SkyMaxx Pro v3 is Out

[737727Nut 12]

I really wish I could enjoy V3 but haven't seen my coupon since V3 was released. Yes i've checked my spam mail, many times,yes i tried contacting them via x-aviation website and their Facebook page. Still no coupon.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

What has been some transition delay time frames for others?

 

With the settings I have posted here (to get the sky looking as I like), I have had some total Xplane freeze up's lasting as long as 6-8 seconds, with the one-thousand and one, one thousand  two, routine.  The sim stays dead frozen, then starts again with a few stutters.  With the latest v2, it was a one second sort of 'bump...and then full animation again.

 

I remember when SMP was first released, long transition lock ups were common.  Successive updates pretty well got rid of that.  I hope that will be the case for v3.(x) as well.  After quite a bit of time moving all the sliders (with combo button/feature settings on or off) around in very slight adjustments, I pretty well have v3.0 rendering as I personally like, with sustained for the most part, 27-30 FPS, (some depictions down to 17 fps with continuous movement upwards, etc)...but deadly sim-freeze with the average of 4 seconds before cloud transition is injected and the sim carries on. I use the built-in XP real world weather for SMP3 to work with.

 

I can also have sometimes four or five successive injections in the space of 90 seconds, before the sim carries on for some time before another freeze/injection.  That pretty well has been my user experience so far.

 

I'd appreciate to read from other user's experience, beyond a few words, that 'So far, I like it, or don't like it'.   How is it working for you with higher, more demanding settings, or have you had to compromise with pulled back settings to get satisfactory performance and reduced halt/freeze/injections/transition delays. That would be helpful to read your more detailed experiences. 

 

 

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

Ses,

 

I was having some delays too and I read on here that the settings might be adjustable and might seem to work, but swamp the ability of the video card when the weather updates.  I hit reset - which took it back to default - selected broken stratiform and apply changes.  No more breaks and it looks great.

 

I did one other thing.  I saw where nVidia Inspector had a new version which was compatible with Windows 10 (should be upgraded for others too) and installed it and used the default X-Plane settings.  With 4X HDR settings, I was pulling 50-55 FPS so I bumped it back (yes, back.  I had been running before and had removed Inspector and had to reduce my settings to 4X) to 8X and am flying in the 30s to 40s.

 

Yes, I'm still using my GTX 770 4GB with my I7-4770, 16 GB DDR with no overclocking.

 

John

[fkane 6]

Ses, your cloud draw distance AND cloud detail are cranked all the way up. The more cumulus clouds you ask SMP to create, the longer it takes to create them when conditions change. And the higher the detail, the longer a given cloud takes to build.

 

Making matters worse, your config screen is showing that you have almost no video memory left to work with, which will slow things down even further.

 

You're going to have to turn down the distance and/or detail if you want to have shorter delays when the clouds need to be regenerated.

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Ses,

 

I was having some delays too and I read on here that the settings might be adjustable and might seem to work, but swamp the ability of the video card when the weather updates.  I hit reset - which took it back to default - selected broken stratiform and apply changes.  No more breaks and it looks great.

 

I did one other thing.  I saw where nVidia Inspector had a new version which was compatible with Windows 10 (should be upgraded for others too) and installed it and used the default X-Plane settings.  With 4X HDR settings, I was pulling 50-55 FPS so I bumped it back (yes, back.  I had been running before and had removed Inspector and had to reduce my settings to 4X) to 8X and am flying in the 30s to 40s.

 

Yes, I'm still using my GTX 770 4GB with my I7-4770, 16 GB DDR with no overclocking.

 

John

Hi John...thanks for all that!   I actually like v3.0's output now...now that I realize in hindsight, that I could not merely 'port over' my setup settings from v2.0.  I realize that THAT was what was preventing my from getting to where I saw it again as stellar.  I am past that now...and with the above settings (freezes aside), am most happy with the result.  Sundog is right....Cameron is right...this is a truly different beast...you need to change your settings in this one.

 

John, I am still running with a GTX680-2 GB card...and I can only imagine that that plays into it as well.  

 

I got back to a really good space...but with about three hours of try this...try that. I'm back to great atmospherics and all is good, once more.

 

I will also try your suggestions to reduce the freeze/inject intervals!

 

Thanks for posting.

 

Mitch

Ses, your cloud draw distance is cranked all the way up. The more cumulus clouds you ask SMP to create, the longer it takes to create them when conditions change.

Thanks for posting, that comment, Fkane!   Yes..I do have it cranked to full...and now, in conjunction, with my other v3.0 settings, it looks fantastic once more.  I will be staying with v3.0 from now on.

 

What I will do though...is to start dropping that cloud draw distance by degrees of 10 percent, and see how that plays out...but again...once I got into that on-screen sweet spot with v3.0....it truly is a keeper.  I just apparently had a slow start out of the gate...(smile).

 

As others have said, and as I have always said...XP without ANY version of SMP...well...I wouldn't run XP (in atmospherics depiction) vanilla...nope.

 

Cheers, and thanks for the developer tips!

 

Ses

Ses, your cloud draw distance AND cloud detail are cranked all the way up. The more cumulus clouds you ask SMP to create, the longer it takes to create them when conditions change. And the higher the detail, the longer a given cloud takes to build.

 

Making matters worse, your config screen is showing that you have almost no video memory left to work with, which will slow things down even further.

 

You're going to have to turn down the distance and/or detail if you want to have shorter delays when the clouds need to be regenerated.

Hello Mr. Kane

 

Here's the new tweaked settings that still are giving me killer sky and cloud type-sets and formations...with about a 1-2 second injection/creations delay. I can live with that. I also turned back on Hi Rez cloud puffs...and lost no FPS as a result.  

 

Yes...the limits of having only 2 GB on the vid card.  I am going to be correcting that...have my eye on a 4-6 GB sooner, than later. Most likely a GTX 980Ti series.

 

 

Post Edit:   With my card in play, there is a very linear, direct correlation between the cloud draw distance slider, and the injection/write/render delay.  With the slider full to the right, some cloud scenes were 6-8 seconds long (that is the longest, no worse than that) before the sim carried on. I turned the slider to half setting, and noticed any further injection/write/render delays of animation, were also cut down by exactly half...to 1-3 and/or 4 seconds (with very heavy bank depictions).  So, for my card...I can only crank this slider to 1/2 setting.  This shot is at that setting.  I'd wish for no delays ever...but I have never seen that to date, with XP's internal weather engine supplying the info to SMP(x).

 

Anybody read that Active Sky is thinking of entering the market?!?!?

 

 

That and SMP3, could be a very interesting marriage....

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Ses,

 

I was having some delays too and I read on here that the settings might be adjustable and might seem to work, but swamp the ability of the video card when the weather updates.  I hit reset - which took it back to default - selected broken stratiform and apply changes.  No more breaks and it looks great.

 

I did one other thing.  I saw where nVidia Inspector had a new version which was compatible with Windows 10 (should be upgraded for others too) and installed it and used the default X-Plane settings.  With 4X HDR settings, I was pulling 50-55 FPS so I bumped it back (yes, back.  I had been running before and had removed Inspector and had to reduce my settings to 4X) to 8X and am flying in the 30s to 40s.

 

Yes, I'm still using my GTX 770 4GB with my I7-4770, 16 GB DDR with no overclocking.

 

John

John...I checked NI...and there was no head's up for the W10 update. You must be needing to have that installed before you see it. I am still on W7 Ultimate

 

Cheers,

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

Mitch,

 

It was not an nVidia notice that there had been a W10 update - only someone posted that they had some problems with W10 and the latest seemed to correct the problem.  It shows that it works with every recent version of Windows, including 10, so they must have done something.  Anyway, seems to work well.

 

John

[Cameron XA 272]

I really wish I could enjoy V3 but haven't seen my coupon since V3 was released. Yes i've checked my spam mail, many times,yes i tried contacting them via x-aviation website and their Facebook page. Still no coupon.

I see nothing in our system from you. What's your support ticket ID #?

[Oscar Pilote 22]

Darn. That would be the icing on an already sweet cake. Enhanced dynamic water and waves would add so much to the atmosphere. Maybe one day (hopefully before X-Plane 11).

They have a possible free open source (should I say superior?) alternative in proland (http://proland.imag.fr/videos.html). The proland licence allows for commercial use; that possibility might already have been exploited though...

[CFIJose 5,485]

I needed support for this add-on and I was provided with 1st class service. Thx.

[propsfan 52]

I've always found X-Aviation support to be as good as one could expect too. Also finding SkyMaxx v3 to be a truly excellent addon, well worth it imo.

[shamrockflyer 647]

A little late to the party, but thought I'd share this here. I have had Skymaxxpro-v3 since release. Not had any problems with it until recently, Xplane 10 crashes almost always when sky maxx pro is doing something, in my log the last program is sky maxx pro and then the application crashes like here -

 

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 120128 KB GPU, 8412204 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 106368 KB GPU, 8299856 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 344704 KB GPU, 8486388 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 414976 KB GPU, 8579472 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 465728 KB GPU, 8621468 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 522048 KB GPU, 8704088 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 531264 KB GPU, 8587388 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 548736 KB GPU, 8614040 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 573312 KB GPU, 8761296 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 574400 KB GPU, 8741092 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 530240 KB GPU, 8614000 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 560896 KB GPU, 8618496 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 559168 KB GPU, 9098688 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 558080 KB GPU, 9083444 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 347200 KB GPU, 8927360 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 306816 KB GPU, 8821964 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 306880 KB GPU, 8829256 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 71808 KB GPU, 8725016 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 68992 KB GPU, 8683364 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 47680 KB GPU, 8641548 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 48960 KB GPU, 8604884 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 54656 KB GPU, 8605688 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 64896 KB GPU, 8504840 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 56704 KB GPU, 8453596 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 58304 KB GPU, 8451296 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 58624 KB GPU, 8342684 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 51904 KB GPU, 8312344 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 62208 KB GPU, 8133200 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 83136 KB GPU, 8109044 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 72576 KB GPU, 8548848 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 68864 KB GPU, 8536388 KB CPU

SkyMaxx Pro: Memory Check: 64256 KB GPU, 8505824 KB CPU

--=={This application has crashed!}==--

 

Anybody know whats up? This was after a short 20 minute spin around Dublin Ireland earlier. 

[fkane 6]

SkyMaxx Pro just logs memory usage periodically. The fact those messages are in the log does not mean it had anything to do with the crash.

 

If Skymaxx Pro did cause a crash, the log would say something about the crash happening in the plugin "SilverLining". Yours doesn't, however - it seems the crash was within X-Plane itself.

 

It is saying that you're running low on video memory. I'd guess you flew into some custom scenery or something that ate up all of your video card's resources.

[shamrockflyer 647]

It was SkyMaxx Pro that was causing the crashes. I had it on a custom setting and that likely caused a memory leak or something. I have since uninstalled and reinstalled it with fresh settings keeping them at default, I successfully did a 1 hour 30 minute flight without any problems. 

[fkane 6]

It was SkyMaxx Pro that was causing the crashes. I had it on a custom setting and that likely caused a memory leak or something. I have since uninstalled and reinstalled it with fresh settings keeping them at default, I successfully did a 1 hour 30 minute flight without any problems. 

 

Did your log say the crash was due to SilverLining (SkyMaxx Pro's plugin name)? If not, or you don't know, I suspect what really happened is that you turned up the cloud draw distance and/or detail settings, which demanded extra memory from your system. Then you probably flew into some custom scenery that caused X-Plane to run out of resources and crash. At least, that's the case with almost every customer who claims Skymaxx Pro crashes or leaks memory once we dig into it. We've tested it extensively and it's been used extensively by thousands of happy customers, so I'm confident in saying it's one of the most stable pieces of software you'll encounter.

 

We've seen precisely one case where X-Plane attributed a crash to SilverLining, and that turned out to be due to an old SASL version that was corrupting memory - not a bug in Skymaxx Pro.

 

If you do have a log attributing a crash to SilverLining, we definitely want to see it so we can investigate what happened.

 

Sorry to be a stickler here, but unfounded claims that SkyMaxx Pro is somehow unstable can hurt sales, and it's how I earn a living!