sundog

This might be a problem with Yosemite itself; just found this article describing all the problems with this latest release of MacOS. Laminar has been warning users about upgrading to Yosemite as well. See the "Yosemite" section in this post from them: For now, all you can do is wait and hope that either Apple or Laminar finds a solution, or roll back to Mavericks using Time Machine if you can. Bottom line however, every indication is that these graphical anomalies are not a SkyMaxx Pro problem but something more general with Yosemite.

Did you try what was suggested in the previous post?

Are you on Yosemite by any chance? It seems there are a lot of problems with Yosemite and X-Plane in general from what I've read, some of which manifest themselves as graphics driver problems. X-Plane 10.35 is expected to resolve at least some of them.

SkyMaxx Pro does not need to go into your custom scenery list at all. It's a plugin, not scenery.

Well your log doesn't actually say why it crashed. Usually if it's a genuine bug in SkyMaxx Pro it would clearly state so at the end of the log file - but yours just ends suddenly. What I am seeing in your log however is consistent with the running-out-of-VRAM theory. You not only have a lot of custom scenery going on, you're also flying into some extremely demanding weather conditions. Three layers of large, dense cumulus clouds are being called for in this flight, and those clouds consume a decent amount of VRAM on their own. If you were already running low due to custom scenery, that could push you over the edge. My recommendation is something's gotta go to preserve VRAM. Within Skymaxx Pro, you can turn down the cloud detail option, or set "overcast quality" to low to save memory. Ditching custom scenery could help a lot. You could turn off HDR, or turn down antialiasing. Any of those should save VRAM, and it's up to you what tradeoffs you want to make.

Well, I'll try! Most software for Windows is developed using a tool from Microsoft called Visual Studio. And, depending on how you deploy that software, it may require specific DLL's from Microsoft to be installed that are associated with the version of Visual Studio used to develop the software. Without them, the software won't function. Usually software will install these DLL's as part of their installation to make sure it works. But somehow, these DLL's either were never installed or got removed on your system. It seems many of your plugins depended on these DLL's, so restoring them with that installer from Microsoft is all that was needed to get up and running again.

My original explanation was overly verbose. Let me explain it more directly: Go here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=13523 and install it. I think it might clear up everything.

Can you be more specific? I know of some people using EFASS with SMP who seem to be happy with it. Ideally send us a log.txt following any problem you're experiencing.

This is a new one. So, none of the panels in your aircraft appear? I can't really come up with a theory on how SkyMaxx Pro would cause that to happen (and if it did, I would have thought it would have been reported by others already.) However, there does seem to be a problem with your 777 installation reported in your log: Fetching plugins for F:\X-Plane 10/Aircraft/Heavy Metal/B777-200ER/pluginsF:\X-Plane 10/Aircraft/Heavy Metal/B777-200ER/plugins/T7Avionics/64/win.xpl : Error Code = 1114 : Routine di inizializzazione della libreria di collegamento dinamico (DLL) non riuscita.F:\X-Plane 10/Aircraft/Heavy Metal/B777-200ER/plugins/T7Avionics/win.xpl : Error Code = 193 : %1 non è un'applicazione di Win32 valida.F:\X-Plane 10/Aircraft/Heavy Metal/B777-200ER/plugins/sasl/64/win.xpl : Error Code = 1114 : Routine di inizializzazione della libreria di collegamento dinamico (DLL) non riuscita.F:\X-Plane 10/Aircraft/Heavy Metal/B777-200ER/plugins/sasl/win.xpl : Error Code = 193 : %1 non è un'applicazione di Win32 valida.I don't know Italian, but according to Google Translate I think this means you have some missing system dependency. My guess would be the Visual Studio 2010 runtime library. Try re-installing your 777, and it might install whatever system library is missing for you. I do see a few things in your log file that indicate other problems: - You seem to have two copies of the "headshake" plugin installed; one in the plugins/64 directory, and another in plugins/Head Shake/64. The one in plugins/64 is the one being loaded, so if that's not supposed to be there, delete it. - Your PythonInterface plugin is failing to load. I don't know what effects this might have on other plugins or aircraft that might depend on it. This is probably the same visual studio runtime library problem. - Your GroundTraffic plugin is also failing to load due to some missing system dependency; probably the same thing again.

settings.dat just stores your preferences from the Skymaxx Pro configuration panel. Leaving it there is harmless.

That's not necessary. I never noticed before and nobody's ever complained about it before either, but you are right that rain particles can't be seen in front of clouds. Unfortunately I don't think it's something we can fix given X-Plane's SDK. Totally agree. I feel no need to simulate fabricated, unrealistic conditions. If we did allow you to set up a 40km-thick volumetric cloud, it would kill performance and probably crash most systems as well due to memory exhaustion. We're not going to change anything there. Hey thanks for digging that old post up Ben! The research that went into SilverLining (the engine that powers SkyMaxx Pro) was a lot of fun, and it's some pretty hardcore stuff. I even went and got accepted into the American Meteorological Society to get access to more research. But yeah, when I say 40km-high stratus clouds don't exist, I'm not just making that up. Normally they don't even exist above 2km.

Your log indicates the crash occurred within X-Plane, and not from SkyMaxx Pro. I noticed you are using a third party aircraft - if you fly with a default aircraft, are your flights more stable? Custom scenery might also have something to do with it, but you've got a decent video card so I think your system should be able to handle that. If you are prompted to submit a crash report to Laminar following a crash like this, please do so. Only they can diagnose something like this reliably. I've read they are aware of problems that seem to be arising from within video drivers, which would be consistent with what you are seeing.

You would never see a stratus cloud 40km thick in real life. Drawing clouds will always be slower than not drawing clouds. If you need some extra performance, try reducing the cloud draw distance and cloud detail settings in the Skymaxx Pro configuration screen.

I guess I'd say the longer you fly, the more likely it is that whatever odd circumstance that leads to your crash will happen. Maybe you're flying into a particularly memory-intensive area of custom scenery. Maybe you're flying into weather that causes us to generate a large number of clouds. Maybe there is some specific object in an add-on airport that causes trouble once it comes into view. Or maybe it's something else entirely that triggers the weird Yosemite issues that the blog post you linked to mentions. That's a very useful post by the way and not one I had seen before. Everyone should read that. One big takeaway is that X-Plane is prone to crash randomly under MacOS Yosemite, and fixes for it are not expected until X-Plane 10.35 is released. If you're on Yosemite, all bets are off.

SkyMaxx Pro doesn't do anything with rain, and never did.

SkyMaxx Pro doesn't do anything with rain, and never did. You're just seeing X-Plane's default rain.

I don't see evidence that your problems are related to SkyMaxx Pro. You do have a lot of custom scenery installed, so I suspect you are running out of video memory. Is X-Plane more stable if you fly without your custom scenery? You might also try a different aircraft - we've had a couple of crash reports from people using the 777 Worldliner, and I wonder if your 787 has some similar issue.

However, you have a lot of custom enhanced scenery going on. No matter how good your system is, it is possible to exhaust the VRAM you have with too much scenery. I would try flying in an area without custom scenery and see if the problem continues.

Please do send along your log and dump. However I just tried switching airports using X-Plane 10.31 and Skymaxx Pro 2.1.1 and it works fine for me. I suspect you're running out of VRAM due to custom scenery, or you may be running an add-on that calls X-Plane's functions for FMS information, such as X-FMC. From what I've read, there is a bug in X-Plane 10.31 where add-ons that call into this can corrupt X-Plane's plugin environment, causing other plugins (such as SkyMaxx Pro) to crash. I've seen a couple of reports like this from users flying with the 777 Worldliner, so I suspect it may be doing something similar. Short story: try flying without custom scenery and see if that helps. If not, if you're using X-FMC - get its latest beta which fixes this issue. If you're flying the 777, try a different plane. If it is custom scenery that's pushing you over the edge, reducing the cloud draw distance and cloud detail settings in SkyMaxx Pro can help to conserve VRAM.

Not a whole lot to go on there, although it does look like the crash came from within SkyMaxx Pro. If a crash report with a call stack is available it would be useful to see that file as well. My first suspicion is that you ran out of video memory - you do have some custom scenery going on there, so perhaps your video card ran out of resources between that scenery and Skymaxx Pro's clouds. If no memory is available when the weather changes and SMP needs to make new clouds, a crash could occur. So, if you want to troubleshoot this, the first thing I would try is re-activating SMP but flying somewhere without custom scenery, and see if that works better. You do have a good graphics card, but photoscenery can eat up every byte on even the best of them. I also see you are using EFASS. You could also see if the problem only occurs with it, or make sure you are using the latest version of EFASS. I know many customers use EFASS with SMP successfully, but I do remember hearing about crashes in older versions.

This is actually an important update to get for folks who like to practice IFR conditions. If you set the "overcast quality" setting in SkyMaxx Pro's configuration to medium or high, low stratus clouds and ground fog will be represented quite nicely in SkyMaxx Pro 2.1.1. It also gives a noticeable performance boost when the sun is in view. Thanks to our beta testing team for making this a solid release.

I don't know what version you are using, but this problem was addressed in SkyMaxx Pro 2.1.

I don't know. That fog color is entirely unused in Skymaxx Pro. That bluish color was eliminated in later versions of SkyMaxx Pro, so if you want to get rid of it, just upgrade. Maybe you moved to a newer version of SMP at the same time you made that configuration change. No. I think it's because you've been messing around with Skymaxx Pro's internal configuration file from 1.2 and expecting it to work properly with 2.x - you can't mix and match config files from different versions. There have been countless improvements since SMP 1.2. If you're happy with your current configuration however, by all means keep it.

I hate to be the one to tell you - but of all those settings, only ambient-scattering actually has any effect on SkyMaxx Pro. The rest of the settings affect features of SilverLining that SMP does not use, including default-turbidity.

Those are your stack traces, not your log.txt files. There should be a log.txt file in the top directory of your X-Plane folder that should tell us more following a crash; posting that might help. What I can tell from the information you sent is that your X-Plane is crashing in places it really shouldn't - all three files you sent indicate it crashed due to a different reason. It looks to me as though something is wrong with your installation of the MacOS Yosemite 10.10.1 update, or perhaps there are some big compatibility problems between X-Plane and MacOS 10.10.1 that you're the first to discover. I'm mostly a Windows guy, so I'll have to lean on the community here to know if this is a known issue. One of the crashes was caused by your graphics drivers in response to something Skymaxx Pro does for lens flare, so perhaps disabling the lens flare effect would help a little. But your other two logs indicate there is a larger underlying issue.