Cameron

Hi there! It's been a while since I've played around with .pol's, so I'm going to allow @JohnMAXX to reply to this for you as he's the one who primarily developed that side of it. In short, the seasons will be driven in a scenery package by a library.txt file, and I don't recall whether X-Plane allows .pol's to be called in there or not. Stand by for John!

Captains, Over the years we have released SkyMaxx Pro, Real Weather Connector, SoundMaxx, and MaxxFX. The community support throughout the release cycle of these products has been nothing short of fantastic, and we have listened to requests from many of you over that time. Today, we are really excited to officially announce TerraMaxx! TerraMaxx will bring you seasons in X-Plane, and it does it without you ever having to leave the simulator, or even having to manually switch out season sets! There are settings in the plug-in menu if you desire to force a season to show, but the product has it's own algorithm on when to show seasonal textures based on location, time of year, and your current flying position (meaning it can also change during the flight). The proper feature list is as follows: Automatic swapping of X-Plane’s default scenery with seasonal representations of summer, autumn, mild winter, and deep winter based on your simulated location, date, and temperature Replacement tree textures with 4X the resolution of default and seasonal variations Optional post-processing effects to give autumn and winter scenes season- appropriate hues If you indicated that your GPU has more than 5GB of VRAM when installing, high-resolution normal maps for default scenery will be installed, to give the appearance of more depth to the terrain. You can easily switch between the normal map option with the installer. Screenshots Will it work with airports and other scenery packages? Airports will continue to work in X-Plane and with TerraMaxx as they always have, but TerraMaxx will not apply seasonal effects to existing custom scenery packages. However, within the documentation that ships with TerraMaxx, scenery designers will find information about integrating their airports and surrounding scenery with TerraMaxx in an even more immersive way if they so choose (not mandatory, airports and TerraMaxx will load side-by-side together just fine). With the steps followed in the documentation, scenery designers could then have buildings that have snow on them in the winter, or different colored grass during autumn, etc! IMPORTANT: Currently NOT supported at this time is orthophoto scenery. Believe me, we understand a number of people enjoy orthophoto scenery, and we're considering ways to integrate this in (we have a few ideas already bouncing around), but that kind of development is going to heavily depend on how the community supports this product from initial release. A lot of work has already gone into this (more than a year with all the textures, coding, etc.), and we need to see that what we're providing is something the community can get behind before we dump more time and resources into it. This all said, TerraMaxx adds a very nice element to the sim even without orthophotos, especially during winter! How do mid-flight seasonal textures change? Let's say you're flying from Florida on a warm, sunny day in the winter to Utah where it's cold and filled with snow. As you approach the boundaries where textures should plausibly change, proper textures will begin to re-load for that region. This does mean you can have a small pause as the textures come in (and TerraMaxx will display in the lower right corner that it is loading in new seasonal textures), and once X-Plane is done loading the scenery all is as it should be. Keep in mind that regions of snow conditions are typically quite large (numerous states), so this does NOT mean as you cross DSF scenery tiles that things are constantly re-loading. We have also talked to Laminar about ways to smooth out the pause, and while we have some positive discussion there, we are again going to wait to see how much support from the community is given to this project before we potentially venture down that path more. Additionally, the auto texture changing is OPTIONAL. You do not have to have this, and you can force a single season as you wish, no matter the location. Below is a screenshot of the menu for TerraMaxx. What will performance be like? TerraMaxx will perform much in the same way you're used to with default X-Plane scenery from a FPS standpoint. The only time this might change is if you elect to install the hi-res normal maps for more depth to the scene. On my system I can't tell much of a difference between having them on or off performance wise, but your mileage may vary with that depending on your graphics card. I have a GTX 1080, but overall our testers had positive experiences as well during the test process! The best way to go is to try it for yourself (the normal maps, that is). You can always run the installer again to swap them out. Either way, normal maps or not, the overall change in scenery is very welcome! Which version of X-Plane is this compatible with? Typically we don't like to state official support in a beta of X-Plane, but we're actually recommending X-Plane 11.20+ for this product. It will work fine in X-Plane 11.10, but Laminar fixed a bug in X-Plane 11.20 where at times the livery on the aircraft you were flying with would get re-loaded back to the default livery for that aircraft. This part aside, everything else works just fine in 11.10 if that's what you choose to use for now. When will this be released? Tomorrow! Yes, that's right...we're releasing TerraMaxx Saturday, March 17th, 2018! We're excited to get this out to you all, and we feel based on our beta testers' feedback (normal customers just like you) we've got a product you all can and will continue to enjoy as we further develop and evolve it. The developers behind this product (Sundog and Maxx-XP) have a track record of sticking to their products and updating them, and as many will recall, SkyMaxx Pro v4 is much different than its first version years ago. As time moves on, improvements do too, and we can't wait to have you along for the adventure! See you this weekend for the release!

The only other thing I could think of is a draw order issue in the X-Plane VR beta. Try reverting back to 11.10 and see what happens then. I can't re-produce that on my end.

Ah, and that topic also says that xEnviro is the issue apparently.

First the Saab, now this. Dude, you're nitpicking at things that are incredibly small, and I'm not even looking to validate them...I'm just astonished to read these posts from you over the past week. Fly the plane. Enjoy the systems. You're going to ruin your own experience with your obsession to perfection on a 3D model. It's just not going to happen. The only one that I will validate and feel is concerning is the window VC issue. I've never seen that before...wondering if it's a video card driver issue of sorts?

The installer uses the same Gizmo.

Nothing from the Saab would conflict with the IXEG. Don't bother chasing down holes like this. There's no correlation.

We will not be referencing a much new Saab 2000 model for looking to model something in a much older Saab 340A. This is very subjective to your eye, and we are not going to be changing that in this run.

Awesome! Thanks for letting us know!

With X-Plane 11 being the way forward, I see no reason they would support 10 at all.

Most positive experiences I have read have been settings of 300 or 500. @Litjan personally likes 500. There's no documentation on this feature, but it really does require your own playing around since every machine is going to react differently. Try either of these settings out and see how it goes.

There is such a selection in the latest Gizmo to run in a more smoothed manner, or spiked manner. Try it out. Other than this, VR is certainly not a priority for the time being. Laminar is not even providing developers access SDK wise to it until they are far from out of many beta phases (personal discussion I had with Ben Supnik). At best, VR is a novelty for the moment.

Yes.

Hi there, Can you please provide your log.txt file?

The error is logged due to these particular aircrafts having new file paths in X-Plane 11. Since Laminar has FMOD you won't hear much of anything from Soundmaxx there anyhow. Environment sounds are in no way impacted and working correctly.

Correct.

This kind of report isn't useful without the crash report or log files!

Because we use our own sound engine. Use the IXEG sounds menu.

No.

That post is updated by Jan. Ignore the date of original post. Read it carefully and decide based on that. Most of the things in there are minor things. You'll mostly just be concerned about no holds and the PROG page is incomplete. I'm pretty certain you'll be quite satisfied with your $75 spent.

No, it should be fine.

SkyMaxx does not use any default X-Plane textures (minus sky colors if you select that).

Ben's last post sums this up pretty nicely, and that's where this thread ends. It's out when it's out. Whomever is spreading other rumors about issues between Goran and I (who is a great friend and business partner that speaks to me daily) has no clue what they are talking about. You bought something for v10. It was advertised officially on the store as v10. If you could not stand to wait for an update at the time you purchased it, while appreciated, was an inappropriate time to do so. Only you are able to assess your level of patience. This thread is now closed.

NO beta test will ever prepare you for the many thousands of people who use the product once it's in the wild. The issues reported here are not affecting majority of customers. We have a lot of beta testers between all products at X-Aviation. Each one of these people are regular customers like you.

Yes it does.