canox

Nice shots Wombat! cool scenery

For whats its worth.. a quick note on some testing. I did 'real weather', got totally socked in over Vancouver. So top cloud layer was overcast, the bottom two were broken. 3000 through 8000 MSL. It was pretty much just all grey clouds. I got around 20 fps with my normal settings. Now just changing the top layer to broken instead of overcast..back to 30fps. Still mostly looked like just all grey clouds. There was definitely 'something' about flying through the overcast layer..it felt more alive and like the grey on my windscreen was swirling and constantly changing opacity. Plus the amount of sun getting through was more dynamic with overcast. But it does chop that FPS, even when dropping my antialiasing.

Really? Seems to work okay for me. With the hd2 mesh your hardly need photosceneries.

The illustrious SkyMAXX Pro 1.1 update shots. See my sig for system specs. Enjoy cause I did. 4xFXAA+FSAA all the way, very high tex, high distance view. HD mesh v2 and photoscenery from Interlaken, Switz. SkyMAXX Pro settings are maxed out. Im SkyMAXXED for real. (except puff rotation is default like 5% and god ray 80%) I dont know if this really happened or not. Is this actually real life? I cant.. I doesnt seem.. could it possibly? No, there isnt.. how can it... but it is! ALL PROPS TO JOHNMAXX As always click to enlarge to full resolution. Shaking in my slippers. (fyi this no more than 10 minutes worth of flying and tweaking) No vis 30 FPS wot m8? This is where I really started to lose it.. Ya'll are now baskin' in the god rays of the magnificent JohnMAXX (man crush, so what?) You really need to see a comparison of God Rays on and off. Here is OFF. Here is ON. Like 80% intensity. Its like bright in my eyes and stings and stuff cause Im looking right at the sun And now my eyes dont hurt because Im not looking at the sun, instead Im seeing nice mountains and a wing .

Yes you can. Why would you want to anyway? If its pure grey whats the difference, you can hardly tell what cloud set you have. If anything the SkyMAXX IFR conditions will give you better FPS with the right settings, imo.

Aw sheesh ya'll I couldnt help myself. The illustrious SkyMAXX Pro 1.1 update shots Enjoy cause I did. 4xFXAA+FSAA all the way, very high tex, high distance view. Edit: shadows still on overlay. HD mesh v2 and photoscenery from Interlaken, Switz. Flying the Carenado C90B.. FPS heavy cockpit and textures plus its fast as f***. SkyMAXX Pro settings are maxed out. Im SkyMAXXED for real. (except puff rotation is default like 5% and god ray 80%) I dont know if this really happened or not. Is this actually real life? I cant.. I doesnt seem.. could it possibly? No, there isnt.. how can it... but it is! ALL PROPS TO JOHNMAXX As always click to enlarge to full resolution. Shaking in my slippers. (fyi this no more than 10 minutes worth of flying and tweaking) No vis 30 FPS wot m8? This is where I really started to lose it.. Ya'll are now baskin' in the god rays of the magnificent JohnMAXX (man crush, so what?) You really need to see a comparison of God Rays on and off. Here is OFF. Here is ON. Like 80% intensity. Its like bright in my eyes and stings and stuff cause Im looking right at the sun And now my eyes dont hurt because Im not looking at the sun, instead Im seeing nice mountains and a wing .

Guys... I think this update is huge. Im 2 minutes into my first 1.1 test flight and I had to pause to make this post. 4xFXAA+FSAA, Very High Tex settings flying in the Carenado C90.. heavy detailed cockpit. 0% visibility, pure grey out the windows using 6000 feet of cumulus sct. 30 FPS. Max SMP cloud detail and distance maxed. SMP is no longer the source of your FPS problems. God Ray test update imminent.. JohnMAXX - genius status.

Sup ya'll thanks for staying interested. Im sorry no 1.1 yet Ive just been busy IRL. I will try to get in at least one more series of shots. Colin I will try L.A. or San Fran.. I dont have anything on the East installed right now. With Inside Scenery package Vancouver is really nice too. Edit: Dont worry Ill get to Manhattan eventually. I almost want to save it until I have everything tweaked perfect. Its a gem of a city. It might blow up my PC though, Paris with OSM didnt work for me. To warn you after tomorrow there will be no photos from me for at least a month. I will be on holiday without any gaming computer. Im really trying hard to convince myself not to take my clothes and sandals out of my luggage and pack my comp instead. Just a warning incase anycare cares (lol ya right) or was worried that I may have been kidnapped/assassinated etc

The difference is really amazing. To me it almost looks like orthophotos how it improves the details of the terrain.. Buildings and forests look more natural and not just big random globs of texture, smaller lakes, little detailed rivers and streams are visible. Not to mention smoothing out of all the mountains. (just to clarify this is no-HD mesh at all vs HD mesh v2 correct? Not HD mesh v1 vs HD mesh v2. That was confusing) Great work man!

I will for sure mtaxp.. hopefully sometime later today. Yea hope I can get get some brutal weather working with good FPS. Its sucks FPS bad even without SMP installed though.. I dont get it :/ These arent 1.1 yet, just a teaser. Happy learned how to putt, uh oh! (canox learned how to control the camera) Very little weather, few cumulus with SMP cloud size settings to lowest. I was mainly testing HD mesh, Swiss scenery packs and orthophotos on this flight. Livery from a French airline that sounds like an Austrian airline.. close enough to a Switz livery right? My my.. Geneva you sure are pretty but youre killin' me babe. (I blame those 40+ stupid round fuel containers on the right) Climbing through clouds with 1x.. Lust for Lausanne...

If you guys could suggest some new locations that would be cool. Im kind of stuck on the Zurich, Nice, Vancouver scene these days. The scenery I have installed on my puny SSD is: West Coast of USA down to and including most of Mexico, most of Canada, most all mainland Europe..I like Spain/France/Swiss and the Medi tho. Canary and Caribbean Islands and New Zealand.

Oh, you thought that was it? Low alt over Nice in the BK-117 heli. Such an awesome cockpit.

Hey, I want to say that it feels really great whenever someone posts about how they like my shots. Plus the overall appreciation of SMP in this thread in general is awesome. Its been a pleasure taking more aerial photos during my flights, some of those long legs can get boring. Tbh my computer isnt that hardcore. All the parts are newest generation, but I mostly have the lowest end of everything. Not saying it was cheap though either. The GTX 760 is low end (the MSI version is slick though), the i5 processor is mid range. You could add an i7, much more RAM, a beefier card, cooling system, and get waaaay better results. For maybe only more 50%-75% the price.. depending on what you already have, and just estimating. My only real issues are with the anti aliasing settings with HDR on.. sometimes I can have them at 4xFSAA+FXAA.. sometimes I have to put it to none. I do have an SSD which I recommend just for the increase in loading time, but get the 240gb version or whatever for all your HD mesh and orthophotos. My 120gb is already filled up with just Windows, Xplane and my modest collection of planes and scenery! Plus, Im really not a computer guy, I dont overclock or tweak like crazy. I use computers a lot but I dont follow performance specs or whatever. My good friend works at a computer shop so I buy what he tells me. I do know a fair amount, but Im just your average Xplane user who had some spare cash to buy some new parts and SMP (mostly all to make Xplane look better. I like Arma3/RO2/BF4 as well but...xplaaaaane <3) MrMaxx you're going to make me squeel Edit: You will always have much better framerates inside the cockpit. Outside shots draw everything around and including the plane, so think about that. Getting solid rates inside the pit with SMP has been no issue for me. Except that pesky overcast layer

Ahh jonrd loving your shots man! Sweet sunrise/set across the water

Departing.. LSGG? for LFMN. Climb through a cloud.. Passengers got some nice views. tinted windows? Copilot admiring the skies Approach to Nice.. aaaand we made it safely! Beautiful.. Still dont know how to land big planes, I do it traffic pattern GA style hahah.

Hey Ben, check your PMs my friend. Random ATR flight. Im starting to get confused I hope I didnt post these already As always, click to enlarge!

You guys are probably getting sick of these.. but Im not. And this is my only outlet! Just departing Geneva.. For this one I tried putting the cumulus layer much higher, at like 20-25k. That way my FPS would still be decent around the heavy Geneva area..and then once I got up into the clouds it was fine because It wasnt drawing so many ground textures. Still using Very High res.. some cockpits are just too detailed for Extreme. Also an important note with HD mesh my VRAM jumps up to 3000 easily even in mountain areas.

Ben and jonrd, great pics! Ben I love that approach shot. Those god rays... What sky colours are you guys using? Also yes the new HD mesh is amazing. It almost looks as good as orthophotos to me. Ripping through Northern BC mountains with some new mesh

Awesome work. Maybe a realistic alternative to orthophotos? We shall see

Just a few.. with some new HD mesh Vancouver/Madeira

VRAM is average 1500-1800.. Less in situations like above. Over 2000 in city areas. Ok thx JohnMaxx I will try that

More beauty at 40 000, that cirrus tho..

Its set to medium.. but I put the overcast at like 5000 when I was up at 30 000.. couldnt even see any clouds down there and my FPS was still 20. Even with mass amounts of broken or scattered cumulus its always fine, as soon as I add any type of overcast it plummets. Even the stratus layer where its completely grey doesnt drop my fps. With low overcast I get that flat white thing.

Yup, with the setup I have you will get pretty stable rates all the time when using 2x. Any overcast layer though just kills it, no matter how much I dial down all the settings. Something seems up with the cumulus overcast layer. More pictures comin... I agree I went back to tropical paradise colours

Love the cockpit in that AN-2 BenWolf where you flyin'?