sundog

It gets non linear at very low visibilities, but for the most part it just tries to prevent shadows from appearing on fogged-out terrain. We try to fade out the shadows with distance consistent with the visibility setting.

You've got a lot of custom scenery, a third party aircraft, and an external weather injector going on plus some other stuff - on a relatively low-powered graphics card. You're probably swapping memory from just pushing your system too hard, which would result in little stutters like that. Try turning down some rendering settings, see if flying with a default aircraft helps, etc. until you can find a setup that works well with your hardware.

SMP does pretty much nothing if no clouds are in the scene. Correlation does not imply causality!

If you need to conserve VRAM, start by hitting the "reset" button in SMP's configuration. Its default settings are designed to optimize both memory use and performance. Increasing the cloud draw distance or detail can greatly affect the amount of VRAM consumed. Also, broken stratiform consumes a bit more than solid. We included a real-time VRAM monitor so you can measure the impact different settings have as you apply them, and find the right balance for your system. In default settings, SMP3 actually uses less VRAM than SMP2 did. I've looked very hard for any memory-related "bugs" or leaks in SMP3, and have not found evidence of any.

One thing I noticed in your log is that there is a stratus cloud in your scene. Shadows won't be cast when a stratus layer is present, since this scatters the sunlight. Also be aware shadows won't appear if visibility is low, for the same reason. Try flying without any stratus or overcast cloud layers in your scene, and with good visibility, and you should see the cloud shadows then.

Hey, you're talking to a card-carrying member of the American Meteorological Society here. I get it! Right now X-Plane just says "draw this kind of cloud at this altitude". For now, that's all we can do. Of course we'll take advantage of any new data that comes our way in the future.

The SkyMaxx Pro 3 product page lists what's new; I'll copy it again here for your convenience. From a visual standpoint, the representation of stratus and overcast clouds is completely different. All of the screenshots on the product page are like nothing you could achieve with SkyMaxx Pro 2. Most screenshots you see on the Internet tend to feature cumulus clouds, however. SMP3 introduces increased draw distances, better lighting, and terrain blending on cumulus clouds under certain conditions, but I can understand how that might be tough to notice in a typical screenshot. New features in Version 3.0: New stratiform clouds! Stratus and overcast cloud layers may now be represented by thick, volumetric clouds. - Extends all the way to the horizon - Both solid and broken stratiform representations - Advanced lighting model with real Mie scattering and fogbows! - Realistic in-cloud effects for convincing IFR landings and takeoffs - Simulated scud layer - Real simulation of single, double, and multiple scattering of sunlight and moonlight through the clouds - Even faster than SkyMaxx Pro v2's clouds! Vastly increased cloud draw distances! - 3D volumetric cloud layers adjustable up to 200KM wide - Uses "dynamically generated imposters" technology to keep frame-rates up - Convincing high-altitude weather for jetliner pilots Soft cloud / terrain blending - Adjustable soft blending of any cloud type with terrain - Makes for gorgeous ground fog, or clouds surrounding mountaintops! Improved memory usage and memory management tools - Clouds now consume less video and system memory - Real-time video and system memory monitor alerts you when resources get low - VRAM and RAM usage displayed in the SkyMaxx Pro configuration screen - VRAM usage reported is the actual usage reported by the video drivers, not an estimate Integration with SoundMaxx - Lightning effects in SkyMaxx Pro 3 will trigger 3D positional thunder sound effects when SoundMaxx is installed Lots of extra polish - Rendering anomalies with lightning addressed - Better darkening of clouds as the sun sets - Cloud layers automatically avoid visually distracting intersections - Improved appearance of cloud shadows in low-visibility conditions

My guess would be that you were starting to swap memory, and disabling SMP for a moment just gave your system enough headroom to recover.

Thank you for the positive feedback! Those are great shots.

marpilot, did you install the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the VS 2012 runtime libraries? Make sure it was the 64-bit version.

I replicated your settings, and shadows appeared fine for me. Haven't heard of this happening from anyone else yet, either. I did notice that you have very little free video memory reported, however. Perhaps we weren't able to allocate the memory required for shadows as a result. You might have to turn down some rendering settings, or scale back your custom scenery. If you have HDR on, try turning it off.

The "broken stratiform" setting might be more to your liking. The color of the clouds depends on the thickness of the cloud, the time of day, etc. We tried to strike a balance so thin cloud layers wouldn't appear too bright, but thicker layers would still look reasonable. I'm sure we'll continue to refine it as time goes on.

Like we're trying to explain, there are lots of things other than textures (and SkyMaxx Pro) that consume video memory, especially when you're running at high resolutions with HDR on. But to answer your question directly, you can disable the "SilverLining" plugin from the plugin admin menu to temporarily disable SMP for testing purposes. You could also just fly in a scene with clear skies as a test.

We just draw what X-Plane tells us to draw. If it tells us to draw scattered cumulus clouds at 1,000 feet, that's what we draw. I'd question the METAR data in that case, really - you would never see cumulus clouds that low. I think they really wanted to specify stratus or overcast, which we would represent differently.

SkyMaxx Pro reports the actual amount of free VRAM your video driver says the card has available to it. There are many things other than textures that consume VRAM, for example the video buffers needed for X-Plane to draw the scene. If you're using HDR mode on a 4K monitor, that's likely to be the biggest consumer of VRAM.

SkyMaxx Pro 3 actually uses less VRAM than SkyMaxx Pro 2 (unless you've cranked up the cloud draw distance setting, of course.) Something else is consuming your memory.

Agreed, driving 3 monitors will eat GPU memory and fill rate alive. Your video card is a good one, but I do think you'd benefit from something even better. A 6GB GTX 980Ti is pricey, but it might make sense for you.

You don't have much memory left on your video card, which is probably the main issue. Your card is actually a good one and has plenty of memory, but you're using it all up somehow. Usually custom scenery is the culprit. Do you have HD mesh or something installed, or high-resolution photoscenery? If so, those are probably consuming most of it.

Try hitting the reset button in our configuration screen. In particular, the upper bound on the cloud draw distance setting has been increased in SMP 3. So the same slider setting in SMP3 will results in many more clouds than it did in SMP2. Even though SMP3's clouds are more efficient, that only gets you so far if you're almost out of resources. If trouble continues, post your log.txt so we can see what's going on.

Yes, yes it is. I think we need that

It would require super extra coding, but that never stopped us before. Thanks for the idea!

What John said. I will add however that it's probably a good idea to hit the "reset" button in the Skymaxx Pro 3 configuration screen after installing over an existing SMP2. Your SMP2 settings may be interpreted differently in SMP3, or result in different performance characteristics.

Patience - Cameron was up all night making sure things went smoothly with the launch. He's getting some much-needed sleep before returning to the support queue.

I also noticed you have a ton of custom scenery installed. Odds are you are running out of video memory which will kill performance. Lowering the "cloud draw distance" in SkyMaxx Pro can help, or you may need to re-evaluate what custom scenery packages your system is able to use without losing performance.

It's a matter of personal preference and the types of clouds you're used to seeing wherever you happen to live. We offer two different types of stratiform clouds you can choose between in our configuration screen. "Solid stratiform" looks more uniform, and is probably the one you would prefer.