ago, sizziano said:

Yes we can, the difference between 30 and 60FPS is very noticeable doing anything that involves camera movement. Of course it is not necessary to have really high FPS in XP as it is in a first person shooter for example.

Having just done a bit of reading up on this, I can see I was totally wrong. Video games are not like movies at all - no motion blur for one. I was equating the two experiences. 30 fps would seem to be the minimum that we should aim for. XP actually goes into 'crisis mode' at 20 fps so it seems sensible to at least aim for 30+. 

[sizziano]

Having just done a bit of reading up on this, I can see I was totally wrong. Video games are not like movies at all - no motion blur for one. I was equating the two experiences. 30 fps would seem to be the minimum that we should aim for. XP actually goes into 'crisis mode' at 20 fps so it seems sensible to at least aim for 30+. 

Props for realizing your mistake. The main difference between films and games is that you directly control a game so FPS has a direct effect on your ability to control it. Anyways 30 is the "ideal" FPS for XP but I don't mind when it gets higher.

[Ben Russell]

http://imgur.com/Erm0LJZ

[Havner]

On 4/19/2016 at 2:28 AM, sizziano said:

Props for realizing your mistake. The main difference between films and games is that you directly control a game so FPS has a direct effect on your ability to control it. Anyways 30 is the "ideal" FPS for XP but I don't mind when it gets higher.

And when you're using TrackIR 30 FPS starts to become too low. 45+ minimum to have relatively smooth experience. 60 preferably.
Without it 30 is enough.

[kneighbour]

32 minutes ago, Havner said:

And when you're using TrackIR 30 FPS starts to become too low. 45+ minimum to have relatively smooth experience. 60 preferably.
Without it 30 is enough.

I have lived with 15-20 for a long time, and more recently 20+. I am used to a non smooth experience! Now that I have new hardware, will have to get used to 30+. Rather a pleasant (but expensive) experience! 

[sizziano]

2 hours ago, Havner said:

And when you're using TrackIR 30 FPS starts to become too low. 45+ minimum to have relatively smooth experience. 60 preferably.
Without it 30 is enough.

That's an entirely different situation.

[kneighbour]

With a few tweaks to my NVidia settings, I have been able to up the SMP distance out to 10,000 sq km. It increases the small box of clouds around the plane, but not by that much. To my eye it does not extend 50km in front of me (ie 10,000 sq km) , but I guess it is possible. 

I am guessing that SMP V2 has the same issue, but I never noticed it. It certainly does not have the framerate hit that V3 does (at least on my system), so currently I am running that and of course without RWC.