sundog

We've tried, but it's not worth it. The closer you make that distance, the more often you need to update the textures, and at a certain point it costs more than it saves you.

We already do that. We just do it so well that you can't even tell Any clouds beyond 50km are rendered to a ring of 2D textures.

That's not surprising; the more area of the screen that the clouds cover, the higher the demand on the fill rate capabilities of your graphics card. It's kind of unavoidable.

That would be pretty cool. Thanks for the idea!

Thanks Chris. If I understand correctly from your thread on XPD, your issue is performance degrading over time as you fly. There's nothing in your log that implicates SkyMaxx Pro or Real Weather Connector, or anything else; the information there is inconclusive. But, it looks like you're using HD Mesh in addition to orthophoto custom scenery, which is certainly taxing your system. It could be that all of our extra 3D clouds are just pushing your system over the edge over time. Removing HD mesh or your custom scenery might help if you need an immediate solution. But as I mentioned in the thread, we also have a new version of SMP coming out that will use far fewer resources than version 3.2.2, and that might be what you need in order to keep the demands of your simulation within the bounds of what your hardware can do. So, let's wait and see if SMP 3.3 clears things up when it comes out. If not, you may need to make some compromises on the add-ons you have installed - but I'm cautiously optimistic that SMP 3.3 will help. You should receive an email when it's available.

Ah, I missed that you're on a Mac. Updating video drivers isn't really a straightforward thing there. Unfortunately Intel HD graphics have a lot of known problems with their driver quality, and there's nothing we can really do about that. As a workaround in SMP, all you can do for now is set SMP's stratiform representation setting to "sparse particles" or "dense particles," which should prevent this particular situation from occurring. Given the capabilities of your video system, I'd stick with "sparse particles."

See if a video driver update is available for your system.

You can't find it because it doesn't exist! SkyMaxx Pro does not expose any datarefs of its own.

It looks like you're using an integrated Intel video chip, so this is probably a driver issue. If your system has an NVidia or AMD/ATI card, it's not set up properly, and that's the real issue. If not, see if a driver update for your system is available.

Just tested flying through a solid stratiform layer here, using X-Plane 10.50r2 and the latest SMP. I didn't see this happening, nor have I seen similar reports. My first guess is that something in your aircraft or custom scenery is throwing off the graphics system in this case. If you fly with a default aircraft or with default scenery, does this issue go away? If not, please post your log.txt file after experiencing this problem, and a screenshot of your render settings and SMP settings might also help. I'd also move this discussion to the Maxx-XP support forum, as I'm more likely to see it there.

We actually parse the entire world's weather at startup, so you don't get any stutters when you fly into a new area!

Thank you for capturing the offending METAR.rwx. Based on the reports it seems this was only an issue for one hour's worth of published METAR data. As before, the problem is a bug inside the METAR parsing library we're using from NOAA, and as before, I've patched it so this particular problem won't happen again once our next update of SMP goes out. The culprit this time was KGRK: KGRK 152107Z 04010KT 3SM RA BR SCT010 BKN014 OVC024 22/21 A3001 RMK AO2A CIG 014V024 BKN V SCT CIG 012 That final "CIG" (ceiling height) entry is what did it in. The NOAA code didn't handle the case of this being the last thing in the entry (but it will now that I've fixed it...) If anyone is still having trouble launching X-Plane, just delete your METAR.rwx file in your X-Plane installation folder, and that should clear it up for now. Sorry for the trouble, everyone.

This looks like a software licensing problem. If you open up X-Plane's log.txt file, do you see any lines that say this: License challenge failed; MaxxFX disabled If so, you'll need to contact X-Aviation support to check on your account. You might want to try re-installing using the installer provided by X-Aviation first.

Appreciate the data. We are still working to track down what's going on and trying out some ideas.

New ways of representing stratiform / overcast is definitely on my radar. Thanks for the feedback!

SMP has always worked that way with cirrus clouds. I'm not saying it's ideal, but since our cirrus textures are complex and can't tile seamlessly, we had to choose between texture quality and motion. Since cirrus clouds are usually far from the plane and their motion small in comparison, this seemed like the best trade-off to make. You might want to try different cirrus texture settings in SMP's configuration; it's more or less noticeable depending on how many cirrus clouds there are near the center of the texture.

That command only affects X-Plane's built-in weather system. RWC checks for new METAR files once a minute and reloads them if their modification time and file size have changed, or you can force it to reload by toggling its settings between always and automatic for example.

RWC only reads the metar information at startup for the entire world, and saves it. It checks for updated files periodically but not right away.

What's up with the = sign at the end of each METAR line? Try removing that.

The first thing that catches my eye is that your time format in the file isn't what we expect. Compare one of your lines: 201607070836 METAR To a line in a standard X-Plane METAR.rwx: 2016/07/31 20:35 SMP does assume a y/m/d h:m format, so that alone could be causing the problem.

Please post your log.txt, and let us know what version of SMP you were using previously.

Thanks for the feedback and ideas, Darren. I do like the idea of inferring fog based on RVR data. Do you have Real Weather Connector? It has a "never change visible weather" option that sounds like what you want.

It looks like it's probably a case of a bad METAR.rwx file being downloaded. If it's still happening, please post your METAR.rwx file (it should be alongside your log.txt) so we can have a closer look.

That's probably your main issue (the video memory consumption reported in X-Plane's graphics settings only counts textures allocated by X-Plane; you can't use it as a measure of how much memory is actually in use on your video card.) Once you get down to 100-200MB of available video memory, most graphics drivers start needing to "swap" which leads to degraded performance. If you don't have many add-ons installed, all you can do is reduce your graphics and/or cloud draw area settings further, or upgrade your video card. X-Plane's recommended system configuration calls for a 4GB video card. (http://www.x-plane.com/desktop/system-requirements/)

When did you file your support ticket, Franca?