sundog

Just tried a night scene here and I'm not seeing that. It sounds like an issue that we fixed in SMP 4.8; what version are you running? If you are on the latest, I'll need some more details. Anything you can remember about the cloud layers that were present (is there ground fog?) would be helpful, as would be knowing your settings for the overcast textures.

I'm afraid that value is hard-coded and there's no way for a user to adjust it. It's certainly something we could consider tweaking for our next update, though. Does anyone else reading this thread agree? It's sort of an aesthetic choice, so I'd like to hear from more than one customer before we change it for everyone.

If you start up AXSP after SMP has already started drawing the scene, it can take a few minutes before it will pick up the new weather conditions coming in from ASXP. To force it, try changing the cloud draw area setting in SMP and that should cause it to pick up the new conditions. Just tried this in Orlando (MCO) where there are thunderstorms right now and experienced the same thing; increasing the cloud draw area caused it to pick up the storms, but normally it would do it automatically after a couple of minutes or if you were to fly out of the area. One other thing to keep in mind is that by default, SMP will only draw rain if you're actually underneath an individual rain cloud. If your plane happens to be in between clouds, no rain will be represented.

I think @Cameron was talking about FSGRW there and not SMP/RWC. X-Aviation makes the installer for those. If you haven't already, please open up a support case at http://www.x-aviation.com/catalog/contact_us.php so they can help you out.

No, I only mentioned NOAA because that is the data source that X-Plane's default, built-in weather uses. You don't need the NOAA plugin to get weather data from NOAA (it is a bit confusing)

X-Plane itself believes there is no rain at this location, and we're just representing the conditions X-Plane is giving to us. SMP and RWC just represents the weather provided to it, either through X-Plane's built in real weather system or external products such as FSGRW. My guess would be that the weather data X-Plane is retrieving from NOAA is out of date; it can be delayed by up to an hour, and that's normal. It's also possible that there is some sort of problem preventing X-Plane from downloading data from NOAA. If the problem persists, please provide a copy of your log.txt and metar.rwx files so we can see what's going on.

My guess would be "fast".

It is 4.8.2.

I would also recommend calibrating the brightness and contrast on your monitor. I think you just have things turned up way too high.

I can't see it either. But what I would try is selecting a different sky color set in the SMP configuration, and then restarting X-Plane to ensure it's picked up.

OK, so I think it's saying that you do indeed have a 2GB video card. It may be that an X-Plane update, an increase in your monitor resolution or anti-aliasing settings, or something else caused X-Plane to start using a little bit more VRAM, and that didn't leave enough for SMP to work with. Laminar recommends 4GB or more for X-Plane 11. Updating your video card would be money well spent, but failing that, there are some things you can try: - Try lowering your monitor resolution, and disable any anti-aliasing your video driver may be set for. - Assuming you can get to X-Plane's graphics settings, turn the quality down such that HDR is not enabled. Also disable any anti-aliasing for now. - If at this point SMP will start up, disable any SMP features you don't need that consume more memory. Mainly, turn down the "cloud area" setting as far as you can tolerate, turn off cloud shadows, turn off cloud reflections, and set terrain blending to zero. If that gets you up and running, you can start re-enabling the features most important to you until stability is impacted.

Thanks for taking the time to rule everything out there. I am just as puzzled as you are now. Did you try updating your video drivers? That's about the only thing left that I can think of to explain this. I also looked up your AMD R9 380 video card, and noticed that it comes in some variants with only 2GB of VRAM. That might not be enough to run both X-Plane and SMP. Do you know how much VRAM is on your video card?

For what it's worth, we haven't made any changes related to the appearance of cloud shadows since we first rolled out the feature. It just depends a lot on your graphics settings (HDR in particular,) the color of the underlying terrain, the types of clouds present, and the visibility. I've been struggling to make them more prominent, but we're limited in our ability to modify X-Plane's rendered terrain while staying within the rules of what Laminar supports for plugins.

Cloud shadows do work, but they can be subtle in many conditions. Turning up the cloud shadow setting, or flying over water, can make them easier to see. But yes, I can confirm they do seem to be the source of the translucent cockpit in VR. In VR there is no distinction between the ground and the cockpit when we are doing our drawing, so getting cloud shadows to work in VR without that side effect may be tricky. But I'll try to get it working for our next release.

We've seen reports of cockpits going transparent, but so far I haven't been able to get it to happen here with the default aircraft I use. You might want to try disabling cloud shadows in SMP, as that's currently my best guess as to what might be causing it. The upcoming 4.8.2 release should improve the rotation artifacts a bit. Choosing the "fast" or "soft" options for cumulus cloud art should help too.

Might want to experiment with non-HDR mode in X-Plane's graphics settings, if dark cloud shadows are important to you. As I recall, it was an X-Plane update to HDR that made it more difficult to manipulate the shading of the terrain, and made the cloud shadows less prominent.

@FlyAgi's advice is sound. I would also try updating your video drivers - it's a long shot, but honestly I'm at a loss as to why this is happening to you. Unfortunately there isn't any useful information in your log to go on. When all else fails however, testing in a clean X-Plane installation is generally the way to go. Sorry for your frustration here; it's understandable. I can at least assure you that thousands of people are using SMP successfully, so it should be a solvable problem.

I would start by un-installing and re-installing SkyMaxx Pro; it's acting as though perhaps a resource it needs is missing. If that doesn't help, try a flight using a default aircraft - the other possibility is that the memory SMP needs has been used up, or corrupted. I haven't seen any similar reports of crashes with 4.8.1, nor were there any changes in 4.8.1 that I would expect to have the potential to cause a crash - so I think it's something along the lines of a corrupt installation.

@Cameron can we please check up on Commander112's ticket? He's been quite patient.

Thanks for updating - I just checked out cloud shadows in 4.8.1 and they seem to be working here. There have always been situations where they are hard to see, and I think you just happened to encounter one. Try turning up the cloud shadow darkness setting all the way in the SMP configuration, and try setting up a single few or scattered cloud layer in conditions that have good visibility, and you should see them. Some cumulus cloud options are more opaque than others, too - "Fast" and "Soft" for example won't cast strong shadows. They're also easier to see over water. If you have direct sunlight over the clouds that isn't obscured by another cloud layer above it, and you're not within an area of low visibility, you should see them.

Oh, that could definitely be the case. In VR mode, X-Plane does not draw the cockpit over everything else as it does in non-VR. We had some correspondence with Laminar about this a couple of months ago; if we think up a way around it we'll address it in our next update.

Can't say I've seen that, but I'm using a Vive Pro here. Might it be connected to framerate dropping below some threshold the Oculus requires? I'd try lowering SkyMaxx Pro's cloud draw area setting to reduce its load, and disable any SMP features you don't need as a test (shadows, reflections, crepuscular rays, lens flare, turn terrain blending to 0). If that fixes it, start re-enabling the features you want until the issue re-occurs. If other users are seeing this, please chime in here.

I don't have a setup like that to test with, but I don't think it would matter.

This sounds like the same issue that prevents Maxx-FX from working in VR. The X-Plane SDK only calls us for one view, so we don't have the opportunity to manipulate the others. We've reported this a couple of times to Laminar but it hasn't bubbled up to the top of their priorities as of yet. The short answer is: unless someone's found a clever workaround I haven't heard of, I don't think it's possible.

Both issues are fixed in SkyMaxx Pro 4.8.1. We've handed it off to X-Aviation and it should be distributed soon.