sundog

If you're sure it's not the moon or landing lights or ground fog, you might want to file this as a bug with Laminar so they can look into it. It might be something our plugin somehow triggers, but we don't draw the ground - they do.

The only work around right now would be to disable Vulkan, or disable HDR.

SkyMaxx Pro has nothing to do with how the ground is drawn. It's possible you're seeing landing lights illuminating the wispy edges of the clouds or something, if you're sure this only happens with SkyMaxx Pro enabled. Kind of hard to tell from that picture.

Hm, I don't have a 3 monitor setup so it's hard to say what might be going on. But, I would try different "precipitation style" settings in the Precipitation menu for SkyMaxx Pro. My guess is that changing it to "particles" will do what you want, and if it doesn't, "default" certainly should.

If you want to see ASXP's choices for clouds and cloud placement, you should set Real Weather Connector to "FSGRW / External Injector". When set to "Always", Real Weather Connector will download its own METAR data and interpret it in its own way. That also produces good results, but it might not be in sync with what ASXP is doing. I'd bump up your "Cloud Area Covered" setting further if you can get away with it. Basically you want that as high as you can go while still having acceptable frame rates, especially if you like flying at high altitudes. Choices for cloud art are very subjective. I'm partial to the "fast" option for cumulus clouds, but if you like crisper detail in your clouds, your choice of "turbulent" makes sense. Soft SD is also my favorite for overcast, and turbulent is indeed a nice cirrus choice. Otherwise your settings look good to me!

After a quick consultation with Laminar, I think we have a real fix for this issue. It seems these aircraft are changing the blending function, and we need to change it back in a specific way. In my tests here it seems to work. I'll package up a version 4.9.3 of SMP shortly.

OK, so I went and downloaded the Zibo 737 to try and see what's going on here. What I've found is that the issue is specific to: - Using the Zibo (or other 3rd party aircraft that has the same issue) - Using Vulkan - Using HDR graphics mode - Having clouds near the horizon Changing any of those things will work around the issue for now. The root of the problem seems to be something drawing in the cockpit of these planes that messes up how the sky is blended in Vulkan mode, but so far I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly what's going on.

Hey @Sky Cowboy - I've been working on trying to figure out what happened with your disappearing thunderhead there. I can't seem to get it to happen in any sort of repeatable manner, but I suspect you might have the "never change visible weather" option in Real Weather Connector disabled. Try turning that on, which should make sure the weather around you doesn't suddenly change. If you do need to reload weather, in response to a third party weather injector spinning up or something, you can use the new "force weather reload" menu option to reload the weather on demand.

Those memory messages aren't coming from us; I think it's diagnostic info being logged by X-Plane itself. It believe it is referring to video memory, not system memory. When you are flying with Vulkan, X-Plane has a complex memory management system of its own, and apparently it believes it is running out of resources. It's possible it really is running out of video memory (in which case lowering your anti-aliasing setting is probably the best thing you can do,) or it may be a bug in X-Plane's memory management. Either way, you should file this as a bug with Laminar, and be sure to send them any crash reports that X-Plane may ask to send.

It is just the way it works. Even if we were to restore the default sun texture when you disable SkyMaxx via the plugin admin menu, it wouldn't cause X-Plane to reload it. What you'd want is a feature in X-Plane that allows you to disable plugins in such a manner that they don't get reloaded when you restart X-Plane.

The "geometrical lines" issue has already been fixed on our end; our next update should resolve that. Meanwhile, the issue seems specific to sunset and sunrise times. Reducing your cloud shadow setting will make it less noticeable when it happens. When you set cloud shadows all the way up, you are telling SkyMaxx Pro that you want cloud shadows to completely block all light from the sun. So, if a cloud shadow falls over your cockpit, it will go black. Set it to a more realistic setting, like the default of 0.5. That said, I know that the shadows don't affect the terrain as strongly as it should - this is a limitation of X-Plane's HDR pipeline that prevents us from totally blacking out the terrain. Disabling HDR will give you darker shadows if that's the look you're aiming for.

By removing shader files that SkyMaxx Pro needs, you are rendering it completely inoperable. Don't go deleting its files. It's not telling you that these files are the source of the problem, it's just telling you that you broke SkyMaxx. That said, I've never seen this happen even though I normally fly with HDR on Vulkan - but I don't use third-party aircraft, either. If it really is *any* third-party aircraft that triggers this, then that does suggest some sort of issue with Laminar's handling of plugins within the Vulkan environment. Filing a bug with Laminar is the right thing to do. Odd that we haven't heard about this from others though. Anyone else seeing this?

Just to add something constructive, you might find the "fast" option for cumulus clouds more to your liking. Counter-intuitively, it can provide the illusion of more detail even though it uses much smaller, simpler textures. Based on that video you're using a different setting.

The first thing I'd do is look at your log.txt, and see if it indicates any clear cause for the crash at the end of it. But yes, the SMP config screen should give you a good picture of both system RAM and video RAM usage.

Again, to each their own. Minor point: technically, our clouds are "volumetric" in that they are 3D objects and not just flat 2D billboards. Ours is a volume rendering technique, just not the same one used by one of our competitors. I think you're comparing us to GPU ray-casted clouds - and they can look good under certain conditions. We actually have the ability to render clouds in that manner, but we just don't like the looks of them up-close ourselves - or their performance and memory requirements when applied over a large area.

It's probably not what you want to hear, but it's probably a memory issue. Try reducing the cloud area setting in SkyMaxx Pro and see if that helps, and/or reducing your anti-aliasing setting in X-Plane's graphics settings. If you're using the 11.50 beta of X-Plane, keep in mind its memory management is still in a beta state. Might be a good idea to cross-post this in the IXEG forum as well; if there is some issue specific to this aircraft they're more likely to know about it there.

No, I think he just plain doesn't like the look of our clouds and prefers more detailed, yet 2D clouds. In whatever he's comparing us to, every cloud is an individual 2D billboard. To each their own.

Well, thunder *should* be working for you. My guess is that there weren't any actual cumulonimbus clouds nearby to generate it. I'll do some tests here to make sure it's working as it should. EDIT: Just tested it and it definitely works - had a lightning strike right next to plane and I almost jumped out of my seat from the loud thunderclap! Try going to a location with known tropical thunderstorms using https://www.badbadweather.com/thunderstorm-world/ - I was just testing at SKUI in Columbia which has some nasty storms right now. Failing that, the only explanation I have is that your third-party C172 might be overriding some of our sounds with its own. You might want to try with a default aircraft to see if that's it.

Hm... it should work. If you can attach your log.txt file it might tell me something.

Oh, sorry - I thought this was the thread about issues in rendering the cockpit. If it's "oversaturated sky/clouds", odds are it's just the crepuscular rays feature in SkyMaxx Pro. Try turning that off.

It is a bug with AMD's video drivers, not with SkyMaxx Pro. You can fix it by changing your anti-aliasing settings until AMD fixes the bug.

Also, there is a known driver bug with AMD and Vulkan that can lead to this sort of issue. If you're on an AMD video card, try changing your anti-aliasing settings to work around it.

Yes, it does!

Tagging @Cameron

SoundMaxx doesn't do any rendering, so to the best of my knowledge it should be working fine under Vulkan as-is.