I am a user of SkyMaxx but recently I have been using the standard X Plane clouds and getting some very interesting results (i.e. beautiful skies) and not getting a massive frame hit. It may be that I adopted SkyMaxx at pretty much the same time I became and X Planer and, therefore, never gave the standard clouds much of a chance. I starter experimenting with the standard clouds because I have been getting some strange shadow artifacts with SkyMaxx on the horizon. So maybe nothing has changed and skies this good were always possible, but interested if anyone else has noticed an improvement.

 

Here are some screenshots to demonstrate.

 

http://1drv.ms/1Exq3Qb

 

cheers

Peter

WOW  :o

I don't have Skymaxx so I can't speak for that product, but the default clouds have been looking pretty nice lately; especially with The NOAA plug-in.

+1 - I'm batting for the default clouds side too.

I like how they fill out the sky, the cloud shadows, etc. they've come a long way I think.

Yes the clouds looks much better. And I am missing my Eyefinity :( 

An early morning flight from KBFI to Boundary Bay with NOAA and Vatsim. C90 with a custom livery. My GPU is not a strong one just a HD 7750 2GB DDR3 so clouds do kill performance but I do manage around 15-19's still flyable.

 

FL100

 

 

This one is @FL50 lovely clouds even though they are default XPX

 

@Zul, I'll give it a go later on my new computer, as maybe it will be powerful enough to run it now. Your screenshots and Peter's look really nice, and it's been a while since I tried the default clouds, but I've heard good stuff about them.

I've always favoured the default clouds over SkyMaxx, and therefore suffered the fps hit. I often look at the clouds in the real sky and it's remarkable how similar to the x-plane clouds UK clouds are! X-Plane however doesn't tend to do the big white fluffy cumulonimbus clouds too well. However, for most of the normal UK cloud coverage it does very very well.

I went up today in Liverpool for real and the similarity was remarkable.

 

@Zul, I'll give it a go later on my new computer, as maybe it will be powerful enough to run it now. Your screenshots and Peter's look really nice, and it's been a while since I tried the default clouds, but I've heard good stuff about them.

Tony - BTW I took some photos today - couldn't finish as I got the third degree from the fuel chappie and turns out even with security pass and high viz on one has to get permisson from Raven Air before taking photos. I will PM you what I have got and add to them once I get permission.

 

Cheers

Peter

Thanks Peter for doing those pictures :smile:

 

BTW, if anyone is interested, the buildings I previously created for EGGP (Liverpool) and Runcorn/Widnes bridge are now inside Renair's EGGP package on the .org. EGGP v2 along with a correctly modelled main terminal. It's a group project with a few users adding buildings, which I think is a great way to get a larger airport done. I suspect the package will improve over time, and I'll model the buildings Peter has sent and get these added also.

EGGP which I have melts my system :(