KMKaine

I did some more testing. - Setup Sky Maxx by selecting max draw distance. - Select Volumetric for Cumulus. - Select broken procedural for overcast (not used here, but still, let's keep it the same). - Close X-Plane. Start X-plane - New flight with C172 (default) - Weather (set to manual, CAVOK, then add a cloud layer). Leave it at it's original height. Turn it into scattered cumulus). - Set time to noon on this date. - ICAO EG08 (no custom scenery for me) - Start flight - Zoom out until you get up into the air above the clouds, I use the Chase/Ride along view for this. - Check FPS. Now go back into the weather menu: - Add wind layer, drag it to just above the cloud layer or that it intersects with the clouds. Give it a speed 100 for instance. - Apply. - Frames are lower... ------------------ As I was writing this, I think it's not the wind but it triggers a not so obvious redraw of the weather. This will result in lowering frames. After a while, I think when the redraw is done, the frames climb back up again.... :-)

X-plane weather menu -> Add cloud layer. Select few or scattered cumulus. Apply. Weather draws in, I get around 70/80 FPS. When go the X-plane weather panel again, add a wind layer and add some speed. The FPS drops to 40/50 FPS after applying. I think it also depends on the number of clouds and draw distance how much effect is has on the performance. If you set it back to 0 wind, you will have to force weather reload otherwise the FPS remains as is. RWC = set to upper option (follow X-plane) Both, added a still for reference. Well, the procedural rendering seems to be very performance efficient. It can render a complete cloud layer with minimal performance hit. A (old style cloud puff style) cumulus layer has the biggest performance hit in Skymaxx. So if it would be possible to render these loose floating puffs with the same system, performance might be higher. So basically render a 'procedural broken overcast' layer but with bigger holes (only puffs). I have no ideas how it looks, but if you can tweak the procedurally generated layer to gave it sort of a puffy individual cloudy look using the same render technique you might gain a lot of performance. Only a thought ;-) Added some stills for clarification. Cheers!

Hi all, Another great update, really like what you have done and really shows the potential :-). Just some things I noticed: - When wind is enabled, thís is what drops the framerate from the Volumetric cloud types. No wind: Super high frames, when the wind is enabled, the frames drop hard. I see the volumetric clouds are also re-rendered and seem to change due to the wind (not only move) which is a nice detail, but if this is the reason the frames drop so hard, maybe add an option to disable this 'dynamic cloud drawing'? - When in the volumetric clouds there appears to be some sort of line/cut-off in the cloud. - It seems that the procedural clouds have been fixed again (haven't seen white squares anymore), which is nice as I find it good looking and having good performance for the overcast layer. Nice! Only 'thing' I noticed is that there seems to be some color difference between the procedural and cloudpuffs/volumetric. Would be nice if that would be brought a bit more together colorwise. - Just a thought, is it an option to create a cumulus option that is based on the procedural drawing method as well or is that difficult/ugly? Really excited what the volumetric clouds will bring and where you will take the product. Cheers!

I asume that Geoff means that when there is overcast, you still see shadows on the ground (from the plane) as if it where a sunny day. I have noticed this too. X-plane default clouds seem to better emulate the overcast lighting in that regard.

Thanks for your quick response! I tried it again after rebooting X-plane, but it seems it remembers the settings now. It happened when I first started X-plane after install and licensing of Skymaxx , so maybe it only happens the first time after install and when you reactive your license. For now it works ;-)

Hi All, Great product. Update looks really good! Found one small 'bug'. When applying your settings under the 'configure clouds' menu, it resets all the settings in the cumulus, cirrus and overcast menu's to default. Would be nice if this is kept. Because you might sometimes adjust your draw distance but now it resets all the other settings as well which is a shame. Keep up the good work, you guys are still number one ;-) Cheers!

Thanks guys for taking the time to explain this stuff! Really interesting and now I understand how it works. Thanks again.

H Guys, I did some flights yesterday with good results ;-). One of the things I did is to use the AP_Disconnect suggestion and bind it to a key. To disable the AP and the annoying warning, one has to press this twice. It is then fully disconnected. Another one was activating the AP with the button in the center console. This resulted in the AP becoming green. I did this before with a button on my yoke (Toggle Servos), but this doesn't turn on the AP fully. The plane seems to follow the AP, however the AP text in the EFIS remains white. Perhaps this is only cosmetically... The Toggle Servos can't properly disconnect the AP so it seems, I guess that is why there is an additional dataref AP_Disconnect. As for power on takeoff, I set the CTOT to 100% or a bit above and used that. I then when climbing out disconnect the CTOT and the TRQ drops back to around 50 - 60. In the manual it says to keep it here but TRQ drops very slowly when climbing, is this normal? A couple of observations; The prop-oil temp seems quite high (almost in the yellow) when using the listed prop rpm. Is this normal? I tend to lower the prop rpm for now... Also the trq on climb results in high engine temps... when using 70 - 87 trq. I tend to use the lower and safer values now. And one last question... I got a config warning when taking off, even tho I followed the checklist... Is there something sneaky I missed ;-) Cheers, and great plane and product. Thanks again.

Thanks for all your feedback, I'll try it tomorrow and report back. Cheers!

It seems that if you ever make the mistake of activating the AP on the ground, it results in an un-silenceble AP alarm. I made the error of clicking the white button on the left of the throttle quadrant (looking for the T/O inhibit), and there it was, unable to quit it again...

I do seem to be losing torque indeed. However I did not overstress the enige as far as I know. I took off with the settings in the screen below. All in the green, except prop oil, seems to be against orange, but I have no idea how to lower that. Also the hydraulics seem to loose pressure slowly. when I set it back to OVRD it ups the pressure again... I feel like I'm missing something, but I'm following one of the checklists made by another user on here, which seems to be quite complete...

I tried another flight, it happened again... I climb for 16000 feet. Then when level, I set the throttles and condition to 75% and 1330 rpm... Slowly but steadily my airspeed falls back to below 120 knots... Then the AP warning goes off, without it ever shutting up again. Also AP logic seems to be malfunctioning once this situation triggers? Any help greatly appreciated. Cheers!

Doing some flights in the SAAB after picking it up this friday. I was climbing out of NZQN this evening, AP engaged. Then suddenly an AP warning sound and red AP text in the EFIS was blinking. No annunciators lighting up, so I have no idea why this is happening, and how to fix it? I think it might be triggered by a stall, but I could not recover from this weird behaviour. After a short while I had some different behaviour as you can see in vid 2. I tried to push the plane down, didn't respond, and then all of a sudden it seemed to snap out of its weird behaviour, or at least a part of it... Can somebody explain to me what I'm doing wrong, or how to recover this behaviour? Thanks in advance and thanks for your time. Log.txt