sundog

Not too long, I hope! I have a working build of SkyMaxx Pro 3 here, so it's not just vaporware.

Ah, I didn't know that's what you meant. But if you read the rest of that paragraph: When we've tried doing that in the past however, it just results in a ton of tech support complaints from people with 512MB video cards who can't handle that many clouds. So, I'm saying we've tried letting people extend that in the settings, and it just resulted in more problems. Many people just go in and max out every setting they see, and then complain to us about their low framerate. SkyMaxx Pro 3 will help with this in some situations - stay tuned for details.

Your visibility will also affect it. Cirrus clouds tend to be very distant, and so there tends to be a fair amount of atmospheric scattering on them by the time they reach your eye. These clouds also tend to be thin and wispy, and so the sky will show through them in parts.

You can. There's a cloud draw distance setting in the SkyMaxx configuration screen.

If someone gives us a ButtKicker to develop with, sure Don't they work automatically though? We did add a little extra punch to the low frequencies in SoundMaxx's new sounds, so I would think it would be more likely to trigger the ButtKicker than the default sounds are.

Outdoor ambient sounds are only heard from outdoor views, Tom. We did think of that.

I think he's talking about the setting in the SMP configuration, not the cloud setting in the X-Plane rendering settings (which is irrelevant.) The min/max cloud size is mostly an aesthetic thing. It can affect performance in certain situations, but if you're after performance you'll get much better results by adjusting the cloud draw distance and cloud detail settings instead.

It sounds like some sort of draw order problem specific to the warping stuff in X-Plane. I'm not really set up to test that here myself, but here are a couple of quick fixes that might work: - Try toggling your HDR setting - Try disabling cloud shadows If either of those works, let us know. It'll give us a clue.

I can't find the thread you're talking about - can you give me the thread name and subforum? Maybe it's been deleted.

Eloquently put, HiFlyer. The important thing is to have a vision and communicate it - sometimes it actually happens then.

Can you put your finger on what makes Outerra so impressive? Is it fractal terrain? Laminar could add that into their own terrain engine, I would think, without too much trouble. I added it into the terrain engine for one of my demos in a few hours. Is it atmospheric scattering? X-Plane already has the mechanism for this, and addons like Real Terra Haze show you what's possible with just a little tweaking. Is it the trees? That's more work, but the techniques used by Outerra are published and could be integrated into X-Plane for far less effort than integrating with Outerra would be. Is it their new clouds? How those are done are also pretty well understood. My point is - I don't think X-Plane is really that far off from Outerra, and it would be less work, and less expensive, to update their visuals to the bar Outerra has set than to integrate with Outerra. The question is, do you want to lobby LR to focus XP11 on visual improvements, or other stuff, given their limited resources?

One thing I noticed in your log is that SkyMaxx Pro also can't seem to write its configuration settings to disk. It sounds like there is a disk permissions issue, or a corrupt file or filesystem in the mix here. I'm pretty sure if there were a general issue with 10.32 and SkyMaxx Pro there would be thousands of customers at my door with pitchforks and torches, and there aren't. I noticed you installed X-Plane into your C:\Program Files (x86) folder. Often there are restricted permissions underneath this folder in Windows that prevents applications from writing files into them. So, that would explain SkyMaxx Pro's inability to save its settings, as well as its inability to manage your sky textures properly. Try moving your X-Plane folder to the root of your C:\ drive for example, or somewhere else that isn't write protected. As things seem to be in a bad state, I'd then uninstall SMP, delete the entire Resources/plugins/SilverLining folder, run the X-Plane updater to restore anything necessary, and re-install SMP. I'd edit the properties on the X-Plane executable to run as administrator just to be safe. Then, run X-Plane - are things better now? If not, running a disk check would be a good idea.

The thing is, SkyMaxx Pro doesn't actually do anything differently when HDR is on or off (well, it slightly adjusts the cloud shadow intensity, but that can't be what's causing your problem.) Like I said, this seems to be a very odd interaction between X-Plane, custom scenery, HDR being off, and your specific hardware and drivers. I cannot reproduce your issue on my own hardware, so I have no way of diagnosing or fixing it. I'm sorry but your choices for now are to choose between SMP, HDR, and your custom scenery - or get a new computer. I know it's not what you want to hear, but I just want to set realistic expectations here.

This thread predated our SkyMaxx Pro 2.1.1 release, which addressed many concerns about IFR flying. Are you using the latest version of SkyMaxx Pro? If so, I think you'll find that low-altitude stratus cloud layers look pretty convincing as long as you have your "overcast quality" setting in SkyMaxx Pro set to high. See http://forums.x-pilot.com/topic/7646-skymaxx-pro-211-has-been-released/on how to get 2.1.1.

I don't have older versions of SMP available, but you might try writing to X-Aviation support to see if they do. Unfortunately I don't think it will help - I do remember hearing about a similar issue when we first released SkyMaxx Pro; it just hasn't come up again since then. It does seem specific to this hardware configuration or driver when used in connection with custom scenery.

I'm sorry you're unhappy, but I can't think of anything we can do. It seems like a system-specific issue related to hardware or the driver somehow. Have you tried my suggestions of enabling HDR, disabling cloud shadows in the SkyMaxx Pro configuration, or turning down the cloud detail and distance settings in the SkyMaxx Pro configuration?

Does the issue happen if you don't use your custom scenery? If it's not a VRAM issue, then there's something unusual about this custom scenery. Bear in mind performance is not a direct indicator of your VRAM availability. SkyMaxx Pro has nothing to do with your terrain and buildings, unless it is drawing cloud shadows over them. Does it make a difference if you turn off cloud shadows in SkyMaxx Pro? X-Plane also draws things very differently if HDR is on - you might try enabling it as it might actually clear up whatever conflict is going on.

I'm not at all familiar with the Mac installer, so I'll let someone from X-Aviation reply here. What I do know is that it should have been installed into plugins/silverlining and not plugins/SkyMaxx Pro 2.1.1.

My guess is that you're tight on GPU memory (VRAM) given that you're trying to run custom scenery and SkyMaxx Pro on a fairly low-memory video card. SkyMaxx Pro is probably just pushing your system over the edge, leading to unpredictable graphical errors like this. So, fundamentally you need to reduce your VRAM usage. Turn off HDR, turn down the cloud detail and distance settings in SMP, turn off hi-resolution clouds in SMP, turn off Maxx-FX, run at a lower resolution, turn off antialiasing - whatever it takes to make your scene stable again.

I do think you are running out of VRAM. Remember the VRAM usage X-Plane reports does not include VRAM allocated by SkyMaxx Pro or your operating system, among other things. Your actual usage can be much higher than what it says. The reason I think it's VRAM is because of two things: - Your crash happened right after SkyMaxx was told to inject a LOT of clouds into the scene - three very large, relatively dense layers of cumulus clouds. These consume VRAM. - The crash didn't happen in SkyMaxx Pro itself, but in X-Plane - which probably means it crashed while trying to allocate VRAM for something else. My recommendation would be to lower your cloud draw distance setting in SMP, or better still, hit the "reset" button in the SMP configuration screen. Based on what's being written to the log, you've almost doubled the default settings, and I think that's what pushed your system over the edge.

Thanks - some of those ideas are already in the works, but I'll have to leave you guessing on which ones for now

I recently found a way to reduce SkyMaxx Pro's VRAM usage a bit - hopefully it will help users who are tight on it with our next update.

Can't wait to see this sitting on pad 39A. It's been depressingly empty since the shuttle program ended! Even better will be the new Space Launch System. A "normal" Falcon 9 is set to launch at 23:10 GMT on Feb. 8.

Yes, that could be why.

Do you have a development build of Outerra Tom? My understanding is that their new clouds are still a work in progress. So it's a little premature to speculate on how they might perform or look outside of a carefully staged video, especially when flying through them. I am a huge fan of their work too, though. They probably will pull it off in time.