sundog

Hm, it should be automatically saving all of those settings when you close X-Plane. For our next release, I'll make it do a save whenever you close the RWC or precipitation dialog boxes as well, just to be safe.

Hit the "reset" button in SMP's configuration; it's possible you turned up the settings higher than your system can handle. If that doesn't help, post your log.txt and we'll be happy to try and isolate your problem in more detail. 10 FPS certainly isn't normal unless you're on a system that's below X-Plane's minimum system requirements, you've cranked up settings beyond what your system can handle, or you have more add-ons installed than your system can handle.

The RWC settings are stored in the same file as SMP's settings. Perhaps the file is corrupt somehow. Try deleting it, which will revert to default settings and force SMP to recreate the file from scratch - it's under resources/plugins/silverlining/settings.dat

If it's happening right after you've started your flight and doesn't happen again, that could just be the initial METAR data coming in from the Internet. If your flight starts while X-Plane still has stale weather data in place from your last flight, it will apply the new data once it comes in. Please provide your log.txt file after it happens and it might tell us more.

The error is actually talking about your main memory, not VRAM. Custom scenery can consume it faster than you realize - or you may have other apps open in the background. I'd suggest re-running the latest SMP and RWC installers to ensure all the components they need for licensing are present.

Make sure "never change visible weather" is on in the RWC settings. Can you be more specific about what you're seeing? The clouds shouldn't change if things are set up properly, apart from perhaps some small movement when you cross one degree tile boundaries. If you're talking about visibility or fog effects, SMP has nothing to do with that - we just draw clouds.

There are a couple of things in your log that stick out to me: SkyMaxx Pro license check failed. Clouds will be disabled.License challenge failed; MaxxFX disabled. You need to open a ticket with X-Aviation to figure out why your software license isn't successfully authenticating. This will lead to unexpected behavior. SkyMaxx Pro: WARNING! CPU free memory at 88284 KB. X-Plane may crash due to lack of memory. Close other applications, reset your settings, or remove memory-intensive add-ons such as photo-scenery. I think you're running out of memory due to your custom scenery, or possibly from other add-ons. You might want to consider removing some of it. If you increased your cloud draw area in SMP too high, that would also consume memory. If problems persist after resolving these issues, please include your METAR.rwx file as well as your best guess as to the closest airport when the crash occurred so we can dig into it more deeply.

65 degrees is not a realistic FOV in terms of what your brain sees in real life. 30 or lower is closer to reality. Your framerate can also affect how fast the rain particles appear to be falling, so if you're struggling with performance issues that may also be to blame - especially if you're below 20 FPS. If you're curious, we compute the terminal velocity of individual raindrops based on their simulated droplet size, using the equations in this paper: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0450%281977%29016%3C1322%3APAAIRM%3E2.0.CO%3B2

Your log does not indicate that SMP caused the crash. However, I do see some other potential problems: - This sort of crash is consistent with running out of memory. I see you've got HD Mesh installed, and that can eat memory alive. Try removing it. - There are many conflicts within your custom scenery that could be causing issues. You might want to try removing all custom scenery as a test, or starting over from a fresh install of XP11. - You have several other third-party add-ons. Make sure you have the latest versions of any plugins and third party aircraft installed. I recall XPUIPC had a version out at one point that caused issues, for example - and something you installed includes it.

For what it's worth, the rate at which the rain falls is based on real physics and the terminal velocity of real raindrops. People tend to fly with wider-than-natural fields of view, which can create the illusion of them moving too slowly.

Just tried flying out of both Tallahassee and Chicago in the MD80 and still no luck in getting this to happen. However, your log.txt does reveal a huge number of issues with your X-Plane installation. You have a very old SASL plugin getting loaded from your F-15 aircraft that is known to cause problems, and countless conflicts arising from all of your custom scenery that you have installed. There are also indications of corrupt memory files being accessed in your log. It's not what you want to hear - but I think the next step is to install a new, clean X-Plane 11 into a new directory, install nothing but SMP to it, and see if the problem still occurs. If so, then it may be something specific to MacOS or your hardware configuration. SMP does "play by the rules" when it comes to shadows, so if we can narrow this down, we'll just have to file a bug with Laminar about it - especially if this just started in PB8 for you. Meanwhile we'll also keep our ears open for any similar reports from other users.

Hm, I still can't get it to happen even with those exact settings. Can we see your log.txt? It might be some sort of interaction with some other third party add-on. Also, I think it's worth seeing if the issue still occurs while flying a default aircraft over default scenery. I could imagine some object in the scene messing up X-Plane's rendering.

This probably means you have some sort of file permission issue preventing SMP or RWC from writing its settings to the resources/plugins/silverlining/settings.dat file. Try running X-Plane with administrator privileges.

Can't seem to make this happen here. It looks more like cloud reflections that are flickering for you, not the shadows. Could you post an image of your rendering settings, weather settings, and your SMP settings so I can try to replicate this?

Can we see your log.txt following the crash? That would tell us if SMP is to blame. I don't think it is; we have thousands of customers using SMP4 without issue. But you may have increased SMP 4's settings to the point that it's causing your sim to run out of memory or something - or it may be interacting with another add-on that is corrupting the memory used by SMP4.

Any PC that is displaying clouds on a monitor used for your sim should have SkyMaxx Pro installed.

Don't know if you're the same person who was describing something similar on Facebook yesterday, but his issue turned out to be a bad Internet connection. His ISP's DNS wasn't working, which was leading to the METAR information being download getting corrupted whenever weather updated. In his case, rebooting his PC cleared it up.

Based on your log, it looks like one of your clients is receiving different weather data from X-Plane than the others. Two show a cumulus layer, and one (client 3) only received cirrus. It may be a good experiment to remove SMP from all three clients and see if you're having the same problems with default weather. As far as I can tell, SMP is just doing what X-Plane is telling it to do, and the issue is probably at a higher level.

Please provide your log.txt and metar.rwx files, and the specifics of where you were flying, after experiencing this. It may be you were just flying in an area where the weather was in fact the same throughout your flight, or it may be that something isn't set up right or there is some sort of license issue going on. Keep in mind too there is a "never change visible weather" option in RWC that's on by default. You'll never see the weather just suddenly change around you if that's on (most people don't want that.)

Please provide your log.txt again after experiencing a crash, with all other add-ons removed, so we can see what's going on. If you're overclocking your CPU or GPU, try disabling that overclocking.

Some things to check: - Copy the same resources/plugins/silverlining/settings.dat file to every client, to make sure the SMP settings are exactly the same. Don't touch the settings after that. - If you're using RWC, try setting it to "always" mode on every client If you're still having trouble, please post your log.txt file. If you can take a snapshot of the issue it might also help us to understand what you're seeing.

According to your log, X-Plane crashed and no specific add-on was directly responsible for it. There's nothing that indicates SMP may have been the cause. (SMP writes to the log more often than other plugins, but just because it was the last thing to write to the log doesn't mean it was responsible for the crash.) You have a lot of custom scenery, aircraft, and add-ons installed, and quite honestly any of them might be causing memory to become corrupt or for you to run out of memory over time. I'm afraid the only way to track it down is to start with a clean installation, and start adding add-ons back in until you start having stability issues.

There's nothing I'm aware of to change how that looks. You might look around for freeware add-ons that adjust the intensity of night lights, but I don't know of anything that does exactly what you want.

I do believe X-Plane draws lights differently when HDR is on, so it would make sense that they would appear differently in that mode.

If it's brand new, I'd seriously consider exchanging it if you can. Even if SMP is all that triggers the fault on your system, it's still not something we can address from our end.