sundog

I think it's fair to say you probably had a corrupt filesystem going on there. SoundMaxx doesn't touch anything outside of your sound files.

Totally possible. Thanks for the idea; I agree that would be a neat feature.

Thanks for digging into this; I'm glad it's behaving better. It sounds like X-Plane was triggering a crash sound effect when your 172 was landing at those speeds. Generally speaking, for things like flaps, crashes, engines, chirps, wind, thunder, etc., SoundMaxx does not change when or at what volume those sounds are played at, it just replaces the sound effect itself. If you hear something that seems weird, it might be worth turning off SoundMaxx and comparing it to what X-Plane does without it, just to see if it's an X-Plane issue or a SoundMaxx issue.

Your system is pretty beefy, but your log does indicate that you have a lot of other plugins and a lot of custom scenery installed. Even with 16GB, you could be cutting it close - or there could be some plugin that interferes with SoundMaxx somehow. I think you should start by disabling your other plugins and see if that has an effect. If so, see if you can narrow it down to a specific one that we can look at more closely.

Actually, I wonder if you're running out of memory - your log.txt should shed some light on how much RAM you have to work with, and how much might be consumed by other add-ons or scenery. SoundMaxx's sound effects do take up more memory than the default ones, so if you were running close to the edge, it's possible SoundMaxx could push a system over it. I would expect the symptoms to be similar to what you describe - missing or corrupt sound effects, since your system couldn't load them into memory.

It sounds like something is preventing SoundMaxx from installing properly on your system. If you post your log.txt, it might give us a clue.

Thanks for putting that together! Gives a good sample of what folks can expect to get from SoundMaxx.

SoundMaxx relies on X-Plane's built in navaids system to determine where airports are. I don't know much about how to create new airports, but I could imagine some of them being created in an inconsistent manner that might throw that off. If you're within 1 nautical mile of where X-Plane thinks the closest airport is, and you're near the ground and outside the plane (or inside with the engines off and door or canopy open), you should hear ambient sounds. If you're within 2 nm of a VOR beacon, then you get "large airport" sounds instead. Glad you're enjoying it!

You'll only hear ambient sounds if your viewpoint is outside and your altitude is near the ground - or if you're inside with the door or canopy open, and the engines off. We can't guarantee that all third party planes will set the proper datarefs to let us know if those conditions are true, but with default aircraft it should be reliable. You may want to try re-installing SoundMaxx, as I've seen one similar issue where that cleared it up. Perhaps something went wrong while copying the sound files in; make sure your X-Plane folders aren't write protected or anything like that. With default aircraft, pretty much every sound effect should be different with SoundMaxx. It should be quite obvious if it installed properly and the settings have everything enabled.

Very strange. Any chance you are on or near the ground while you're testing this? Turbulence rattle will only happen if you've above 100 meters AGL. I just tried a flight out of KBOS in a default aircraft, turned up the turbulence in the weather settings, and it's definitely there. Double check that the setting for turbulence is on in the SoundMaxx configuration screen. If none of that helps - try a different aircraft. Perhaps you're using one that does something odd with the turbulence datarefs or with X-Plane's audio system that we hadn't encountered before. Posting your log.txt would help us understand what the conflict might be.

That's correct. SoundMaxx does what we advertise, which is a lot - but no more than that! We actually tried to attach sounds to AI planes, but X-Plane's existing API just doesn't give us the information we need. Instead, there are ambient airplane sounds that vary based on the size of the airport you're at, but they are not tied to specific aircraft.

Its volume depends on how heavy the turbulence is...

Cameron's right that we can't even think about Metal until X-Plane offers support for it. However, I honestly don't think it would offer anything close to the grandiose performance benefits Apple is promising. SkyMaxx Pro already uses a lot of tricks and extensions within OpenGL to avoid the performance bottlenecks Metal aims to eliminate. Improving performance on MacOS would be much better served by offering more powerful GPU's on Mac desktop systems; most MacOS performance problems reported with SkyMaxx Pro are due to insufficient video memory. So, changing SkyMaxx Pro to make more efficient use of limited video memory would probably have a bigger performance impact than moving to Metal. SkyMaxx Pro 3 will do that, by the way. Personally I would prefer that Apple adopt Vulkan, like everybody else. Speaking as a developer, I'd rather not be forced to learn an entire new programming language (Objective C) and API (Metal)! I'm hoping they will support both in the end.

Hard to give a general answer, but on most systems I would say it uses the GPU mostly.

We need to see your log.txt following the issue. Not something I've seen happen either.

Hit "reset" on your SkyMaxx Pro configuration screen, and see if that helps. Based on your log, it looks like you increased a few settings quite a bit, and you're using it with EFASS as well. Even high-end systems might not be able to run smoothly with that many clouds in the scene.

Haven't tried exactly what you're doing, but don't you need to change the depth function? Normally the OpenGL depth test will draw stuff that has depth values lower than what's in the buffer, and it sounds like you're trying to do the opposite. glDepthFunc(GL_GREATER) might be what you need. Remember to put it back when you're done.

Just like real life, they only appear in very specific conditions. You are most likely to see them when the sun is fairly low, and behind clouds that are dense but have openings for the sunlight to shine between. Usually you need to be under the cloud layer.

It's hard to say definitively, but here's what I think is going on. Crepuscular rays will only appear when the sun is in the scene, but obscured by clouds. Holes in the cloud cover near the sun will cast "god rays". SkyMaxx Pro analyzes the scene to see how much of the sky is obscured by cloud cover relative to where the sun is, in order to produce this effect. When you turn on the god rays feature in the SkyMaxx Pro configuration screen, it's not just applying that setting - it is also re-applying all weather conditions. In doing so, it will fade out the existing clouds, and fade in new clouds to replace them, over the course of a few seconds. Since the cloud-related settings didn't really change, this isn't too noticeable, as it's replacing one set of clouds with another, identical set. So, I think as the old clouds are fading out, it's allowing just enough sunlight to shine through that it triggers the effect. But once the new clouds fully fade in, the sun is obscured again, and the rays disappear. Short story: if I'm right, it's behaving as designed, and it's just a quirk of the new settings getting applied after you close the SMP configuration dialog. If you fly around and get the sun behind some holes in the cloud cover, you'll probably see the rays as intended.

SkyMaxx Pro 2, with high overcast quality, simulates IFR conditions with a very dense layer of cumuliform clouds at ground level. You'll break through the top of this layer a few thousand feet up, typically. Stay tuned for more details on SkyMaxx Pro 3. It has some very exciting enhancements for accurate, realistic depictions of IFR conditions. For now I just have to ask for your patience while it's tested and released!

What is your "overcast quality" setting on? If IFR is important to you, you should have it on the highest setting.

Short answer: increase the "overcast quality" setting in SkyMaxx Pro's configuration screen, and you'll probably like the results more. It will also give you better blending of thick cloud layers that are on the ground. Some of what you are describing sounds like our simulation of a scud layer when using the lowest overcast quality setting. The upcoming SkyMaxx Pro 3 will address some of these issues, even in the lowest overcast setting.

To be honest, it's not something I've ever mentioned to them myself. It would require a fair amount of effort to integrate Triton into X-Plane, and I suspect they have more pressing features on their list that are less work. If people want to lobby Laminar for it though, I certainly won't stop them!

Good detective work, 3saul

Not yet! Watch for an announcement from X-Aviation once we're closer to beta testing.