Superdelphinus

Ok, thanks chaps! I'll have a mess around later. What's a good app to monitor VRAM usage then? At the moment I just rely on the lack of plummeting fps...

I had one little thing that's just a query really. Does skymaxx have it's own VRAM usage that wouldn't show up in the rendering screen in x-plane? Only asking because yesterday I had some crazy black spikes shooting up everywhere when there were a lot of clouds, which from experience with other games usually means my card's memory is being taxed a bit too much, but the reading in x-plane still had nearly a gigabyte free. I'll try reducing the resolution to very high or high and see if that sorts it out, though it might just be a case if turning down the memory clock settings on my card.

I saw some violent thunder and lightening around the French alps last night - first time I've seen that in x-plane and very cool! Does the volume of the sound effect change depending how far away the lightening is?

I don't think the cost of add ons really has an awful lot to do with how much the developers deserve rewarding - it's about the market and how much people are willing to pay for them. If no one bought them at $80 dollars they wouldn't cost that much, irrespective of the amount of effort that went into them. What is clear though is that the flight sim market is generally for people who have a fair amount of disposable cash.

I was massively surprised this was a free update, Johnmaxx. Hats off to you sir