FlyAgi

It's done - this is how the cumulus look for me in motion. I think it's pretty good actually, the only problem I found where some weather redraws which should not happen like this in XP11, even the default weather redndering does not suffer from this (except on mesh or weather loading).

Well... I'm going to take a video for proof, this just needs some time to record and upload... :-)

Do a slider with the current values as the max available value - this way people can increase performance by reducing the slider and those in the need of higher draw distance could possibly have more options to achieve that without sacrificing too much of their framerates (high visibility has a massive impact in FPS).

I think the few cumulus are fine. I just did a quick test with a manual weather preset, changing clouds to few and there where some areas with lots of few clouds while right next there where huge gaps and some single puffs or smaller accumulations. Same position, different heading:

Regarding the FSGRW wind and trubulence injection I suggest to talk to the developers directly (there email is available on their store page). I talked to them myself regarding the injection process and they will at least look into this, they came up with a solution (yet to implement) very quickly so I think they are pretty open for suggestions.

No, it won't. FSGRW gives me about the same FPS performance I can get with ASXP, the real performance impact SMP can have is related to cloud layers and positioning, drawing lots of broken clouds has a noticable effect but this is the same situation with ASXP or FSGRW - for me it makes no difference performance wise. This will be reduced drastically with RWC, no matter which weather engine you want to use. In the RWC options make sure to have 'never changes visible weather' checked so you will see much less cloud redraws than without (on mesh tile loading a slight redraw effect still seems to occur, on metar change it's fine). Regarding the 'killer combo' I have to give some further notes for ASXP users, there are some downsides compared to ASXP: ASXP draw more noticably detailled wind/turbulence effects ASXP is smoother in weather injection, currently you have to inject the weather manually with FSGRW after the flight has loaded and then you will have to change settings in the RWC options to really see the current weather (I reported this to the developers and they look into the injection process) On weather change you will see no cloud redraws but sky colors and haze can suddenly change (I don't remember if this also happens with ASXP or if this is smoothed there). Aside from that FSGRW gives you better, more detailed looks, more variety in clouds, it also has a more streamlined (and simple) interface and I really enjoy using it, I clearly prefer FSGRW over ASXP but the more detailed turbulences are not that important to me. No matter what weather engine you want to use I really recommend RWC as this is the key to plausible and great looking cloud formations with SMP. If you want to upgrade your SMP cloud representation this should be the first thing to add. Here I have some videos of what you can expect from adding RWC to your SMP, weather information comes from FSGRW.

Thank you, John. I think I won't need the softer options as the mix of soft and crisp clouds is exactly what I think looks very natural, SMP now looks better than ever and development seems to head into the right direction in my opinion as everything is getting better - the competition seems to go one step forward and two steps backwards all the time and they are becoming real resource hogs. I hope you won't mess around with the voxel stuff (or if please do it right) which seems to be the lastest hype currently but obviously kills performance completely (and does look average at best). SMP + RWC gives me better FPS than UWXP in the same situation and it's much faster than the latest xEnviro - with my new CPU (Ryzen 7 3700X) performance, even in heavy cases, is not an issue at all (though I can have faster clouds by tweaking myself but then it does not look as great as it does with SMP). I love the very special cloud formations, this is still something available exclusively with SMP + RWC, no competitor cares for stuff like this:

So you did not tweak the softness or darkness of the clouds for 4.8.2? For me it seems very different in 4.8.2 compared to 4.8 or 4.8.1...

Hey guys, I recently updated SMP to 4.8.2 and did not expect much of a difference in visuals (I was very satisfied with 4.8.1) but since this update I have the impression the clouds have changed massively, everything seems to look much more natural now, smoother and less synthetical overall - is this right? Or did I just encounter a different weather situation? The thick broken clouds where much darker and more cluttered before I think? BTW, I got used to the hosek wilkie sky system and I really love it now. :-)

As I said, for me it did never look different than it does now since version 4.0, the cloud shadows behave exactly the same way for me, sometimes harddly noticable, sometimes very prominent - I can't see any changes in this regard.

Don't get me wrong - the SMP cloud shadows are often barely noticable but this was always the case since 4.0, I can't see any difference in 4.7 and 4.8 compared to what I've seen before.

Honestly... those shadows look as if they come from the scenery, from the mountains in combination with the low sun angle and not from the clouds. :-)

Thank you Steven. :-)

Well... did you try using SMP in a fresh and clean X-Plane installation? As this seems to be an ongoing issue for you since 4.7.3 I would try to figure out where it comes from. If you have some time you could just download a second copy of X-Plane with the installer, you don't need any global scenery so it's just some few GB in size and try if SMP works in this situation (just test in KSEA or LOWI demo areas if no global scenery is installed).

My video uplaod has finished and I can now show you how the thunderstorm situation seen on my screenshots looks in motion. This possibly also helps on judging if performance is good enough for some users but I think those flying at locked 30 fps on pretty modern computers don't need to fear anything (and even if then SMP is worth the tweaking for compensation). :-) My specs: i7 2600k, 4200 MHz 32 GB DDR3 @ 1333 MHz RAM (with 16 GB @ 2133 I get about 5 more FPS) GeForce GTX 1070 (8 GB VRAM)

About a year after TerraMaxx was released there are now more and more sceneries supporting TerraMaxx. Here is a list of sceneries shipping with TerraMaxx seasons, these are the sceneries I know they support TerraMaxx and possibly there are more out there (but I don't know). FlyAgi.de (free) EDDK Cologne Bonn (by Ced Gauche) EDHK Kiel Holtenau (by MrMo) EDXE Rheine-Eschendorf (by Johannes Schuster + Jens Hicken) EDPW Thalmaessing-Waizenhofen (by Johannes Schuster) EDNQ Bopfingen (by Johannes Schuster) EDRN Nannhausen LOWI Innsbruck (Upgrade for the default XP demo area) Lindau im Bodensee FlyAgi Vegetation (Library) FlyAgi Vegetation Global Trees (Global tree replacement) Simmershome.de (free, login and free club membership required) EDAQ Halle-Oppin EDAU Riesa EDOP Schwerin EDAY Strausberg EDAZ Schoenhagen EDAB Bautzen ETNL Rostock Aerosoft (Payware) Airport Zürich V2.0 XP Dortmund XP Tromsø XP Airport Köln/Bonn XP Airport Manchester XP11 FSDG (Payware) Graz Thalerhof XP

That sounds amazing. :-) At first I think you should incorporate the pol files fix, you helped me on this some days after release and I think this would make things easier and more enjoyable for most users. BTW, there are currently lots of airports being released supporting TerraMaxx seasons officially and I'm working on some more myself - This is gathering some momentum it seems and I will do my best to keep things rolling. Regarding this I hope you will not change the color appearance of the seasons drastically as all my color optimization for creating seamless integration of airports into the surrounding landclasses would have to be redone (I'm talking about 20+ sceneries and counting).

Indeed... :-) I took some great shots of some thunderstorm clouds yesterday, this was really impressive. I like the new darker clouds of 4.8 and hope they don't get white again in the future as I found some people already complaining about too greyish clouds - for me they are right as they are now, I really enjoy the new lighting.

Possibly it helps if you create an exception for the complete X-Plane folder, this could also speed up things a bit and avoid future issues with other addons.

I had my own 'problems' with SMP cloud shadows in XP11 right from the beginning of version 4.0. As mentioned before SMP does not draw cloud shadows in certain (foggy) situations but this did not change in 4.8 compared to the older versions. The shadows are sometimes barely visible but this was always like this. Further, your screenshots show very different situations and, as mentioned before, over water areas the shadows are more noticable so your screenshots don't help judging if everything is right or not in your installation. Do you have some shader tweaks or other stuff installed which is modifying the lighting situation? For me your screenshots #1 and #2 look extremely bright, the default clouds never looked this bright and free of details for me. This is how the shadows look for me, over water areas and with high visibility: Actually, I made this shot to report another bug or issue (taken with 4.8.0): On the DSF edge you can see a very hard line, the shadow is cut there and does not look very natural to me. I checked with the XP map and this hard edges seem to occur exactly on the edges of DSF mesh tiles (weather was injected by FSGRW). Edit: I forgot to mention that SMP cloud shadows take the sun position into account it seems so the cloud shadows are not just straight below the clouds but shifted depending on sun light angle. This should be noticable on the following shot below the thunderstorm cloud. You can see the cloud shadow on the left side of the towering cloud with no clouds above and on the right side below the cloud the shadow starts shifted to the left side and not directly below.

This can be done with up to three installations. After installing into your main X-Plane installation go to 'X-Plane 11/Resources/plugins' and copy SilverLining Gizmo64.plugin RealWeatherConnector into the plugins directory of your other X-Plane installations. Possibly you will have to activate the DRM for every installation once (and after a certain time not used) but as long as you don't have more than three installations this will work. If you have more than three you will have to transfer one of the activations more often but technically this would work as well.

If this is stuck just switch to 'never - read datarefs instead' (or similar), wait until the weather has been redrawn and then switch back to 'External Injector'. This way RWC should reread the weather files and this works well for me. Further I think 'Automatic' possibly leads to the same results as 'External Injector' when using ASXP but I'm not completely sure about that. The setting 'automatic' when using the default real weather lets RWC read the metar.rwx for drawing weather and this is all you need when using ASXP so I expect RWC to do the same in 'automatic' and 'external injector' mode with ASXP as injector. With FSGRW however the 'external injector' mode gets you different results because of the additional information from the fsgrwsmp.rwx file which, if I get this right, will only be taken into account in 'external injector' mode.

I suggest to use the 'external injector' method, this should work. Make sure you start ASXP before launching X-plane so when the flight is loaded and RWC starts it finds a current metar.rwx (especially important if the 'never change visible weather'option is checked). If you have ever used FSGRW delete the fsgrwsmp.rwx file in the XP root folder, this file could interfere with the ASXP weather information.

I've recently learned 'SMP is a resource hog' but my computer just does not believe... :-)

I had this on my first flight after installing 4.8 but on later flights the cloud art settings were stable.