sundog

It looks a lot to me like Ultra Weather XP is being used with SkyMaxx Pro in that video. Those look like SMP clouds to me, but the sky colors, reflections, etc. do not look like SMP. If so, that's a very misleading thing to post, since Ultra Weather XP positions itself as a cloud replacement like SMP.

Usually lowering the cloud detail and/or cloud draw distance settings in SMP will reduce the time needed to create new clouds when the conditions change. If that's not working, something else might be going on. Posting your log.txt would be helpful. One known issue is using the original release of FSGRW for X-Plane. I don't know all the details myself, but reportedly they issued a patch that reduces "pauses" that helps a lot.

I'm a fan of the NVidia GTX970 myself. Definitely go with a 4GB card though, at least.

You are low on video memory; SkyMaxx Pro 2 just wouldn't have told you that. I'm not entirely sure that's what caused your crash, though. I see you are using an old version of the SASL plugin (2.0.1) and that's known to cause some issues. The current version of SASL is 2.4. Try flying with a different plane, or see if an updated version of your plane is available that includes a newer SASL. Apart from that, you are low on video memory, and that can also cause X-Plane to crash under some conditions. It seems to be a combination of your custom scenery and some very thick cloud conditions that you've entered into - you've got three layers of cumulus clouds indicated in the logs, probably coming from EFASS. If it's not SASL, something will have to go - your custom scenery or EFASS, or you can try reducing the draw distance or cloud detail settings in SkyMaxx Pro. If you have HDR on, turning it off can also help. If you want to run with good performance and stability with all of these extras running at once, you should consider purchasing a new video card with more onboard memory. By the way, I see from your log that you're a customer of MaxxFX, SoundMaxx, and SkyMaxx Pro - thank you!

Looks like the top of a stratus cloud to me. If you don't like how that looks, change the "stratus / overcast representation" setting to sparse particles or dense particles, depending on what your system can handle. Clouds come in a lot of different varieties and it depends a lot on your local climate, so what looks perfectly natural to someone in one part of the world may look strange to someone else. But that's why we give you four different settings to choose from there.

When the cloud conditions change, SkyMaxx Pro needs to "grow" a new set of clouds, and that can take a fraction of a second. It shouldn't happen often though, and it should be barely noticeable with default settings. If you can post your log.txt file here following a problematic flight, it will give us more specifics as to what you might be seeing.

Might help to see your log.txt. My usual advice is to lower your cloud draw distance and detail settings in the SMP configuration, but if you're running with defaults, you'd have to really be running on the edge of your machine's capabilities for that to be the issue. But that is a possibility.

Bizarre! Glad it's working again.

It's possible that installing the Visual Studio 2010 x64 runtimes would solve this sort of problem. Java not so much. Hopefully that helps Alex - if it's not that or the issue solved by http://media.sundog-soft.com/test/xplane/win.xpl, I'm not sure what it is. Double check you installed that win.xpl file to the right location....

I think your main quibble is that due to X-Plane's flat coordinate system, it's possible to position the sun such that it is visible from underneath a stratus layer *if* X-plane's visibility is not consistent with what I'd typically associate with a stratus cloud. Usually in those sorts of overcast conditions, X-Plane will draw the sky as gray, which blends in with the stratus cloud at its edges. But when the sky is bright and visibility is high, the edge of the stratus cloud becomes visible when seen from below, breaking the "to the horizon" illusion. What we're really speaking to with that claim is the sheer size of the stratus cloud layer (250km) which does extend to the horizon when viewed from typical GA altitudes from above. Mostly I think we're on the same page, but I want to make clear we're not setting out to deceive anyone.

Well, for whatever reason, X-Plane is interpreting the conditions where your plane is as cumulus there. Perhaps you should consider using a third-party weather engine. Your other post (13) looks as expected for the conditions specified. I think what's going on is that the visibility is a little bit low, and that's limiting how far out we can draw clouds. If you were to increase the visibility, you'd see the clouds start curving over the horizon, which I think is what you really want. If you were the reduce it, X-Plane should start drawing the sky as gray which would also look more natural. If you were to disable SkyMaxx Pro, I think you'd find that X-Plane's default weather representation also allows the sun to shine through in those conditions as well.

That doesn't look like the first set of conditions you posted - those screenshots look like what I would expect for the weather conditions it's receiving. It's that small disc you posted originally that I found unusual. There's nothing unusual about your video card, so my hunch was probably wrong on that. Updating your drivers couldn't hurt, though. You mentioned RTH was in the mix, and I could see that causing strange artifacts in the sky if it were configured in certain ways. One thing I did notice is that your aircraft is using an old version of SASL, which may be causing problems. You may want to see if a newer version of your aircraft is available. I think however you'd be happiest if you changed SkyMaxx Pro's stratiform setting to "dense particles" or "sparse particles" though. What's going on in this scene is that your weather conditions are specifying stormy conditions with a low stratus cloud in the scene. SkyMaxx Pro is trying to prevent the stratus cloud from intersecting with the storm clouds by pushing up the stratus layer, which is why you see a gap at the horizon below the high stratus layer. The real problem is that the quality of the METAR data you are receiving is suspect. Here's what we're getting sent: SkyMaxx Pro: Created cumulus congestus layer alt 409.000000 size 50000.000000 density 0.333333SkyMaxx Pro: Created stratus layer alt 1018.000000 thickness 1829.000000 density 1.000000SkyMaxx Pro: Created cumulonimbus cloud at -7886.328125, 10575.523438SkyMaxx Pro: Created cumulonimbus cloud at -36486.750000, 24566.734375SkyMaxx Pro: Raised stratus layer to avoid a layer collision. It's pretty weird to have a cumulus layer that low with a stratus layer right on top of it! However, if you set the stratiform setting to one of the particle representations, Skymaxx Pro won't be forced to juggle the cloud layers around in this situation, which will probably look better to you.

I would need to see your log.txt to figure out what's going on. That "disc" you're seeing is not normal, and I've never seen it before nor heard it reported before. It looks like your video drivers are ignoring our command to disable far clipping on the cloud layers, so we'll need to know what your video card is and what capabilities it exposes (which is in your log.txt file.) Your log will also report the specific cloud conditions present, which may be needed for us to reproduce what you're seeing. Short story: what you're seeing is a rare fluke that I've never seen before, and may be specific to your video card and driver version. If you want us to track it down, we'll need your log.txt file after you've experienced it.

Any custom scenery installed? That can eat memory alive. If you got this message with our default settings, it means you were running close to the edge beforehand.

Chris knows how CPU's work. What he said specifically was "X-Plane's rendering code is effectively single-threaded" and that is accurate. X-Plane does spin up many threads, presumably for things like loading terrain, but only one thread can do the actual rendering of the scene. It's a fundamental limitation of OpenGL. If rendering is your bottleneck (as it would be on a mobile Quadro card), then it will appear as one core doing most of the work.

I think what we're talking about is that rain particles won't draw in front of our clouds. It's a limitation of the API X-Plane provides for plugins. Nothing we can do about it. Most people consider this a very minor issue, though.

Thanks for working with us on this. Your results tell me that the crash is probably originating deep within the bowels of your video driver or operating system, while we're trying to measure the amount of free video memory on your card. I think this is an extremely rare problem, but in case others run into it and come across this thread, I'll summarize: - If you are getting a crash after installing Skymaxx Pro 3 immediately upon starting a flight, your log.txt file indicates a crash within the "SilverLining" plugin, and you are running Windows with an AMD video card, try replacing your Resources/plugins/SilverLining/64/win.xpl file with this one: http://media.sundog-soft.com/test/win.xpl This version will disable video memory monitoring on Windows/AMD systems, avoiding the issue. If that helps others, please comment in this thread to let us know. It will help us gauge how widespread this issue really is.

Hmmmmm!!!! May I ask you to try one more experiment? See if this build also works: http://media.sundog-soft.com/test/xplane/win.xpl If so, we'll issue a patch using it for others who may share your configuration. If not, you can go back to using the one in my previous post instead for now.

You are looking in the right place, I think. What should happen is settings.dat should be written the first time you run with SkyMaxx Pro with a set of default settings, but apparently it's not even getting that far. I wonder if you are running X-Plane as a user that does not have write permissions to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\X-Plane 10\Resources\plugins\SilverLining folder. Check the permissions on that folder. You may need to change them, or run as administrator - but I'm just guessing. One thing that *might* work is starting with clear weather selected, which should result in SkyMaxx Pro doing pretty much nothing. If that lets you start up, that will give you an opportunity to bring up the SkyMaxx Pro configuration panel, and turn off all of the extra options like cloud reflections, shadows, terrain blending, lens flare, and crepuscular rays. If you can then successfully introduce a cumulus cloud layer into the scene, we can at least start narrowing down what feature it is your system doesn't seem to like. If, at this point, you're still having trouble - there is one bit of new code in SkyMaxx Pro 3 that is specific to AMD video cards. It seems to work for everyone else, but I created a special build for you that removes it, as a test. Just download this file: http://media.sundog-soft.com/test/win.xpl and place it in X-Plane's resources/plugins/silverlining/64 directory, replacing the one that's there. If that fixes it, then I know what's going on.

That's really weird; I've never seen anything like that before. It looks like it's crashing before it even tries to draw anything. Start by removing the settings.dat file inside X-Plane's Resources/plugins/SilverLining folder, and then try again. My best guess is that your settings file is somehow corrupt, and telling Skymaxx Pro to do something nonsensical as a result. Next step would be to re-install SkyMaxx Pro 3, as I'm still leaning toward a corrupt file system of some sort here. Thousands of people are using SkyMaxx Pro 3 successfully and this is the first crash of this nature I've seen, so I think something really unusual is going on. A filesystem problem would fit the facts. As a final step, updating your video drivers is also somewhat likely to help, if they are out of date. Hopefully one of those steps will clear things up. If not, please let us know the specifics of your video card model and what driver version you have installed.

I'm not sure I see any patterns in that screenshot, but perhaps you're talking about color banding? That's a fundamental limitation of PC computer graphics - your monitor can only represent 256 distinct shades of gray, so when you have subtle gradients like you might see within clouds, you will sometimes see the boundaries between the different shades. All you can really do is adjust the brightness and contrast on your monitor to make them less noticeable. You might also be happier using the default "solid stratiform" setting for stratiform clouds, as it will result in a more uniform fog when you fly through stratus or overcast layers. However, banding can still be an issue when viewing the cloud itself. Really you should just adjust your monitor's settings. - Can I get rid of the red lines in the horizon, that sometimes occur (not on this picture)? I've read about this issue on other forums. It has nothing to do with SkyMaxx Pro. I think updating your video driver might help, but others here might know more about it.

Although you probably paid a premium for that Quadro chip, my guess would be that it's to blame. Quadros are aimed more at the CAD crowd, and aren't the best choice for 3D gaming these days. I think they have their own separate drivers, and don't benefit from all the speedups that go into the GTX drivers. Not to mention the K1000M isn't even a particularly powerful Quadro, and it's also limited in the amount of video memory it can have. If it's possible to update your video driver, it might help - but it's not all that old, really. If you post your log.txt, we might spot something else that's going on. This is just my guess based on the info you provided.

Exactly, you need to be within 2 nm of a VOR for SoundMaxx to think you're at a "large" airport.

People have written entire thesis on this problem. It's not simple at all. But if anyone does tackle it, here are some papers I came across when I had to do something similar for a client: http://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~whmin/Zhang-2012-DMS/Zhang-2012-DMS.pdf http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/kin/publications/CA93/wdroplet.pdf http://imagine.kicbak.com/blog/?p=124 http://www.researchgate.net/publication/268438621_Animation_of_Water_Droplets_on_a_Hydrophobic_Windshield After about two weeks' worth of work I came up with this: http://media.sundog-soft.com/ForMak/raindrops.mp4 And, it still leaves a lot to be desired.

NVidia recently published a technical article on the causes of stuttering in games. Short story: it's probably due to running out of video memory.