kentwerickson

Progress report? With all due respect, it's been several months since the NOAA METAR format change took effect, and the continued silence is becoming deafening. Someone in the X-Aviation camp (I don't recall now who) claimed that the fix for this problem is non-trivial. But please understand that from the perspective of end-users it's hard to imagine how difficult this could be, especially given that so many other developers were able to respond to it nearly immediately. But as important are just periodic updates for purposes of reassuring hopeful customers that the issue is still being actively addressed, or perhaps not for whatever reason. For instance, if it turns out that the programmer responsible for this particular section of code has run off to Borneo on a two-year sabbatical, this would also be helpful to know (e.g., so that I don't bother to continually check this thread for updates). Thanks in advance.

I actually have already tried precisely what you suggest here -- setting the blend slider to zero -- but could not discern any appreciable difference (actually, I was a bit surprised by this because it still looked to me that some blending was occurring). I also tried changing the cloud formation type, which also did not seem to alleviate the problem. As you say, maybe I have just encountered just a fringe condition. And ordinarily this would not be a big deal except that I don't recall ever noticing this problem in the past (and I fly a lot). But again if it occurs again I will attempt to experiment some more and provide screenshots of what I am seeing.

Thanks again Frank. Just to be clear, I am currently not using RWC (I have it disabled/uninstalled) because of the NOAA web interface issue, which I am hoping will eventually get resolved. In other words, I am currently constrained to using only SMP + NOAA Weather plugin. However before the interface issue cropped up, everything -- SMP+RWC+NOAA Weather -- was all working fine together. The current cropping issue occurs not only in evenly distributed fog/overcast conditions (as depicted in my screenshots above) but also (occasionally) with broken low level cumulonimbus clouds, particularly in and around areas of high terrain. What's kinda' weird about this issue is that the cropping effect changes (will go in and out) as I change/re-position the camera angle. At the moment I am having difficult reproducing this latter phenomenon. But for comparison, I am attaching a few screenshots just to show that SMP does for the most part work with my version of the NOAA Weather plugin. I will add screenshots of the cropping issue the next time I notice it.

Seems like a reasonable compromise; thanks!

I always run SMP with the blend softness maxed out (1000). But is this the only possible explanation? I seem to recall a period of time before I purchased RWC and was running just SMP + NOAA Weather together without this sort of problem??? There of course have been updates to both SMP and NOAA Weather since then. But I was at least hoping to learn, a bit more specifically, what exactly would cause SMP (internally) to draw clouds with puffy tops but perfectly flat bottoms (I don''t have another screenshot readily available, but this is the best way I can describe what low level cumulus clouds look like now -- as though someone took a sharp knife and cut their bottoms off). What's puzzling about this is again that higher level cloud layers seem to draw just fine. Also, for a variety of reasons (mainly the cost of repurchasing most of my payware) I have chosen to not upgrade to XP11 -- or at least not in the near future (unless maybe I win the Power Ball )

I personally like seeing towering thunderheads, but my experience is that they are more commonly much broader (and darker), even in sub-tropical climates. But again I could be wrong about this.

I've also been meaning to ask about the towering clouds; kind of remind me of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man . And when a bunch of them appear together they don't look to me very natural at all (but just my opinion). I'm no meteorologist, but my hunch is that these formations are more common in Florida, and maybe parts of the Southwest, but pretty rare elsewhere in the U.S. Seems to be maybe more of a tropical phenomenon.

Background: SMP v4.7 + NOAA Weather plugin, XP10.51 Ever since I lost use of RWC (because of the recent NOAA HTTPS changeover issue), SMP is drawing lower level clouds/fog with distinct striations -- i.e., no smooth blending (see images below). Otherwise higher cloud layers are still drawn just fine. Is there anything I can do about this? Near as I can tell, my NOAA Weather plugin is also working fine. But I know nothing about how it interfaces with SMP (or vice versa), and particularly without the help of RWC. Thanks in advance for your assistance (and sorry if this issue has been addressed elsewhere -- I couldn't find another thread dealing with this particular issue). Btw, any update on the RWC/Gizmo fix?

If this goes for XP10 as well, then bless you! (I have no idea whether Gizmo is tailored to specific XP versions, but I very much hope not).

Interesting; I've heard otherwise -- that LR will not be fixing this problem in XP10 (though I believe they have some obligation to do so). There are of course other weather injectors out there besides the free NOAA weather plugin, but most are literally too expensive for my meager pocketbook. And this does upset me for a couple of reasons. First, I don't especially mind missing out on certain innovations in XP11; it's much easier to accept not having what one has never had (plus there are some new "features" of XP11 that I positively dislike). However it really stinks to lose features/functionality to which one has grown accustomed. Secondly, the visual and audible immersion factor in XP is just as important to me as, say, having 100% correct flight dynamics -- without good looking clouds, accurate winds, etc., XP (in general) loses much of its appeal, again in my view.

Ben, is there any kind of status update on this? I am among the people who are currently pretty much screwed with respect to XP10. Until recently, I had been using SMP+RWC+NOAA Weather with no issues. Everything still seems to be working fine except RWC/Gizmo -- i.e., it seems that my future ability to generate and render real NOAA-based weather in XP10 crucially relies on this update to Gizmo to support HTTPS. Thanks in advance for any sort of update.

Thanks Frank. This would explain why it otherwise mysteriously went from working to broken given no changes to my XP installation. As mentioned, I am still running XP10. And so unfortunately any XP11-specific alternatives won't help me. Kinda' sucks. But I suppose, as they say, it is what it is.

Thanks Cameron. This is somewhat of a nit, but it would be helpful to add a version note along with an update to the manual as part of the installation. One other question while I have your ear. I've been running SMP v4.7.0 + RWC v1.1 + NOAA Weather v2.4.2 for what seems to be ages now, without issue -- wonderful, largely accurate multi-layer cloud representations (same goes for previous versions). But just recently I noticed a problem with the cloud rendering -- namely that clouds, when present, are now always visually represented as basically a uniformly grey-ish high overcast layer -- I never see ordinary cumulus ("puffy") clouds like I used to in conditions where they would be expected. Yet I've changed nothing recently in the respective configurations of these three plugins: The NOAA Weather plugin is enabled and seems to be working fine (its METAR reporting tool returns current and accurate METAR data, and also seems to work fine by itself; i.e., with RWC and/or SMP disabled). Also, I have the RWC "METAR data" option selected to "Always," which I believe is the correct setting in combination with the NOAA Weather plugin. However if I instead check either "Automatic" or "Never" the puffy clouds return (but then are presumably not sync'd to the NOAA Weather data as desired). I've repeated this experiment by moving around to different airports where, for example, I know there are thunderstorms or a variety of cumulus cloud layers, and the result is always the same wherever I go -- SMP again draws a kind of uniformly grey-ish high overcast layer. So my question is this: Which of these three plugins do you think is most likely the culprit, and what is the most likely fix for this problem? In particular, is it possible that RWC (when set to "Always") is not receiving correct METAR data from wherever it is looking for that data (say because the source of that data is experiencing problems of some sort)? Or is it possible, for example, that Gizmo is causing the problem (it too seems to be running fine)? Btw, I have repeated this experiment with all other third-party plugins/addons disabled, and using only the default C172. And to repeat, I am still on XP 10.51. Update 1: I don't know if this has anything to do with the problem reported above, but I just noticed the following: With all third-party addons disabled, including SMP, RWC, and NOAA, I notice that when I force real-world weather updates in XP (under Environment/Weather/Grab real-world weather), it's consistently reporting that the weather downloads are failing (I have no idea why; e.g., my Internet connection is up and working fine). However, if RWC, when set to "Always,", is not using XP's real-world weather data, this should not matter for the correct rendering of SMP+RWC+NOAA clouds, right? Update 2: Did a quick search on the .org forum and lots of people seem to be reporting a similar issue regarding failed weather downloads. Not sure yet what's up with this. But again, if RWC is not using XP's weather data should it not be immune to such problems?

Quick question: How can I verify which version of RWC I have installed? For there appears to be no version information in my RWC plugins folder. Also, whether I run the v1.0 installer versus the v1.1 installer, the user's manual that gets downloaded in my RWC folder is always the same -- it says v1.0. I know there is an online version of the v1.1 manual. But without some sort of independent verification it just seems like a leap of faith that the v1.1 installer actually installed version 1.1 of the plugin. Seems to me that there should be some way to check the current version number within the sim, but I don't know how to do this??? Note: I am still on XP10. Thanks.

Thanks for the pointer, yet this thread seems to offer no solution. The messages I saw look like X-Aviation DRM/validation messages, which I see all the time, but never before in mid flight like this.

Mid flight in the CRJ-200 (v1.7.2) I see the following messages: Looking for server. No connection found. Moments later the CRJ goes completely cold and dark at 20K feet. My 49 passengers and crew are now dead. WTF?

No, no -- I did not mean to imply as much. I get it. Thanks.

Well, all I know is that when I disable Gizmo my Kodiak problems go away. But okay, fair enough -- thanks for clarifying, and again thanks also for your support.

Hmm. Curious. Because when I first starting disabling Gizmo, I'd swear that I was still seeing SMP clouds (though my memory, let us say, is less than perfect). With respect to the Kodiak, XP(10) will crash if on startup the Kodiak is selected. However, if I start XP with a different plane, say the default 172, and then load the Kodiak there is no problem (hope that's clear enough). There was one other problem/symptom which escapes at the moment, but when I disabled Gizmo both of these problems went away. Btw, when I first notice issues with the Kodiak, I recalled having heard Dan Klaue (once upon a time) complaining about Gizmo causing conflicts with SASL, which first gave me the idea of disabling Gizmo (and just for the record, I take no stance regarding Dan's criticisms of Gizmo).

Although, this raises a different issue which I'd only just now thought about. I also recently discovered (by trial-and-error) that Gizmo seemingly causes conflicts with my Thranda Quest Kodiak, and which is why I have been disabling Gizmo when not flying my Saab 340A. However, I also did not notice that doing so is problematic for RWC. I'm guessing that I'm out of luck here, but do you happen to know of any way around this conflict?

That was it; It's been so long since I've reinstalled these products that I'd forgotten about the dependency on Gizmo. Thanks for you help, and sorry to bother you about this.

Oops. Hold tight a sec. I think I may have had Gizmo disabled. Let me try again and report back (and thanks very much for your prompt reply!)

Yep. There is no item: Plugins > SkyMaxx Pro > Real-World Weather, only Configure Clouds and Configure Precip.

Hi folks, I recently did a fresh XP10 install under the latest build of Windows 10, including a fresh install of SMP v4.6 and RWC v1.1 (using X-Aviation's respective installers). Installation seems to have completed successfully. However, the SMP plugin menu no longer shows configuration options for RWC. Rather, the three menu items shown are 1. Configure Clouds, 2. Configure Precipitation, and 3. More from Maxx-XP. According to my Plugin Admin, RWC is running. I've tested this will all other plugins/scripts disabled and see the same result. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

I'm aware, but thanks again all the same.