sundog

Try deleting the METAR.rwx file in your X-Plane folder; it may be corrupt. Then restart X-Plane. Also make sure you have the latest version of SkyMaxx Pro (4.5).

There are some long-ish load times indicated in your log while loading custom scenery tiles. You're also downloading new weather conditions fairly frequently from the looks of it, and it can cause a stutter as RWC parses this new information - but your log indicates this never took more than 1/5 of a second or so, and nothing has changed in SMP 4.5 that would affect that time. It's also possible that you're paging memory - I don't see anything in your log that might suggest that you're running low, but check the SMP configuration panel to ensure you have plenty of free RAM and VRAM next time this happens. What's probably more likely is that Windows is running some big software update or virus scan in the background that's interfering with your flight.

Lucky guess. Actually SMP works fine with HDR on or off on the Macs I have in the office here, so there is some unusual configuration that seems to be problematic that we haven't identified yet it seems. Apologies for the trouble.

I believe they aim for 3 business days. Your case may be an odd one, though. Looking at your log, it seems as though SkyMaxx Pro believes it is licensed and is trying to draw clouds. You might want to spend some time trying different rendering settings like toggling HDR mode, or switching between manually created and real-world weather. I wonder if it's something like haze or fog causing the clouds to disappear due to low visibility, which would be working as designed.

This might happen if you switch sky color sets in the SMP configuration without restarting the sim (the config screen tells you that's needed.)

Yes, I'm just saying given the choice I'd leave it on, for if and when it's fixed. It won't conflict with RWC either way.

I would leave it enabled, so updated wind conditions etc. will be applied. RWC only affects the representation of clouds in SMP, nothing more.

The short answer is probably not. You can try updating your video drivers and hope for the best, but X-Plane's minimum system requirements call for an actual video card and not integrated graphics.

There are a couple of different problems described in this thread. If you're not seeing weather change around you instantaneously when new conditions are downloaded, and you want that, make sure "never change visible weather" is not selected in the RWC configuration. If you find the X-Plane is not downloading new conditions as you fly at all, set RWC to "always" mode to ensure it downloads weather data on its own. Or do both.

RWC simply transfers METAR data to SkyMaxx Pro for representation of the clouds - that's all. If you want to use NOAA for other things like winds you can still use it, but X-Plane 11 already has most of NOAA's functionality built in as I understand it. Like I said, I don't use NOAA, so others please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. 10k is pretty low for the cloud area. How high you can go depends on your system specs and what other add-ons and scenery you have installed. I'd just set up some cloudy conditions and see how high you can set it while maintaining an acceptable frame rate. Higher settings are better, especially if you fly at high altitudes. I keep mine maxed out all the way, but I have a pretty modern system.

I don't use the NOAA plugin, but yes that configuration should work well. Remember to set it back to "automatic" if you want to manually set up weather conditions instead.

My advice is to set the cumulus type to "fast", and overcast to anything but "HD Puffs" if your goal is to minimize rotation as the camera turns. "God rays" will only occur under specific conditions, if there is a layer of cumulus clouds that are reasonably dense between the camera and the sun, and you have the slider up to see them.

If it bothers you, you can change the sky colors back to default in SMP's configuration screen for now. That will also restore X-Plane's default sun and moon.

I know! We'll fix that in our next update. Originally this release was going to be called 4.1. The documentation is accurate, apart from the version number.

The rotation you see is a fundamental side effect of the rendering technique we use. You can minimize it by setting the "fast" option in SMP's configuration, and not using the "HD Puffs" option. Users with VR rigs in particular should change those settings. It is possible to do occlusion tests with the lens flare, but it has a significant performance impact, which is why we don't do it. X-Plane's architecture is such that raindrop effects on windshields is something that needs to be implemented by individual aircraft designers. There's no way I know of for one plugin to apply this effect to every plane automatically. They're good ideas though! We've noodled on all of them already.

If you can post your log.txt file, it may tell us more. But I'd advise opening a ticket with X-Aviation on this, as missing clouds are usually a symptom of an invalid license check.

Don't worry, we have no plans of dropping the sky color selection feature. Some people are perfectly happy with X-Plane's default sky, and that's fine with us.

No clouds appearing except cirrus is a symptom of a problem with your license check, most often. My advice is to open a support ticket when that happens so X-A can look into the particulars.

If you like flying in real weather, you'll probably want to also get Real Weather Connector (RWC). You can use SMP with real weather without RWC, but without RWC it can only represent one uniform set of conditions around you at a time, and fade in new conditions around you as you fly into them. RWC provides a much smoother, more realistic experience where you can see distant weather systems appear at the horizon and fly into them.

To be clear it only affects the sky colors, but it's a very sophisticated model. There's no artistic aspect to it where we were going for something darker or brighter, it's just as accurate a simulation of reality as is currently available. How it could affect X-Plane's terrain and lighting of airplanes is currently beyond me, however. It has nothing to do with either.

I think sun is where it should be, it's just that X-Plane renders distant terrain as transparent in some situations, so you see the sun through it. It's done this forever I think. We do have some code to fade away the sun when it gets low in the sky to counteract this; sounds like we may need to make that a little more aggressive. Remember you can always turn the sky back to default or some other sky color set if you don't like our procedural sky model. But you will need to restart X-Plane for the changes to take effect.

X-Plane does not simulate any specific year. SMP simulates the year 2014 in order to best match X-Plane's built-in night lighting of terrain etc. Once X-Plane adds a year to its date setting, we'll honor it.

Yes. And all this talk of crispiness is making me hungry!

Not unless we offer a completely different approach to how we render clouds - which isn't off the table.

That's just the nature of particles. If you set your overcast setting to something other than "HD Puffs", it might reduce this effect a bit.