sundog

My gut tells me that your 350+ custom scenery packages is simply causing you to run out of memory once you throw in yet another plugin. I would try temporarily removing all of your custom scenery and see if that makes a difference. If not, you also have quite a few plugins installed - sometimes installing a new plugin can move memory around such that it exposes a crash in another plugin. You could also try disabling all plugins except SkyMaxx and Gizmo and see if that makes a difference. You have a ton of scenery errors in your log, but nothing that implicates SkyMaxx Pro.

We put them exactly where X-Plane tells us to put them, but I haven't quantified the error between real-life cloud bases and what X-Plane reports. I do know this is a known issue in X-Plane and on the list of things they are planning to address in X-Plane 10.30, but I don't know the status of that work. We do add a random variation of up to 300 meters in the altitudes of individual clouds in order to add some visual interest - in real life, they're not all at exactly the same level. But, this variation is added to the given base altitude, so it would only make clouds higher, not lower.

Select the plugins/SkyMaxxPro/configuration menu in X-Plane, and you should get a dialog box. On the left will be a slider for "puff rotation speed." Try turning that all the way down. The complete user manual for SkyMaxxPro may be found at http://www.x-aviation.com/landing.php?cid=6578447835

Can we have a look at your log file Andy?

It'll work fine with or without HDR on - we tested both cases.

Understand that the amount of clouds we have to draw increases with the square of the cloud draw distance. Depending on how much free video memory you have, there will be a tipping point where performance gets hit. We chose the default setting for cloud draw distance to provide great performance on most machines. You just need to stick with the defaults, or find the point where your system can't handle it and don't go past that. It's already as optimized as it's going to get. If you've been messing with other settings, such as the cloud detail, minimum, and maximum sizes - these can also affect performance. We chose to give the end user a lot of control with these settings so future hardware and high-end systems can take full advantage of what SkyMaxx Pro can do, but it is definitely possible to set up bad situations for your system if you're not careful. If you want to go back to a blank slate with default settings, delete the resources/plugins/silverlining/settings.dat file prior to running X-Plane.

When you close the settings dialog, or when new weather conditions come in, SkyMaxx Pro may need to "grow" a new cloud layer. Generally this only takes a moment, but you may see this as a brief framerate hiccup when it happens - and framerate may be slightly lower for a few seconds while the old layer fades out and the new one fades in. To minimize this, lower your cloud draw distance - and if you've been playing with SMP's configuration settings, you may want to try deleting the resources/plugins/silverlining/settings.dat file prior to running X-Plane in order to go back to the defaults, which are tuned for best performance. I've never seen a permanent framerate drop like you're describing, so I suspect something's going on with your settings - that or you are running perilously close to running out of memory on your system.

Turn down your cloud puff rotation setting.

An insane number of people have been installing SkyMaxx Pro 2.0. We appreciate all of your feedback! SkyMaxx Pro does not set visibility, or do anything special at 10,000 feet. I think the problem here is that X-Plane only gives us a single visibility value, so if there is different visibility at different altitudes that information is not exposed to us. We do increase visibility of the clouds a bit as altitude increases to compensate for this, but for now that's the best we can do with what X-Plane tells us. If I told you, it would ruin the illusion! If this bothers you, set the cloud puff rotation setting to zero in the Skymaxx Pro configuration and the shadows will match up with the clouds perfectly. As you said, this is only really noticeable if you're on the ground and there happens to be a shadow where you are. Still, it is a little thing that bothers me as well, and it's likely to be addressed in a later update. Shadows are applied in exactly the same manner over water and land, but I agree they seem more noticeable on the water for some reason. I haven't been able to prove it, but I think the lack of features on the water creates an illusion that makes the edges of the shadows stand out more to your eye. I think this might be an issue related to certain beta versions of X-Plane 10.30 as opposed to a SkyMaxx Pro issue. I do remember seeing this in 10.30 beta 7, but I just tried some tests with changing visibility in beta 8 and it seems to work fine now. You're welcome! Overall the response has been very positive, and we're enjoying seeing all of the gorgeous screenshots popping up everywhere featuring SkyMaxx Pro 2.0.

You'll get a volumetric representation for stratus clouds if you set the "overcast quality" setting in SkyMaxx's configuration to medium or high. We're hoping the final 10.30 release of X-Plane will publish accurate altitudes for stratus clouds that will enable us to get it perfect.

Now that's a question we like to see

It's early, but so far I've seen about 3 comments online about SMP2's superior performance - one person has come out and said it's faster than SMP v1. Our testers reported comparable performance to SMP1. Knowing how it all works under the hood - I'd expect performance to be a little faster than SMP v1 if the hi-res cloud puff option is off, and about the same if it's on. Either way it should be faster than default clouds on most systems if you stick with the default settings.

In 32 bit mode, X-Plane will use its own clouds. Most customers report that our clouds are measurably faster than X-Plane's default clouds.

SkyMaxx Pro is 64-bit only, due to its dependencies. We're aware of that new override dataref - Laminar had us in mind when they created it

Yes, each individual cumulus cloud will be a little different. Each cloud is "grown" using the same rules, but with random variations in the initial conditions. It's a big part of why SkyMaxx Pro looks so convincing.

I don't want to give away too much about how we do it, but different types of clouds are created in different manners. Taking cumulus clouds as an example, each cloud is a 3D volumetric collection of "metaballs", where each metaball is represented by a billboard and lit individually. The cloud shapes are created procedurally using a cellular automata to create variety and realistic cloud shapes, and the distribution of cloud sizes is also based on algorithms taken from meteorological research.

This is an issue specific to the 10.30 betas. We don't know if the final 10.30 release will still have this problem (even without SkyMaxx Pro, you'll notice that 10.30 starts off in hazy conditions for a few seconds when it shouldn't). But even if it does, SkyMaxx Pro 2.0 has a workaround for the problem - so worst case scenario if this problem persists in the 10.30 final release, the SkyMaxx Pro 2 update will fix it.

Not necessarily; SkyMaxx Pro 2.0 works just as well with X-Plane 10.25 as it does with the latest 10.30 beta. We don't anticipate any further changes in 10.30 that would cause problems. Here are a couple of new screenshots to tide you over These are from one of our testers, Emma, and shows the improved cloud lighting in SkyMaxx Pro 2 at sunset and dusk:

Fear not; we've been careful not to impact performance, and our beta testers have reported no framerate problems even with all the new features on. Just in case - all of the new features have associated configuration settings, so you can tune and enable or disable them as you see fit.

Yes, some of our most active beta testers use EFASS and it seems to work well with it.

When your potential customer base is FSX users, perhaps the small percentage of people who search for the right thing and stumble on your website, or read the right forum post, is enough to kickstart a real business. But X-Plane is much smaller, and so you need bigger guns to raise awareness of your product. The primary value resellers like X-Aviation bring is their customer database. With one email campaign, your product will be in front of a huge number of active X-Plane users instantly. The reach they have is orders of magnitude greater than what you could achieve on your own, and well worth their modest commission. Plus, having a first line of technical support means the developer can actually take a day off once in awhile.

This thread has gone sideways in a rather glorious manner.

One of our testers was good enough to snap a couple of shots for you:

We did push out the maximum draw distance you can set, so the clouds will extend a bit further than they used to if the visibility is high. As in Skymaxx Pro 1, the look of overcast at high altitude will depend on the cloud draw distance, current visibility, and overcast quality settings. People will be able to strike their own balance between visual quality and performance there.

The log implies X-Plane itself crashed, as opposed to a plugin. Be sure to send in a crash report to Laminar if prompted - could be a bug in the beta they need to look at.