SkyMAXX Pro 1.2 released

[jerry allen 3]

Where do I find the download link for 1.2?

 

I did not get an email.

 

Thank you,

 

Jerry

 

 

Disregard...I found it.

[motoadve 49]

Something that I think is unrealistic with this add on is the light blue color of the clouds, I havent seen anyone complain about it.

Clouds are white, grey or balck but never light blue.

[fkane 6]

Something that I think is unrealistic with this add on is the light blue color of the clouds, I havent seen anyone complain about it.

Clouds are white, grey or balck but never light blue.

 

Distant clouds will start to tint blue (and blend into the sky) for the same reason that the sky is blue (Rayleigh scattering.) Nearby clouds in high visibility however should look pretty achromatic.

 

I just sampled a few cloud colors from SkyMaxx Pro screenshots, and there is a very small blue tint even in nearby clouds. This is because scattered skylight does in fact have a blue tint to it, but it's fair feedback that normally your eye adjusts to this and doesn't actually perceive it.

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

Anyone any ideas how to improve performance? You can see my PC in my profile. The clouds reduce my fps by about 10; however that's not really the issue, the issue is popping/stuttering caused by them? <br /><br />Anyone care to share settings they use ? That also runs gtx 770 4gb or similar card? <br /><br />Thanks <br />Ian

[fkane 6]

 

 

Anyone any ideas how to improve performance?

 

Turn down the cloud detail and distance settings in the SkyMaxx pro config menu. Also make sure you are running SkyMaxx Pro 1.2; it handles weather condition updates 4X faster than previous versions, which might be the "stuttering" you describe, especially if you only experience it when real weather or some third party weather injector is on.

 

Drawing clouds will never be "free", but they should be faster than the equivalent default clouds in XPX.

[Longranger 148]

Anyone any ideas how to improve performance? You can see my PC in my profile. The clouds reduce my fps by about 10; however that's not really the issue, the issue is popping/stuttering caused by them?

If you have already SkiyMaxx 1.2: Do you have the texture resolution extreme? Or high SSAA ?

Skiy MAXX Pro can work with a fraction of the CPU budget that the default clouds use, but it needs more VRAM.While the 770 has a lot of VRAM X-Plane can still demand more and force the card to swap its VRAM content to System-RAM.

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

I have 1.2 <br /><br />I have extreme textures and I have not checked to have them compressed. I also have 4xfsaa.<br /><br />I get 30 fps locked with half vsync without clouds. <br /><br />

[fkane 6]

I have extreme textures and I have not checked to have them compressed. I also have 4xfsaa.

 

Yeah, certainly plausible that you're swapping VRAM then. Anything to get that usage down will help.

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

I just reduced sky maxx cloud draw distance down to about one third across, same for quality.<br /><br />I also reduced my 'world view distance' in x plane rendering settings to 'medium'. This has me back at 25-30 fps smooth! <br /><br />I noted in the rendering settings screen, it said I was only using 2.4gb of VRAM, this was when it was at high world view distance. Shouldn't this leave me with 1.6gb for sky maxx to play with?

[fkane 6]

Glad you're back at 30 FPS! 

 

Hard to say exactly what may have been going on. I don't know if that VRAM usage number includes all the extra buffers needed for FXAA, double buffering, etc. and/or other add-ons you might have - but it's hard to imagine them all adding up to over 1.6 GB unless you have some massive display spanning multiple monitors or something. More likely your bottleneck was bandwidth, fill rate, or CPU, and dialing down the cloud distance & quality settings can help with all of that (as well as VRAM usage.) What's great is that most users can't even tell the difference visually, so you're not giving up much for that extra performance.