sundog

You might just have to be patient; if you are loading scenery for the first time under Vulkan it can take several minutes.

From what I understand, that install error is safe to ignore. It's actually coming from a Microsoft system file installer. In my own tests with ASXP I'd start up ASXP first and then X-Plane; that seemed to work well. If you start ASXP after X-Plane is running, RWC only checks for new weather every couple of minutes. You can use the "Force Weather Reload" option in the Plugins/SkyMaxx Pro menu to make that happen immediately; it should be easier than toggling the RWC setting.

No, I don't look at reviews. I'm aware that there are situations where things don't look perfect in VR. I've been working to improve it all along and continue to do so.

I don't see many clouds in that scene at all, so I doubt they are the primary cause of any performance issue. The memory report in the SMP screen shows that you're dangerously low on RAM, which is probably the real problem. I would take the warning message in X-Plane at face value; try lowering your graphic settings. Disabling HDR and lowering AA can save some memory. If you have custom scenery installed, that eats up RAM very quickly too. I've also seen some chatter on Facebook about some recent NVidia driver update and/or Windows update causing problems like this.

That's correct, but it too would be overwritten.

That "banding" sounds like the cloud/terrain blending slider in SMP isn't up enough. I know the docs recommend setting it to 0 to maximize performance in VR, but that's exactly the trade-off you make by doing that. Might want to fiddle with that if you haven't already..

Afraid not. But, the pace of updates should be slowing - SMP 4.9 was a huge change with Vulkan support and we've had to quickly work out a few kinks in it. But I think it's pretty solid now. I'm still working on things but I think the days of a new update every couple of weeks is behind us for now.

I suspect there are two separate issues being discussed. - Rotation of overcast cloud particles when moving your head around when you're near the clouds. That's something I know about and have done my best to minimize. Ultimately a new rendering technique will be needed to eliminate that entirely. - Left/right eye divergence issues. That's the thing I can't get to happen. But, I don't normally fly in VR so it's likely that I just haven't flown enough to experience it. I'm still stuck out of town (have to move my elderly Mom closer to us) but will spend some more time on this once I'm back in the office.

Very glad you got it sorted out, @BlackBeltMike

Only X-Aviation can look into the specifics of your case. I'll tag @Cameron in case he missed this. I think this message means you have tried to use the same license on multiple computers, and possibly missed a warning message about permanently de-authenticating one computer to transfer your license to another.

"Draw shadows on scenery" shouldn't matter; SMP draws its own cloud shadows outside of X-Plane's internal system. To see cloud shadows the best, try a broken cumulus cloud layer under good visibility conditions, and crank up the cloud shadow slider in SMP all the way.

Have you tried it using default scenery? I'm kind of grasping at straws because the shadows work fine for me under Vulkan, but I'm not using custom scenery so that may have something to do with it. Try looking for cloud shadows on lakes... they tend to stand out more there.

These kind words have made my day And I appreciate the ideas. Some of the forums and groups are affiliated with our competitors, which is why you don't hear a lot about SkyMaxx Pro in certain circles. We really value word of mouth between enthusiasts like yourselves. Thank you!

Oh, this sounds like a known driver bug with AMD and Vulkan that Laminar told me about. It is specific to anti-aliasing. Until AMD fixes their drivers, you'll have to run with AA off if you also want to use Vulkan with add-ons that do 3D drawing (such as ours)

Hmm... while I tested flying through overcast conditions, I don't think I explicitly tested low visibility in VR. Maybe that's the piece I've been missing. Under low visibility, the far clip plane of the projection matrix changes, and if Laminar is not passing the correct matrix to us, it would explain what you're seeing. I'm going to be away from home for a week or so, but once I get back I'll test that. If that is indeed the case, I'll likely need to work with Laminar as it may be a bug on their end.

Can't say I've ever seen that before. My first thought would be to ensure you have the latest video drivers installed on your system; Vulkan does require recent drivers.

Solid procedural will likely only help when you are not using real-world weather, or in some very specific circumstances if you are.

John, are you actually seeing a problem? The original issue was that certain third party aircraft (such as the "Zibo mod") change X-Plane's blending mode and don't change it back, and this caused problems with our clouds when using Vulkan and HDR. I just tested that combination here in 11.50b11 and it looks fine. If there's an issue, I don't understand what it is.

It's likely that you're running out of video memory, which is causing the crash - SkyMaxx Pro's clouds are just pushing your system over the edge. Try turning down your graphics option in X-Plane or turning down your anti-aliasing. Using custom photo scenery can also cause this. If you can attach your log.txt file from X-Plane, it would tell us if SkyMaxx Pro actually caused the crash or not.

Yes, I suspect it's the overcast clouds in particular, as they use very large billboards - and billboards and VR generally don't get along well. You might try experimenting with different settings in SMP for the overcast representation. Ultimately this may not go away until we have an entirely new way of depicting these clouds to offer, which is something we're starting to experiment with here. Well, there is one exception - if you're *not* using real weather, setting the overcast in SMP to "solid procedural" or "broken procedural" would probably clear this up. But when real weather is active, the weather is usually too complicated to be represented with those options, and we automatically use a different one instead. Still, for VR, I'd set it to "solid procedural" - it couldn't hurt.

OK, so I found the bug. It turns out the change we made to try and improve VR in SMP 4.9.4 caused this. As it reportedly didn't actually help VR, I rolled the change back. I've sent X-Aviation a SMP 4.9.5 build that should fix this; hopefully it will be distributed soon and this issue will go away.

Update: Finally got it to happen here. I'm looking into it.

FYI, X-Enviro does not support VR at all as far as I can tell. Maybe it's just my eyesight; everything looks a little blurry to me in my Vive Pro and maybe that's preventing me from seeing the issue. I'll spend some more time trying to reproduce it when I can, though. I do wonder if the issue is specific to certain headsets though; I've never heard a complaint from a Vive Pro user.

Great, it's one of *those* bugs - I've been trying all morning to get this to happen here, following the exact steps shown in your videos, and everything works fine on my system. I suspect there might actually be two different issues being reported in this thread. But for one of them, it looks like the fog effect when you are inside a solid procedural overcast layer isn't working. This might be tied to your graphics settings; try with and without HDR enabled to see if that matters. Or it could be a Vulkan vs. OpenGL thing. If either of those settings seem to make a difference, please let me know (that would imply there's a bug in the latest X-Plane beta we need to work with Laminar on, if so) I'd also suggest deleting your resources/silverlining/settings.dat file and then reconfiguring SMP/RWC to your liking. One possibility is that your settings are in a bad state somehow, and as a result SMP has inconsistent information about what kind of overcast layers are being used. If none of that helps, it would be helpful to post your log.txt file so I can understand more about your system configuration. Maybe it's a Mac-specific thing or something.

The "oversaturated clouds" was a bug in X-Plane itself that Laminar has since resolved. So whatever you're seeing, I think it's something else. A screenshot and your log.txt would be helpful.