sundog

While we're waiting, I fired up ASXP to do a quick test. It *seems* to be working; as an example it wants to position 3 cloud layers right now at KSEA and that's what I'm seeing: (I moved the camera up through them to confirm.) What might be going on is that the new ASXP weather isn't getting shown due to having "never change visible weather" on in the RWC settings. Try turning that off, if it's on. Also it can take up to a minute for new weather to get picked up by RWC after ASXP drops it. One other thing that can mess things up is if you used FSGRW at some point in the past, and it left an old fsgrwsmp.rwx file in your X-Plane folder. If that's present, it will use it before the ASXP weather data.

I'm told X-Aviation is aware of the issue and working on it. Hang tight.

Commander112, really not sure what happened there. I'd advise you to open up a support ticket with X-Aviation on that. It sounds like some sort of file permission issue or maybe a license issue; first thing I'd try is re-installing it. It does sound like you have the correct file installed - it just doesn't want to load it for some odd reason.

I'm told X-Aviation is working on a fix for the RWC installer issue... hold tight...

Can I confirm you have RWC set to "external injector" mode? We don't have any lines of communication with ASXP, so it's possible they changed something we didn't know about. If you do have it in the proper mode, we'll have to investigate - first I've heard of this.

1) We treat stratus and overcast the same within SMP, but some options for overcast representation in 4.8 will behave differently. I'm not sure why runway lights would appear differently - it might have more to do with the thickness of the cloud layer we're being asked to create, and the effect that has on the cloud's transparency. 2) When thunderstorms are present, we can simulate towering cumulus clouds that are very tall. These types of clouds are common in the tropics and sub-tropics, but not in more northerly latitudes. It resulted in a lot of complaints from people who live North of 40 degrees where these clouds aren't really seen, as they look unnatural to them. So, we no longer create those cloud types above that latitude, unless FSGRW explicitly tells us to. We will continue to represent cumulonimbus "anvil" clouds at all latitudes when appropriate. 3) We provided a 4.8 manual to X-Aviation; I'll follow up with them to make sure it was included in the release.

Ah, you're right. We'll have to bring that back in our next update. I believe it is on by default. Or, now that X-Plane can handle cirrus, it would make sense to just remove that option entirely.

There's an option in the SMP configuration screen called "force cirrus layer". Is that on?

No need to get defensive. I'm just telling you that as far as I know, SMP itself does not crash unless something is corrupting the memory it's using, or it runs out of memory. It consumes much more memory than typical add-ons, so it is more sensitive to these sorts of issues. I would encourage you to try the experiment I suggested, as it may be a corrupt installation. We often hear users say that deleting their settings files clears up issues like this, but testing with a fresh, separate installation is safer.

For what it's worth, as far as I know you're the only person out of thousands that is reporting this. It has to be something specific to your system - perhaps one of the few remaining plugins you have installed, or a corrupt installation. If you really want to fix this, I'd install a fresh XP11 in another directory, install nothing but SMP, and try that. If it works, start adding other plugins until it doesn't.

I am pretty sure that you'll get the best results with global mode off and RWC on external injector. To ensure you pick up new changes immediately, you can uncheck the "never change visible weather" option in RWC, which I think accomplishes the same thing they're trying to achieve with "global" mode, but without giving up localized weather depictions in the process. That said I don't know how ASXP works under the hood. so I could be wrong. With RWC omitted you will only see uniform weather conditions surrounding the plane, limited to 3 layers. It puts you back to X-Plane's default weather depiction. Only FSGRW has worked with us directly to enable the depiction of new cloud types. You will need a new version of FSGRW released after our 4.7 release for that to work.

Neither Real Weather Connector nor Skymaxx Pro will operate without Gizmo 64 - I should have mentioned that. Regardless, my best guess is that you're running out of video memory, which might explain a crash while trying to load up new clouds in the scene. Or it may be a video driver issue. Try reducing the "cloud area covered" setting in SkyMaxx Pro or your graphics settings; if that clears it up, then you just have too many add-ons and/or too high of settings for your system to handle (more likely the former, given your video card.) I'd also make sure your drivers are up to date.

Do the crashes also stop if you disable everything else but SkyMaxx Pro? The log may imply that something's corrupting memory, but it's not saying that SkyMaxx Pro caused the crash. It looks like some complex incompatibility between third party add-ons, or you may just be running out of memory.

And I'll have to defer to @JohnMAXX on the texture issue. We do have a whole new set of cirrus textures to choose from in the upcoming 4.8 update however, which will probably offer a solution for that.

I agree - I've updated the RWC doc accordingly, which will go out with the next RWC release.

Ah, I see. It depends on the timing - if FSGRW drops their new METAR data before RWC starts up, then we'll pick up the new data and display that from the get-go. Otherwise, if you have "never change visible weather" on, you would need to fly out of the area to see changes. Fiddling with SMP's settings would also force the weather to reload.

Beta testing just wrapped up, but I don't have a release date - that's out of our hands at this point!

"Never change visible weather" just means that if new METAR data is dropped into the sim after you've started up your flight, it won't affect the weather conditions visible in the immediate area. But as you fly out of the immediate area, the new areas you fly into will reflect the latest weather data available. It's meant to prevent sudden changes in weather, which some people find objectionable. But, other people find it objectionable to not always have the latest weather data represented - so we offer the choice. Regardless of this setting, we only poll for new weather conditions from FSGRW every 60 seconds, so it may take up to a minute for new weather data to be "seen" by RWC.

SkyMaxx Pro and Real Weather Connector do not affect visibility, unless you are inside a solid or broken stratiform cloud. I can't speak for FSGRW as I'm not its author, nor do I know anything about "X-Visibility." Hope others can chime in on that.

I expect it will be handed off for beta testing next week, but from there it's out of my hands...

Happy to report that with Laminar's help, I've tracked down the issue with cloud shadows in VR. They'll work properly in our 4.8 release. And now that the underlying problem has been addressed, everything looks really great in VR now if I may say so

Well, it seems that something changed in a recent X-Plane release that prevents us from retrieving the depth buffer from X-Plane when VR is on. This means we can't properly draw shadows on the ground in VR, since we can't tell where the ground is. We'll have to disable effects that depend on the depth buffer (mainly cloud shadows and soft cloud / terrain blending) when VR is on, unless Laminar provides us with a new way to do this. I'll send them a note in hopes that they can help.

OK, I'll look into it. For now you can disable cloud shadows in the SMP configuration screen if it's distracting.

Tagging @JohnMAXX

Are you seeing that in SMP 4.7.3? I wasn't aware of that happening.