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Wow. Here we have a great program: Skymaxx Pro 1.1 - and many are wishing for 'even more' features. I have to say it- just getting rid of the grey wall of death was worth every penny of Skymaxx cost. The beautiful clouds are simply a bonus! I am not in love with REX. I used to fly FSX, and even with Rex Essential HD OD, the clouds were not 'all that' and a bag of Tostitos. IMHO, they looked kinda wrong where the clouds intersected the mountains. Nothing is perfect, but I am firmly in the 'happy camper' category with Skymaxx Pro.

Yes , I managed to learn something last years I am painting aircraft-models for flightsim for many years now. To be frank ,I did not expect to find much I did not already know. Until some wheeks ago , when I started to make a repaint (Thai Royal Air Force) for the ATR 72-500 ( Aerosoft/McPhatstudios ) Not really a big deal , a white airplane with an emblem and a blue and gold cheatline. The "white" happened to be the problem. I tried,tried once again I really was going mad. Even a complete pure white texture turned out to produce a greyish kinda thing. I realised that had to come from the OBJ files. An OBJ file can be opened with a text-editor so I did. Ok I knew, a command line reading ATTR_shiny_rat 1.00 gives us a plane with a bit of gloss, ATTR_shiny_rat 10.00 gives us even more. We can fill in the value we like. There are many different ATTR commands. Among them is a special one , ATTR_diffuse_RGB 0.00 (or other values) This is the command which drove me mad. In the OBJ file for the front section of the fuselage I found this line , ATTR_diffuse_rgb 0.820 0.820 0.820 That was the explanation of the problem ATTR_diffuse_rgb 1.00 1.00 1.00 means 100% of the color/bightness ( pure white is 255.255.255) ATTR_diffuse_rgb 0.820 0.820 0.820 means less than 100% 0.820 is 18% less than 1.00 As 255.255.255 is white at 100% brightness and 18% of 255 is 46 , the command ATTR_diffuse_rgb 0.820 0.820 0.820 reduces the brightness of the texture (all colors) with approx 46% Thats all , I opened all OBJ files related to the fuselageparts and changed all ATTR_diffuse_rgb 0.820 0.820 0.820 values into ATTR_diffuse_rgb 1.00 1.00 1.00 I could also simply have inactivated all ATTR_diffuse_rgb commands by placing a # in front of them , # ATTR_diffuse_rgb 0.820 0.820 0.820 An ATTR_diffuse_rgb 1.00 1.00 1.00 does not change a thing so we can forget about it. Now I was able to have my bird in sparkling colors. Ohh and yesssss, the default liveries , brand new and good looking too. No need to say back-up all files first , however, its very unlikely you`ll ever want them back. See the result , the front of the fuse displays the colors exactly the way they are on the texture, the rest of the fuse the suffer the ATTR command. ( 3d modelers should not fiddle with color-values and leave that to the texture-artists ) Second screen shows the files involved, they are in the main objects folder. Its only some minutes of work.( the # will do nicely) just search for ATTR_diffuse_rgb 0.820. Look at this all I wrote above as a general explanation of what this command is about, I you are content with the ATR the way it is , do not do a thing. My bird however will aways be a grey one for you then. Enjoy, Leen de Jager

If you take the time to review the product page at X-Aviation I think you'll find the product delivers exactly what it says. X-Plane has never had distant clouds, this is a very long standing issue, so we haven't removed anything there. In fact, last time I tested the default clouds, X-Plane couldn't even cope with NEAR clouds that were partially in view, very large chunks of cloud formations pop-in and pop-out as you rotate around the compass. The default effect is laughable. So laughable that for years I've been flying CAVOK so I can completely avoid the default. Here is the product page for easy access: http://www.x-aviation.com/catalog/skymaxx-p-101.html Take a minute to watch the slideshow, it shows a bunch of different items, including a nice lightning strike. Would it be nice to have distant cloud formations? Absolutely. Unfortunately, X-Plane only provides data for the weather that is very localised around the aircraft. Because of this ALL the plugins that feed X-Plane data from NOAA or METAR files ALSO can only provide localised weather data. There is absolutely no data available to X-Plane about distant weather. NONE. You can use the built in METAR or the NOAA plugin, both of them only care about a very small area of air space. SkyMAXX was never advertised as a weather-injector. It's advertised as a visual effects change.

My post was an observation. It is not and was not directed at anyone or any particular product. It is an observation about the general expectation of people when they're online dealing with software. We are already working to improve the product in this thread (SkyMAXX Pro) and have been since the day it was released. As a side note; I have seen storms. I have seen ugly clouds. I have seen pretty clouds. I have seen clouds better than anything I've ever seen in X-Plane since 2005.

Had another look... let X-Plane run for a while all by itself with SkyMAXX Pro activated and running. Definite leak of about 20 megs every 3 minutes or about 400 megs an hour. I can't understand why your leak is so aggressive but I have some good leads on how to pursue what I can find. Thank you very much for your patience thus far, hopefully we can resolve this with a patch soon.

No no, that is my point. There is no need for a new model or remapping, just a lowering of the vertices...that's all. If it was more complex I would certainly understand that anyone would be hesitant of backtracking through the mesh and make major alterations. But this is not the case, you could lower the said vertices without adding anything else or remapping for that matter. And just to make clear, I am very happy about the rest of the aircraft and I agree that it's well done, both visually and system wise.

No, it is not a question of viewpoint, it is a somewhat deformed glare shield, and I am quite astonished in regards to the reply from the developer. This is a very expensive addon and one would think that things were up to shape, and if they weren't, I would expect it to be fixed in the future. But a blatant 'no'? Not only is it an error, but it's also very hard to ignore as it's in your face + it obstructs the view, in sum is a total immersion killer. And to top it off, it is an easy fix from a modelers viewpoint (I'm a among other thing's also a developer myself). I don't think I am nitpicking or trying to be difficult either, I'd be quite happy if they just lowered those vertices just a tad. No remapping or new polygons are required, just a lowering of those vertices that are extruded horizontally. I mean, I think it's crazy, the aircraft is so very well made in every other aspect, but this glaring bug 'will not be dealt with'? That does come off as very strange considering it is a top dollar addon, if it was my work I would have been a bit embarrassed and I would have rectified it ASAP, no doubt! And just to make sure, with embarrassed I mean the jovial "woops, my bad" type embarrassed, not embarrassed embarrassed. Well, whatever, if there's definitely not gonna be issued a fix for it from the developers I guess I just made a bad investment, no worries. For those who says it's correct here are some better pics where you can clearly see that the top of the glare shield has an angle down towards the windshield from the get go, there is no flat/horizontal part first and then a downwards angle : http://www.airliners.net/photo/NextJet/Saab-340A/1672851/L/&sid=969187520daf5913c3103394d6b1039c http://www.airliners.net/photo/Air-Botnia/Saab-Fairchild-SF-340A/0280748/L/&sid=969187520daf5913c3103394d6b1039c http://www.airliners.net/photo/Chicago-Express-Airlines/Saab-340B/0368081/L/&sid=969187520daf5913c3103394d6b1039c http://www.airliners.net/photo/United-Express-(Colgan/Saab-340A/0599114/L/&sid=969187520daf5913c3103394d6b1039c http://www.airliners.net/photo/US-Airways-Express/Saab-340B/0665533/L/&sid=969187520daf5913c3103394d6b1039c and a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ob7oRxMTX0 Well this will be my last post in regard to this matter, the issue has been raised and I don't have anything else to add. I certainly hope the devs will take this into consideration despite the initial 'no' (which could technically just have been a reflex 'no' shot from the hip)

SMP it's not soooo much great as you said. It is a great inprovement in X-Plane weather render engine, but It's still absolutely not perfect and there are still some problems...and there is much room for improvements. I think that, for the price, the developers MUST add new features and solve step by step all the problems found during those days of "public testing". I'm not an unsatisfied customer, but I'm expecting progressive updates and enhancements in near future.

Can't you just change the pilot's seat height in Plane Maker? Looks more like a viewpoint issue rather than a graphics model issue.

Hi Cameron, Yes, it has been a long time coming, but life doesn't always go as planned and you have to keep in mind that I do all this beside a busy full time day job, family, baby and other constraints. So I am happy to have reached this stage so far, even by changing directions from time to time. It is my first aircraft and I guess this is natural, if you learn along the way. You are right, I built my own C++ framework for development, as I usually prefer to code in this language and it was working fine. However, I didn't like the pain to compile for three different platforms. I even bought a Mac Mini, just to be able to compile my code for the Mac, but I didn't like the idea to also install Linux as well, even I like to provide the Beaver to Linux users. So like I said, it was painful and the code turn around times, when I did a single code change became annoying. I know there are workarounds like having two folders of the same aircraft, where you just swap .xpl files etc., but also this was annoying. Another developer suggested SASL to me and gave me a short intro and after trying it, I was hooked. I could implement my code within minutes and now I can re-load my plugin on the fly, without stopping a running simulation. This allows rapid development, prototyping and testing. I know that SASL has its limitations with respect to OpenGL, but since I am not into developing airliners or heavy avionics cockpits, there is absolutely no need for me. SASL also makes it very easy for me to implement GUIs and I just love it that way. Code encryption, if required, is a piece of cake and I can do it myself and the support for all three platforms is important for me as well, because I don't want to close the door for anybody, even Linux users might be a minority. So no stumbling blocks. It was more a question of ease of use, a more rapid and streamlined development process, which is just fitting my specific needs and my own customer support. I still prefer C++ over Lua, but I can easily live with it.

First congrats on a very well made aircraft, really enjoy this bird. But I think I found a small but glaring error It's the shape of the glare shield and the error is 'in your face' practically all the time And besides being a constant reminder being what it is and where it is, it's actually also a bit obstructive because it blocks the view forward a bit. I hope some vertices get's shuffled around a bit in the near future. Other than that, great addon Pictures says more than a few words, so here are some pics that hopefully shows what I mean As one can see, in RL the top of the glare shield is angled more directly towards the window sills while in the sim, it is extruded almost horizontally before it angles down toward the windows. You should be able to see almost the whole window frame from a pilot's perspective, try that in the sim without moving your head up and to the forefront of the overhead panel. A few more pics 'over the counter' just to show how it look's. Sorry I didn't have any better pictures for you, but I hope you can take care of this glaring bug on my glare shield. If it happens I'll gladly rate this aircraft a 10 out of 10 Merry Christmas!

Hi, guys! Today, I'm orbiting around the earth in the x-15 rocket airplane at the altitude of about 1,200,000 feet or about 227 miles above the earth's surface! I got the picture of the Aurora Borealis from that high in x-plane! Please see attached! How high to the Aurora Borealis from the earth's surface? I know I still see the Aurora Borealis in the sky above the airplane flying at 40,000 feet. So why the Aurora Borealis seems to be below my spacecraft when I'm in orbit 1,200,000 feet or about 227 miles above the earth's surface? Thanks! Cheers, Vincent

Check that Sky! Skymaxx Pro with "true blue high contrast". It produces a really nice pinky colour at early sunset. In the foreground I have Melbourne International with some great HDR lighting. Since 10.25 X-Plane has been running so slick ^There's the pink ^Look at the freeway tracing back to the city of Melbourne with skyscrapers in the background

the (computing) power is going to my head :/ and this isn't even a great laptop XD

Absolutely, 100%...there is a DEFINITE chance you'll get this before christmas. Kidding aside, files have been submitted. Shouldn't be long. The installer is quite complex.

First true long-haul flight on the 787 from Seattle to Kai Tak

Have this baby in my sim for a several years now. Then the Saab 340 took most of my spare-time. Now.............. at last her is my Thai . Making my own painkit (layerfiles based on composted and edited blanks from the default liveries) first, it was quiet a job.

Sorry, I found them in this forum http://forums.x-pilot.com/files/file/420-j32-fsm-profiles-maneuvers/ http://forums.x-pilot.com/files/file/421-j32-fsm-performance/

Keep it up John! "...Fixing XP10 one add-on at a time" =) - CK.