[First encounter with a T-Storm under SMP v5 - Very Nice]

SMP with volumetric clouds, ASXP (with SMP option selected), and RWC.  Just a little assist from MaxxFX (not very much, though ).  Also duly impressed that my FPS did not get torn to shreds.  Thanks for a great product, keep up the great work.

 

 

 

 

[SkyMaxx Pro v5.0.5 Update Released!]

15 hours ago, sundog said:

What resolution and AA setting are you running at? So far it seems a common theme in people with performance issues is that they are running at 4K resolution and/or high anti-aliasing settings.

Volumetric clouds are rendered per-pixel-fragment, so their performance is very sensitive to these settings. For example on my system I can quadruple performance by just switching AA from 8X to FXAA.

Hi; Sorry for the delayed response; I didn't get a notice that you replied to this and I wasn't expecting one so hadn't been on to check.  Answer to the question is 2560 x 1440 with no AA since I use HDR and AA doesn't do anything with HDR.

Cheers!

[SkyMaxx Pro v5.0.5 Update Released!]

Hi All;

Thought I'd chirp in on the discussion. I am running an Nvida RTX2080 with 8GB VRAM and an i7-9700 with 32GB RAM. I had some trouble installing 5.0.5 and in the process manually removed all traces of SMP and then had to remove RWC as well. Also ran the XP installer to make sure everything was OK before my last install which was successful. Installed SMP 5.0.5 and then RWC. Loaded the sim with default scenery, MAXX FX, Soundmaxx, SMP, RWC, and ASXP plug-in. Loaded ASXP, injected the weather, and with default scenery my fps went from 70+ to 30 - 40fps.  Turned off RWC and the clouds thinned out and frame rates went up some.  I had cloud draw distance set for almost 13,000 and I did have god rays and shadows turned on.  Rays were at about 30% and shadows at 50%.  I was getting this fps with UHD mesh and a couple of other plug ins loaded with 5.0.4.

I also tried setting manual weather with scattered cumulus, broken cumulus, and overcast cumulus.  With only the three layers of clouds, fps was about 50.

Hope you can figure this all out.  It looks great but, unfortunately, is not very usable like this since I know where the fps will go once I put everything back.

Cheers and Blue Skies

[[SOLVED] Ghost Images]

Glad I looked here.  I was just going to post the same thing.  Flying alone isn't great but that's not exactly what I had in mind when thinking about flying with someone   I did notice in the last incarnation of version 4 that the edges of shadows were moving with my  plane's movement but the whole issue has been raised a notch with the moving lines even clearer and the ghost ship flying by.  Looking forward to the fix.  Love what I'm seeing so far.  Thanks for the awesome work.

Cheers and Blue Skies!

[SMP Upgrade?]

4 minutes ago, Cameron said:

@manidep271 I can't find an account with your forum e-mail, so you'll need to contact support@x-aviation.com

Cameron;

Thanks. Email just sent. My store account uses a different email than my forum account. Always got the notices to v4 updates . . .

Cheers,

Paul

[SMP Upgrade?]

1 minute ago, fog said:

They said we will receive a discount code in email.. still nothing here..

Freddy

Thanks.  Guess I missed that in all the posts around the announcement.  Wish I had the code before it went live.  Well, just have to sit tight and wait a bit longer.

[SMP Upgrade?]

I'm probably blind in one eye and can't see out the other but I can't find any way to get SMP 5 at the upgrade price.  What am I missing?

Thanks.

[Announcing SkyMaxx Pro v5]

On 1/19/2021 at 11:53 AM, Cameron said:

on the Mac side Metal is an impressive uptick in performance for X-Plane as a whole over OpenGL

Well I still don't get it but I had to refresh my XP install after the need to delete the settings file and when I hit some very cloudy weather, my OpenGL rates choked.  Switched back to Vulkan, no other changes, and I was up by about 30 fps.  So I guess I have to take it back ...

[Announcing SkyMaxx Pro v5]

2 hours ago, akatham said:

Do you have v-sync turned on ingame? I remember from some 11.50 beta devblogs one developer mentioning that it was broken in opengl and actually working under vulkan when someone mentioned lower framerates...

Yes I do have v-sync turned on and the Nvidia settings to go with it also active.  I can't remember exactly what they are but I know when I activated one setting in the Nvidia driver it mentioned turning on the other two (one is G-Sync) for best performance.  I didn't touch the Nvidia driver when I just tried the return to OpenGL.

[Announcing SkyMaxx Pro v5]

I don't know if this is the best place to post this but - since we're having a discussion about the much-anticipated new SMP - I thought I'd mention it here.

I am one of those low and slow people that miss the cloud reflections and the precipitation system of SMP.  When Cameron described his system for testing the new SMP, I decided to set my XP back to OpenGL from Vulkan and I saw my performance go UP!  I have absolutely no explanation for that one.  I did not change any of my other setting nor the area in which I was flying nor the plane I was using.  This has born out consistently for three days and that's with reflections in the water.  Go figure . . .  

X-Plane 11.51 r1, GeForce RTX 2080 8GB RAM, i7-9700 3.6 OC with SMP clouds out to 30,000 with crepuscular rays and shadows turned on.  Oh, BTW, screen res is 2560 x 1440.  (I will admit I'm not using too many plug-ins.  SMP, RWC, ASXP, and MaxxFX, a couple of small lua scripts, and XPRealistic.  The plane I was using at the time also had Simcoders REP package loaded.

This scene at Bella Coola (and it's snowing on top of everything else going on) is clocking at 38 fps. Under Vulkan, it would hover around 30.  Just thought I'd share this experience in case anyone else might want to try it and see what happens.

(Cameron, if this should be under a different / better category, please feel free to move it.)

Cheers and Blue Skies
 

[Announcing SkyMaxx Pro v5]

On 1/14/2021 at 9:10 AM, AtariX said:

Yellowish clouds again? When will they be white, as in nature?

I've been a long time user of SMP and RWC and have found MAXX FX a great little utility to tweak the visuals to nicely bring out a little more contrast in the clouds as well as making XP look soo much better over all.  The only yellow clouds I see is at sunrise and sunset and (since I don't often see that where I live) I've been able to tone down some of the reds and yellows to make things look more like my little corner of the world (not to mention I can adjust it seasonally).  Since Gizmo is already installed for SMP, MAXX FX has really no fps hit that I've noticed.

[Skymaxpro Weather keeps freezing x plane]

I haven't had the experience of it freezing XP but I have recently noticed that I have to go to the plug in admin, stop it, restart it to get the cloud depictions to update.  Running with FSGRW and RWC but NO other weather related stuff and it was working okay but decided to go bonkers with the heavy cloudiness around Hurricane Delta.  I'm assuming it is being overtaxed in trying to draw all the cloud layers although it has worked and then not worked.  I'm starting to wonder if there is an issue with that OpenGL gateway to Vullkan.  I've not tried this with 11.5 under OpenGL.

[Vulkan - cloud reflections]

17 minutes ago, sundog said:

it probably works by just modifying X-Plane's built-in clouds

I would venture to say that is probably the case as I think about it.  Once the product is installed, there are several options for sky colors and cloud textures that may be used but when a change is made, the user has to open the texture browser, select all the cloud (0-5) textures, and use the "reload" function.  The default clouds are then replaced by the new textures.  Same with the sky colors.

I kind of figured that your entire cloud system replacement was what prevented the reflections but it also allows for a more detailed handling of various types of clouds which is a higher priority than reflections even though I do miss them.  Maybe someday . . .

Then again, I heard a not so rumorish rumor that Laminar may be changing the entire weather system for version 12 so who knows what that will mean. 

[Vulkan - cloud reflections]

3 minutes ago, sundog said:

Using OpenGL to Vulkan is the only way to do 3D rendering in X-Plane 11.50 in Vulkan mode. They do not expose a way to write native Vulkan code in plugins.

I'm not sure who's promising what in the competition, but don't believe everything you see / hear until it's released. I've seen at least one developer making a lot of claims that are flat out impossible.

Hi Frank and thanks for the quick response.  I do appreciate it.  I'm new to this forum but my system has been loaded with skymaxx, terramaxx, real weather, and MaxxFX for quite some time.  I do think that SkyMaxx Pro creates the best cloud system but, being a float plane flyer, I do miss the reflections of the clouds in the water.  Here is a screen shot I took just a few minutes ago using the "other" system under 11.5 r3.  This, apparently, is something that can be done somehow.  I don't know how they are doing it.  Thanks for the info about the OpenGL / Vulkan bit on plugins.  I did not know Laminar had totally shut the door on native Vulkan plugins.  Hopefully that will change in the future.

[Vulkan - cloud reflections]

I'm somewhat curious about this now a couple months later.  There is another (no names mentioned) developer that has been working on their next version of cloud / weather simulation and they have the ability to show cloud reflections in water under Vulkan.  Is the difference that you are going through the OpenGL to Vulkan arrangement Laminar set up rather than working with Vulkan natively?