sundog

This is an issue we were trying to fix with the just released 4.9.6 version. Are you seeing this with it?

OK - so it turns out this update crashes if you have an AMD/ATI card. But, I at least know why, and I'm building a fix for it now. Stay tuned for a patch release.

I think this might be specific to Windows users with AMD cards, running with HDR off (ie, medium or lower graphics settings on X-Plane.) Do you recall if you had HDR on or off?

This isn't something that is user-configurable, but we'll consider reducing it in a future update.

It turns out it's only possible to really fix this issue on Windows; because Apple deprecated OpenGL in 2018, MacOS doesn't have the newer features needed to work around this problem. Laminar has agreed to add a new "dataref" in X-Plane so we can fail gracefully in this case (using MacOS with X-Plane 11.50, with HDR off and anti-aliasing on, while using solid or broken procedural overcast clouds.) As soon as that's released, we can release our fix.

OK, I have a fix coded up and tested here on Windows. Just need to make sure it builds on MacOS and then I'll package up SkyMaxx Pro 4.9.6. There are some more performance improvements in this upcoming release, too.

OK, so Ben figured out what's going on here. The short story is something did change in X-Plane, but the only way to work around it is on our end. This problem only occurs if: - You are running X-Plane 11.50+ AND - You have HDR off AND - You have anti-aliasing set to more than 1X AND - You have cloud shadows or "solid" or "broken" overcast selected in SkyMaxx Pro. Changing any of those things should work around the issue until we can get a fix out.

After some troubleshooting I'm pretty sure this is a regression in X-Plane itself. I forwarded the details to Ben. For now, choose a different overcast representation, or enable HDR, to work around the issue in Vulkan.

Thanks for the details; I'm looking into it. I'm also in contact with Ben about the issue; not sure if it's on our end or theirs yet.

That's weird - it does sound like some sort of installation issue. The installer, however, is the one part of the software I didn't write - so I'm going to tag @Cameron to see if he has any thoughts. Might help if you could post your log.txt and GizmoLog.txt files from a machine where it isn't showing up; there might be a clue in there. Contacting X-Aviation for support couldn't hurt either: https://www.x-aviation.com/catalog/contact_us.php

That's normal; we only implemented that effect for landing lights. As I recall X-Plane's API for plugins doesn't give us enough information about where the strobes and nav lights are to do it for them.

According to your log you've got quite a few addon airports installed. I don't know if any affect the area you're flying at, though. Did you try changing the sky color in SMP's settings to default? I found the following scenery packages (prioritized in this order): 0 Custom Scenery/YMIA - Mildura/ 1 Custom Scenery/Williamstown/ 2 Custom Scenery/YORG - Orange/ 3 Custom Scenery/YSBK Bankstown/ 4 Custom Scenery/YWCH-Walcha/ 5 Custom Scenery/YARM- Armidale/ 6 Custom Scenery/YCKN-Cooktown/ 7 Custom Scenery/YSNF - Norfol Island/ 8 Custom Scenery/YPPD - Port Headland/ 9 Custom Scenery/YBCS - Cairns/ 10 Custom Scenery/zzz_new_zealand/ 11 Custom Scenery/NZNV Invercargill/ 12 Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - New York/ 13 Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - Washington DC/ 14 Custom Scenery/YSSY - Sydney/ 15 Custom Scenery/YCNK Cessnock/ 16 Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - Dubai/ 17 Custom Scenery/YRTI - Rottenest Island/ 18 Custom Scenery/YGKL - Great Keppel Island/ 19 Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - Chicago/ 20 Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - Las Vegas/ 21 Custom Scenery/YBCG - Gold Coast/ 22 Custom Scenery/NZMO/ 23 Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - Sydney/ 24 Custom Scenery/YCFS - Coffs Harbour/ 25 Custom Scenery/YGLA - Gladstone/ 26 Custom Scenery/YPAD - Adelaide/ 27 Custom Scenery/X-Plane Landmarks - London/ 28 Custom Scenery/YJNB - Jurien Bay/ 29 Custom Scenery/_FAC-STR_Index/ 30 Custom Scenery/YMLT - Launceston/ 31 Custom Scenery/YCBG Cambridge/ 32 Custom Scenery/YMHB Hobart/ 33 Custom Scenery/YMGT Margaret River/ 34 Custom Scenery/YPJT - Jandakot/ 35 Custom Scenery/YBHI - Broken Hill/ 36 Custom Scenery/YBRK - Rockhampton/ 37 Custom Scenery/YMEN - Essendon/ 38 Custom Scenery/YSTW Tamworth/ 39 Custom Scenery/YPMQ - Port Mcquarie/ 40 Custom Scenery/YBTL - Townsville/ 41 Custom Scenery/YCAR - Carnarvon/ 42 Custom Scenery/YDPO - Devonport/ 43 Custom Scenery/YBSU - Sunshine Coast/ 44 Custom Scenery/YBBN - Brisbane/

Your log indicates quite a bit of custom scenery installed, including "HD global scenery"

Thanks. Those are exactly the same settings I was using, so I'm thinking this is somehow triggered by some object in your view that is corrupting X-Plane's graphics state. You said that "if you move around you can make it disappear" - what's probably happening is that whatever object is causing the problem is moving out of view when that happens. It could be third party scenery, a third party aircraft, or some other add-on that's the root cause of this. If you don't feel like trying to track down which one it is, there's a good chance that setting the sky color to "default" and restarting will clear it up. Re-installing SMP might also be worth a shot, in case our sun texture somehow got mixed up.

Can you provide the other information I asked for? And confirm what sky colors are selected in your SkyMaxx Pro configuration screen?

I don't think it should matter.

That's pretty weird; just tried and I can't get that to happen here using b17. Can you tell me more about your graphics settings (Vulkan? HDR? AA?) Are you using the latest version of SMP? Any specific sky color set? A log.txt might help too. My best guess is that it's somehow specific to when the sun is exactly at that height in the sky; the "box" looks to be in the area where our Hosek-Wilkie sky would blend in with X-Plane's default sky near the horizon. Couldn't get it to happen here though. If I'm right, changing the sky colors in SMP to something else (like default) would clear it up.

Just confirmed this will be fixed in X-Plane 11.50 beta 17!

Sorting the clouds to draw them in the correct order takes CPU resources. If you want to improve performance and you're bottlenecked on CPU, the easiest thing to do is to reduce the "cloud area" setting in the SkyMaxx Pro configuration screen. This results in fewer clouds and less CPU load.

Looking at your log, this appears to be a license issue with SkyMaxx Pro. SkyMaxx Pro clears the skies of clouds when it does not have a valid license. Please contact X-Aviation support so they can look into it. Re-installing SMP might be worth a shot. Also, your version of X-Ambience is not compatible with your version of X-Plane. It's filling up your log file with warning messages and likely hurting performance in the process.

It is not possible with Vulkan. X-Plane's API does not give us an opportunity to draw reflections under Vulkan, and I don't think they have any plans to change that.

You might also have a look at this post; sometimes it seems ASXP gets into a bad state that can cause this behavior, but there is a workaround:

Please just read through the manuals for RWC and for ASXP and double check everything. Your weather file isn't getting updated and that can only mean something is misconfigured. METAR.rwx isn't used with every possible configuration for X-Plane and RWC so it is entirely possible you would see different weather under different settings, but METAR.rwx is used for connecting ASXP with RWC when things are set up properly.

According to that screenshot of your X-Plane folder, your weather data (METAR.rwx) hasn't been updated since June 23. I think you haven't properly installed or configured ASXP.

Reinstalling SMP and RWC definitely would not fix this issue. It's a bug in X-Plane itself. It might be triggered only by certain views in certain airplanes, however, and it would only be a problem if Vulkan is enabled.