sundog

To be clear, it is only visibility while inside of cloud layers that works differently with or without SkyMaxx Pro enabled. My "occasional" comment was in reference to your reported problem with lights showing up in front of clouds. That has nothing to do with visibility inside clouds, unless we are talking about different things.

I wrote the code for SkyMaxx Pro - I can tell you definitively that the "overcast quality" setting does not get used if X-Plane sends us a cloud layer they classify as "stratus" instead of "overcast." Stratus will always result in the flat cloud you're seeing with no visibility effects inside of it, which is the best we can do given the data X-Plane gives us. So, under the hood, I think the cloud you think is "overcast" is actually "stratus" as far as X-Plane is concerned. However, if you have "overcast quality" set to medium or better, "overcast" clouds will be rendered volumetrically and you'll lose visibility inside of them in the same way as you lose visibility inside of any cumulus layer. It won't match up with the default cloud experience, but it's the best we can do due to inconsistencies between X-Plane's visibility effects and the cloud heights they send to us. In short all I can recommend is to use overcast instead of stratus, and use an overcast quality of medium or high, for the best results. It's all we can do for now. We are aware of occasional sorting issues between the clouds, lights, and other transparent objects, and hope to address that soon with a future patch. Hope this helps.

Use "overcast" instead of "stratus". The overcast quality setting only applies to overcast, not stratus. As Cameron said, this has been discussed already in this thread.

Start by hitting "Reset" on your SkyMaxx Pro settings. Your cloud draw distance is larger than default, which can consume a lot of video memory. Given your high resolution, texture detail, HDR use, detail, AA, and object density, together with any other custom scenery or add-ons you may have, you may be running out of VRAM resources even on what is a pretty good video card. Put simply, I think you just have things turned up too high in general and your system has hit a wall as a result.

How did you activate cirrus clouds? Is this the "force cirrus" option in SkyMaxx Pro's configuration, or did you enable cirrus via the X-Plane weather configuration? If the latter, what is the altitude of the cirrus layer? It sort of looks like you have somehow positioned a cirrus cloud in between your camera and the rest of the scene, but you'd have to really try to do that. Not something I've seen before, so we'll need more details on how you got this to happen please. Your log.txt file might also be good to see.

Both crepuscular rays and lens flare will kick in only if the sun is in view. Make sure you've tried disabling both effects together.

What the log does tell us is that it isn't SkyMaxx Pro that's crashing, but X-Plane itself. My guess would be that you're actually running out of video memory, and SkyMaxx Pro's clouds are just pushing it over the edge. Perhaps 10.31r3 consumes more VRAM than earlier versions. You do have a lot of custom scenery and other add-ons, so you could well be going over the limit, even on your 2GB video card. I suspect that removing your custom scenery and other add-ons would restore stability to your system just as well as removing SkyMaxx Pro does. My best advice is to hit the button to send your crash log to Laminar so they can be aware of it and debug what's going on. I haven't seen this happen myself, but I'll do some more flying to be sure. You also have at least one improperly installed add-on; probably not related but worth fixing: C:\Users/Fleming/Desktop/X-Plane 10.31/Resources/plugins/win.xpl : Error Code = 193 : %1 ¤£¬O¥¿½Tªº Win32 À³¥Îµ{¦¡ ¡CFailed: C:\Users/Fleming/Desktop/X-Plane 10.31/Resources/plugins/win.xpl. (This file is missing, not a DLL or could not be loaded due to another missing DLL.) C:\Users/Fleming/Desktop/X-Plane 10.31/Resources/plugins/32/win.xpl : Error Code = 193 : %1 ¤£¬O¥¿½Tªº Win32 À³¥Îµ{¦¡ ¡CLoaded: C:\Users/Fleming/Desktop/X-Plane 10.31/Resources/plugins/64/win.xpl (sandybarbour.projects.pythoninterface). Loaded: C:\Users/Fleming/Desktop/X-Plane 10.31/Resources/plugins/DataRefEditor/64/win.xpl (xplanesdk.examples.DataRefEditor). XPluginStop : Error Code = 127 : §ä¤£¨ì«ü©wªºµ{§Ç¡CXPluginEnable : Error Code = 127 : §ä¤£¨ì«ü©wªºµ{§Ç¡CXPluginDisable : Error Code = 127 : §ä¤£¨ì«ü©wªºµ{§Ç¡CXPluginReceiveMessage : Error Code = 127 : §ä¤£¨ì«ü©wªºµ{§Ç¡C

Google Translate to the rescue: "I bought the Skymaxx in Black Fried promotion, but forgot to add the Urban maxx Maxx and FX NOT Cart. How do I get the download of these two." I don't think X-Aviation handles ordering issues through the forums; please contact orders@x-aviation.com so they can help you out.

I think I finally understand what you're seeing. If you set up "stratus" clouds, then you'll get that flat, infinitely thin cloud no matter what. "Overcast" is probably what you really want - that will give you volumetric clouds if you have the overcast quality set to medium or high. I forgot that "stratus" was a different setting from "overcast" in the X-Plane weather settings, and they are treated differently by SkyMaxx Pro. Maybe they shouldn't be.

Did you "apply settings" after resetting them and changing the quality to medium? That last screenshot you posted looks like how "low" should appear.

If we're talking about how it looks on "low" overcast quality, yes. We represent low-quality stratus clouds as a single plane (the geometric kind) in the middle of the layer. We're forced into that because of inconsistencies in X-Plane's visibility effects and the base and ceiling they publish to us for the cloud. "Medium" and "high" represent these clouds in a volumetric technique that gives them some real thickness at least. But, I think this particular user's problem is that "high" quality isn't working due to cranked up settings and low available VRAM, as described above.

I noticed that you turned up the cloud detail and draw distance almost all the way, and you have overcast quality set to high. I would guess that Skymaxx Pro simply ran out of VRAM while trying to create the amount of cloud puffs those settings would require, and gave up. Try hitting the "reset" button on the SkyMaxx Pro configuration, set the overcast quality to "medium," and see if that works better for you. It should result in a dense layer of puffy clouds at the base altitude specified for the cloud layer in MSL.

Also be aware there's a "reset" button now in SkyMaxx Pro 2.1. That will get you back to a reasonable starting point for performance optimization.

Yes, it does look like the MU2 is installing a version of Gizmo that is incompatible with MaxxFX to me - and probably the other way around, as well. I'll have to defer to Ben & Cameron on further advice.

X-Plane doesn't really simulate twilight or moonlight as far as I can tell. Clever manipulation of X-Plane's sky colors makes it possible to address though, to some extent. Sky Color X looks like it's worth checking out.

What you are seeing is what would happen if license authentication failed for MaxxFX. So I would guess there is some conflict between the MU2 and the Gizmo plugin we use to authenticate your license. Please attach your Log.txt and GizmoLog.txt files so the X-Aviation folks can have a closer look.

Clouds fade out with distance as a function of visibility, and cirrus clouds are very high. I see in your log that in this scene, the visibility was just 16 km. So, cirrus would be hard to see unless you were near their altitude in that case.

My guess would be that you are running low on VRAM. How much memory is on your video card?

A huge thank you to our beta testing team! Over 20 people tested this update over the course of several weeks, and their feedback ensured a smooth upgrade for the X-Plane community.

I wish it were possible! The only way for that to happen, at least with the current SDK for plugins, would be if Laminar licensed our Triton Ocean SDK and integrated it into X-Plane themselves.

Waiting for it! Should be soon; it has been handed off to X-Aviation at this point. X-Aviation customers should receive an email once it's available, and we'll certainly announce it here as well.

This looks like the problem: Loaded: C:\X-Plane 10/Resources/plugins/PluginAdmin/64/win.xpl.C:\X-Plane 10/Resources/plugins/Gizmo64.plugin/64/win.xpl : Error Code = 127 : The specified procedure could not be found. If the Gizmo plugin can't be loaded, then SkyMaxx Pro can't validate your license, which would cause the clouds to not appear. This is similar to the original issue described earlier in this thread, for which Ben Russell suggested a solution in post #5 above. Please give that a try. (Ben - do we need to start installing a different MSVC runtime set with Skymaxx Pro for Gizmo?)

Mat, something likely to come out in SkyMaxx Pro 2.2 is an API for other plugins to call (ie via XPLMSendMessageToPlugn) to create individual clouds at specific locations and sizes. If you guys get to the point where you're writing a plugin, and know where a thermal is and where exactly you'd like a cloud to be, PM me and we can discuss details. To set proper expectations, I'm still focused on getting SMP 2.1 out the door, and 2.2 is nothing more than an idea at this point. But this is something I want to expose as it lets weather engines / injectors have finer control than what is currently possible in X-Plane's existing API.

SkyMaxx Pro works fine with 10.30. Please attach your log.txt file so we can take a look at what's going on.

Yes!