Jose Almeida

Please ask for help from John Maxx or Fran Kane, because your plugins aren't properly installed. If your whole installation is messed up it's no wonder you get crashes. José

Hi, How did you install SkyMaxx Pro? I notice it is listed under Custom Scenery packages and I don't understand what it is doin there! The same with UrbanMaxx! Apart from that it doesn't tell me a lot, but I am no expert. José

If you select "A.I. flies your plane" the plane will taxi to the runway, take off and fly to a destination set by A.I. but I've never seen it successfully land. José

Hi, I don't yet understand why x-plane exhausts VRAM in OS X Yosemite and I don't think anyone does. I monitor my VRAM with Apple's OpenGL Driver Monitor and I can see sometimes it goes over the top but it has been difficult to exactly replicate the situations. Furthermore, Laminar would prefer if those situations were reported with a clean installation, completely free from add-ons and scenery. I've been able to produce one of those situations of VRAM exhaustion with a clean installation but when I tried to replicate it did not happen again. I don't have crashes, though, but that is probably because my OS and X-Plane are both in a SSD, which makes memory swapping much quicker than with a hard disk. What I do get is fps drops to 4 or 6, which is barely usable; my workaround then, is to point the camera to the aircraft floor, so that no scenery is drawn, or go to Shift W mode. I know that Laminar is on to it, although I believe they still don't know what is going on and whether it is an X-Plane or an OS X bug. José

Right Theory is you are running out of VRAM! This shouldn't happen but it does! By using an external camera you are telling x-plane not to bother drawing the plane itself and so it uses less video memory. Let's see if Laminar can come up with something to fix it. José

Hi, I am trying to fully characterize this to report to Laminar; would you please perform an experiment for me? Could you fly the same route but rather than stay in the plane use the view "Forward With HUD", in my installation is "Shift W". I am hoping you don't get a crash if you are not in the plane and in that case a theory begins to take form. Thanks. José

Hi, I see a lot of people struggling with X-Plane under Yosemite and my experience tells me that it is often due to VRAM exhaustion. One may be induced in error by VRAM usage reported by X-Plane but this is only part of the story and video memory may get fully used, in spite of a reassuring value reported by X-Plane. It is possible that the issues are caused by X-Plane code making use of obsolete APIs and a full revision of those is likely to happen in version 10.35. Meanwhile, if you want to monitor your real VRAM usage Apple doesn't make it easy for you; you can download the necessary tools from Apple but you must register as a developer. If you do, you'll have to download "graphicstools_for_xcode_6.1.dmg" wherein you will find "OpenGL Driver Monitor". This is a professional tool which allows monitoring many variables, among which "Current free video memory" and "Current Video Memory in Use". I am not advising everyone to download and run those tools and it is certain they won't cure anything or improve anyone's frame rate but for someone who is curious about what is going on they may prove useful. Best regards, José

Hi, I am on Yosemite myself and I can tell you that there are threads entirely dedicated to x-plane problems under Yosemite. Just search the internet carefully and you'll find those threads in other forums, if not on this one. I do have vram problems but they don't cause crashes, they rather send my fps to single figure numbers, like 4 or 6, but this may be because I have osx and x-plane residing in a SSD, which may smoothe things out when the computer starts swapping. Usually I can bring fps to decent numbers by either pointing the camera to the aircraft floor, so that x-plane doesn't need to draw scenery, or switching to an exterior camera, like "forward view with nothing"; I belive in this case the improvement comes from x-plane not having to bother with the aircraft itself. Until version 10.35 comes out, hopefully curing most Yosemite issues, that's about all we can do. José

Hi, I am a Mac user and one thing that must be clarified is weather or not you are using X-FMC. The stable version of this pugin is known to have compatibility problems with SMP. They have released a beta version that hasn't shown any compatibility problems so far, but this is not a stable version and you may find some issues if you give it a try. My advice, if you are using X-FMC, is to try and remove it. Other than this known conflict, I am not aware of any other problems of SMP in a mac environment. Best regards, José

Hi, On this subject, most likely outside the scope of SMP, I find annoying the sudden way the ground texture rendering stops some distance away; is it 40 nm? I know Laminar has been talking about increasing that distance but I'm sure it will have an impact on VRAM usage. What I think would be a reasonable compromise would be for the visibility to fade out around the same distance where xplane stops rendering the ground texture. Now, I don't think SMP controls visibility and I don't think it can place any sort of artificial clouds ou there, just to mask that sudden transition. Increasing the cloud draw distance beyhound that would likely do the trick, if there are clouds, but then again we will be faced with a VRAM problem. Sometimes there are things you have to accept as they are. José

OK, I checked Google Earth against xplane's default location and they seem to coincide.

Hi you considered that Navdata could be right and xplane wrong? I have found countless airports wrongly placed by xplane. José

Hi Sundog, Glad you understood I am sure it is difficult but it may not be AS DIFFICULT as you put it. I haven't looked closely at NOAA's weather files but I believe there's no need for geographical interpolation. As for the update time lapse it's not really a problem because the data is forecast and each release incorporates a much finer time interval then 6 hours. The reason for using the most current release is the higher likelyhood that the forecasts coincide with the actual weather. I wouldn't send data to x-plane and, of course, the weather radar would not be entirely correct but, if the user is using real weather from some source, there could be a close match, certainly better than now. Anyway, this is why I say that at low altitude SMP should always opt for xplane data, so that clouds match the weather the simulator is using when interacting with the ground. I am only talking about drawing clouds, not feeding weather to xplane, and I can try to parse NOAA's files to have an idea of how much interpolation would be needed. For instance, when I look at Skyvector, I see that wind data is shown on a 0.5 degree mesh and cloud data has a much finer mesh; one has to look at it in detail to find how much work would be needed. Cheers, José

Hi, Come on, guys, read what I wrote. I suggested using NOAA data downloaded directly, without making use of any plugin or even xplane! This is the deal: NOAA data is updated every 6 hours, so a forthcoming version of SMP could check whether current data was already in the disk, if not if it could be downloaded; that means checking that there is internet connection. SMP would default to xplane data if NOAA data could not be obtained. Furthermore, SMP would opt for xplane data bt user's choice or at low altitude. The latter is important because when interacting with the ground the pilot must see clouds that match what the simulator is using. I use that plugin often; although I agree that it has its problems and it is no longer maintained, it is unparallelled when it comes to high athmosphere winds. When flying on line I also use IVAO whether, whose data I am not sure that it can be accessed outside xplane; if it could, that could be another source of weather for cloud drawing. I am just feeding in thoughts but please don't misread me; I am sure my English is not that bad Cheers, José

Hi, I understand the difficulty but can I suggest a waorkaround? As you weel know there is a weather plugin out there that uses publicly available NOAA data to generate the weather for xplane; could you not use NOAA data directly, not via the referred plugin and x-plane? Just a Thought... Cheers.

Hi, I don't think it can work with SimHeaven because it has it's own textures which are not winterized. José

Hi, Good news! XFMC has just released a new betta and my initial tests didn't cause any crashes, even woith the latest SMP beta. José

Hi, I find this very effective: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=24353 José

John, Since you addressed me directly let say a few words in reaction. I will start by stating that I love SMP and I use it all the time, otherwise I wouldn't be concerned with clashes with other plugin I happen to also love. I am sure you remember me complaining about problems with Mac from an SMP version that, in my view, was released without proper testing. Meanwhile those initial issues were completely resolved and I even became a beta tester, which I am very proud off. It was in the framework of beta testing that I faced the conflict between these two plugins. I took the initiative of posting in both fora about the problem and to call for a cooperation of developers on both sides to identify the source of the crashes. There has been dialogue between developers and there is hope that a solution will be found; looking back, I don't regret what I did and wrote. Best regards and Seasons Greetings, José

Hi Sundog, I'm sorry but this could be turned the other way round. One could say start by disabling Skymaxx pro and see if that ends the crashes; if not, disable all plugins and start adding them one by one until you find the culprit; if you find that the crashes appear when Skymaxx pro is enabled, you've found your culprit. If it is a question of plugin conflict, the suggested procedure will produce different results, depending on the order you choose for enabling plugins. It seems to me that there is a strong suggestion of conflict between Skymax pro and XFMC, which can only be resolved by cooperation between the respective developers. Now, this isn't going to be easy because one of the plugins is payware and it doesn't seem likely that a freeware developer will be willing to cooperate in a payware add-on. José

My experience with V2 seems to give a better frame rate from simheaven than from HD Mesh on its own, for the same region; do you agree? Is there an explanation? José

Are you sure it changes simheaven's photo scenery? As I understand simheaven and hd mesh exclude each other for the simple reason that simheaven incorporates HD Mesh V2. If you have simheaven HD Mesh V3 should not make any difference or I am completely misunderstanding how it works. José

Hi Andras, Great news; I am a big fan of HD Mesh since V1 and I can't wait to try this one. I've already asked this question but here it goes again: Any chance of cutting HD Mesh for the Azores? José

Hi, It took me some time to verify that I have JRollon's scenery as well. Upon further checking, I found that on that particular taxiway my planes also sit slightly below ground, but far less than yours, when I set "Runways Follow Terrain Contours"; the problem goes completely away when I set off that option and reload the scenery. My explanation for a less pronounced effect is that I use SimHeaven's photo scenery, that incorporates HD Mesh; I presume that x-plane's default mesh has some local artifact and also that this scenery was produced by conversion from fsx, which would explain why runways never really follow terrain. José

Is this native x-plane scenery or converted from FSX? I have x-plane native for LESA and this effect does not happen. José