sundog

Storms are hard to find in the winter, but I found some starting to form:

Well, OK. The more interesting conditions of this morning in Seattle are gone unfortunately, but I found a little hole in the clouds just now. You can see it represented in the weather situation and in the clouds next to the plane. Don't expect every cloud to match up perfectly, but the general features of the surrounding weather should match up pretty well - at least to the resolution of the underlying METAR data.

A bit more eye candy; it's getting close, I think. Watch for more/better screenshots and videos soon. These shots are using X-Plane's built-in real weather with no external weather engine at all, around Seattle, with current beta versions of SkyMaxx Pro 3.1 and Real Weather Connector.

I would suggest re-downloading the plane's latest versions and re-installing them. If this means your friend has to send you a new "coupon," you might have to ask for one. I can promise you that Skymaxx Pro has absolutely nothing to do with how the switches in your plane behave. It's either coincidence that you noticed this problem once SMP was installed, or installing SMP shuffled the memory layout of your system in such a way that it exposed a bug in the plane's software or in SASL. I see you are running with SASL version 2.0.3 while the latest version of SASL is 2.4.3, so I think this also points to your plane's software being out of date.

Your log shows some errors while X-Plane is trying to load the plugins associated with your JS32 aircraft. I would start by re-installing it, making sure you have the latest official release of it. I know there are lots of unofficial extensions to that plane, and all bets are off if you're using them...

Your log doesn't say what caused the CTD. Just because our memory check message was the last thing in your log doesn't mean it's what caused the crash; X-Plane does LOTS of things that don't write to the log. You've got a lot of custom scenery with conflicting ATC information that could be the cause. My guess is that you happened to fly into an area where this became an issue.

One more for you - taken just now over Washington State's Cascade Mountains at dusk (my old stomping grounds.) Note how the clouds are blocked by the mountains just like real life, and the long cloud shadows near sunset.

X-plane updates leave plugins such as ours untouched. You will be able to upgrade without problems. Even if an update messes with files we need, SkyMaxx Pro will automatically restore them.

Glad you like it! Thanks for your purchase.

Ask, and ye shall receive: Also, here's a screen cap from this flight:

Yes - but we haven't announced the features in 3.1 yet. Stay tuned for more details.

Well, I think Cameron's right about it being some sort of driver error. Intel doesn't exactly have a good reputation in that area I'm afraid, and I've never run across the specific card you have. If you can update your video drivers, it may help. If that doesn't do it, try enabling HDR mode - that may trick the drivers into behaving properly. What I think is going on is that when you are inside a solid or broken stratiform layer, SkyMaxx Pro does a post-processing effect over the scene in order to make it look fogged. Your image looks like portions of the screen aren't writing into the depth buffer or something, but I don't want to get too technical! Bottom line - if updating your drivers and HDR mode doesn't help, as a last resort you could set your stratus/overcast representation setting to sparse or dense particles to get around this.

It's a tough thing to describe, since Real Weather Connector isn't really like any existing product I've seen. It sits between X-Plane's real weather system, or an external weather engine (whatever produces METAR files for X-Plane) and SkyMaxx Pro. It works to enhance the weather data and how it is depicted. What matters is the end result, which is pretty darn immersive once you've experienced it.

I understand that's what it sounds like. But, we're not bringing XP's default real-world weather functionality to SkyMaxx; we're inventing our own. We're parsing and interpolating raw METAR information, and using it to position cloud formations and storm clouds in ways X-Plane's built-in weather cannot. For example, we can have hundreds of distinct cloud layers in view at once, all at different altitudes - and we offer cloud types like cumulonimbus and towering cumulus that the default engine doesn't have. We didn't replicate what X-Plane's default clouds can do, we went beyond that. I think once folks start to get their hands on it and spread the word, folks will understand why it's a product in its own right. For now, stay tuned while we get through beta testing.

Your log indicates that SkyMaxx Pro could not find some of the files it needs. If you went into your X-Plane folder and moved anything around, that would explain it - or it could indicate a more insidious error like a corrupt file system on your PC. The first thing I would do is try re-installing SkyMaxx Pro; there's a good chance that will clear it up.

There's a huge variety on how METAR can encode storms - TC, TS, CB, TCU ... sometimes with the direction the storm is in, sometimes not. Handling all those cases is a big part of why there's actually more code involved with the Real Weather Connector than with SkyMaxx Pro itself. You're right that we don't have info on how tall the storm clouds are in most cases. In that case we randomly pick a size between 5 and 7 km, just to keep it looking natural.

As much as I really, really, really want to talk about SkyMaxx Pro 3.1's new features - we haven't announced those yet! Stay tuned.

To be clear, it reads metar info from external plugins *or* from X-Plane's built-in real weather system - you don't need an external weather plugin to benefit from Real Weather Connector. It will make SkyMaxx Pro's cloud formations much more realistic and immersive with or without one. Things like wind and turbulence are a function of the weather engine. Real Weather Connector's purpose is to tell SkyMaxx Pro about detailed cloud formations that surround you, so it can visually simulate them. Due to differences in how we might interpolate METAR information vs. how X-Plane or external weather engines might do it, I can't promise things like turbulence will correlate perfectly to our cloud placement. But it should be reasonably close, which has always been the case. The new "solid stratiform" and "broken stratiform" effects in SkyMaxx Pro 3 will be used if selected in the configuration, and if the entire surrounding area is reporting overcast conditions. RWC will add towering cumulus and also cumulonimbus clouds to the scene when reported. You don't need extended DSF on for them; clouds will be visible up to the cloud draw distance selected or up to the visibility distance being simulated, whichever is smaller. Screenshots below

Interesting weather is just hard to find in the winter! I did notice that Geneva was having some rather crappy weather at the moment, so here's a shot near LSGG. You can see there's a bunch of clouds bunched up against the mountains with some storms forming:

Was doing some more testing today and snapped a high-altitude shot for you. I've also lightened up the clouds as promised:

SkyMaxx Pro had always represented a single set of weather conditions surrounding the plane. As you flew into new conditions, the clouds around you would just suddenly all change. It was a limitation of X-Plane's SDK for plugins, but our customers really wanted a solution, so we found a way to work around it. Real Weather Connector + SkyMaxx Pro lets you see different weather conditions in the distance, and fly into them smoothly, just like in real life. All of the clouds around you will be in the right place and at the right altitude, and won't just "pop" in as you fly. If you look closely at the screenshots above, you'll see there are many different weather systems and cloud conditions visible in the same view - that wasn't possible before with SkyMaxx Pro. Don't think of it as a replacement for FSGRW. It just enhances the experience by creating a more direct link between FSGRW and SkyMaxx Pro - and it also works great with X-Plane's built-in real world weather or any weather engine that drops METAR files.

I don't have a screenshot handy, but it looks great. First time I tried it, I thought that SkyMaxx Pro had turned itself off somehow and I was seeing some sort of weather map representation from X-Plane. But no, it was SkyMaxx Pro's clouds, just in very realistic weather patterns. As with the current version of SkyMaxx Pro, you control how far out the clouds draw to strike your own performance / draw distance tradeoff. As Cameron alluded to, we're introducing a few more performance tricks to make sure more people can turn that cloud draw distance slider up high enough to get the full experience.

Just to provide an update, Real Weather Connector + SkyMaxx Pro 3.1 is totally decoupled from X-Plane's internal 3-layer limitation now. Internally weather is represented by a grid, and each cell of that grid can have up to 6 layers of clouds at any altitude. Development is moving fast The only limitation is the METAR data itself. If the METAR has been changed by an external weather engine to fit within X-Plane's default 3-layer system, then that's the only information we'll have available to us.

Looks like you're flying over photoscenery. That might be what's causing your GPU to run out of resources, not the plane. Try flying somewhere that has default scenery. Your GPU really isn't a great choice for gaming or flight simulation to begin with, but it looks like you're on a laptop and you can't do much about that.

Yes, definitely. There are even better cards if you've got the budget for them; I just like the "bang for the buck" the 970 gives you.