The other night I was doing a nice little sunset flight from CYEG to CYYC in the ViperJet, and the weather was changing back and forth from this really nice light cloud cover with RTH providing a nicely coloured and realistic looking haze at the edge of my viewing distance, to being 5/6 cloud cover, and a ugly very dark 'wall' above the cloud layer at at the edge of the viewing distance which had also reduced dramatically.

 

The first was very immersive, the later was not, to say the least!

 

Hmmm can you provide a screenshot? I'm not sure I understood your description.

Hmmm can you provide a screenshot? I'm not sure I understood your description.

 

If I can recreate the same weather, I sure will!  With your settings, if you set your weather to overcast with marginal VFR visibility, what does your sim look like?

1- NOAA weather engine  http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=15453

2- Cloud textures @520 pixels to gain FPS http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=26906

3- Cloud fix for the cirrus clouds because the default one are not very good looking, this one is HD though http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=17818

4- RTH for Fly with Lua

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=22387

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=17468

 

5- Clean sky colors  http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=18494

6- Reshade+Sweet FX http://reshade.me/

 

If I can recreate the same weather, I sure will!  With your settings, if you set your weather to overcast with marginal VFR visibility, what does your sim look like?

 

Do you mean under or above the cloud deck?

Do you mean under or above the cloud deck?

 

Under the deck.

1- NOAA weather engine  http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=15453

2- Cloud textures @520 pixels to gain FPS http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=26906

3- Cloud fix for the cirrus clouds because the default one are not very good looking, this one is HD though http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=17818

4- RTH for Fly with Lua

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=22387

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=17468

 

5- Clean sky colors  http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=18494

6- Reshade+Sweet FX http://reshade.me/

 

Nice!

Under the deck.

 

Here's what I get playing with the datarefs. Day:

 

 

Dusk:

 

Nice!

 

Double nice...I thought that was a photo on quick first glance!

Hello David,

 

The glorious photo scenery can be found at zone photo.x-plane.fr It is ZL16 (ZoomLevel 16) and is really just as good as ZL17 and the files are around 1.5GB as opposed to 5GB; i.e. much quicker download time. Not to mention the amount of HD space that gets eaten up if you download a large swarth of landmass. My custom scenery folder has grown to over 450GB mostly due to European photo scenery. But it's worth it.

 

An added benefit of photo scenery is the ability to run in "extreme" resolution for a much clearer view of the terrain below. I'm not sure why this works, but if you load up the sim in say "normal" or "high" resolution for good frame rates, you can then simply change the screen resolution to "extreme" and the photo scenery comes in to clear focus with absolutely no hit to fps. It really makes flying low much more realistic as you're flying over the actual terrain.

Thanks. That HD photo scenery would be worth buying a large SSD! It looks superb in the screen shots I have seen and should be developed and released as regional payware. Or perhaps Aerosoft have already started with the UK? It looks like it would blow Ftx out of the water. I think it would be a game.....sorry, sim changer!:-):-)

 

 

 

I recall a few years ago, a discussion on photo scenery in FSX. The scenery ran much smoother than "regular" scenery due to not having autogen scenery draws. That UK scenery was in fact super smooth and looked great at anything over 1000', but lacked any trees or buildings at low level. Then someone brought out a tree add on to go on top of the photo base layer. This resulted in a slow down in fps and the old stutters! However, that was 32 bit on dual core Cpu!

 

cheers

 

David.

I guess maybe it is the lack of autogen scenery draws that allows me to run in extreme resolution with photo scenery.  The weird thing is that I'm also able to run trees, objects, and roads on "extreme" settings with only 512 MB of VRAM and still get 40-50 fps flying 1000' over the UK.  It's simply awesome, and with Tony's GB Pro world2xplane it is amazing.  FSX is not even in the same ballpark.  

I tired the default clouds along with the mods suggested by Murmur and Pilot83,  Wow, I really like it a lot better than Skymax!  I still like skymax, but its so easy to switch back and forth between them. 

 

I flying through the clouds is such a pleasure now.

 

Thanks for the suggestions guys!

 

Rob

 

 

 

I tired the default clouds along with the mods suggested by Murmur and Pilot83, Wow, I really like it a lot better than Skymax! I still like skymax, but its so easy to switch back and forth between them.

 

I flying through the clouds is such a pleasure now.

 

Beautiful... I'm going to try them soon. Now if only X-Plane had a more detailed cloud renderer that did cumulonimbus and even ordinary cumulus clouds well. I feel the default renderer works very well for stratoform clouds.

 

How do you "switch between Skymaxx and default clouds"? And what's the impact on frame rate?

To switch between them, just go to plugins menu (enable/disable) and uncheck "silverlining". That shuts off Skymax.

 

I don't notice a frame rate change while switching between them. Only a brief pause while changing between them.

 

Rob

To switch between them, just go to plugins menu (enable/disable) and uncheck "silverlining". That shuts off Skymax.

 

I don't notice a frame rate change while switching between them. Only a brief pause while changing between them.

Rob

Ah. Thanks. One more question - would replacing the cloud textures and sky colours affect the built-in Skymaxx textures?

I found that when I replaced the sky textures, Skymax would overwrite them again next time I restarted X-plane. So I took the sky textures, I like, and overwrote one of the skymax set, I didn't like and use that.  They are stored in the resources\Plugins\Silverlining\Skycolors directory.  I think if you read the skymax instructions, it tells you how you should do it, But I just took the easy way, since I didn't much care for the skymax sky colors.