X-Enviro is OUT

[pilot83 387]

Seriously... If they had said 'as we advance towards v1.2 or v1.3 I might have thought 'Ok, let's see where this goes'. But NOW ALREADY they are talking about v2...? While v1 has been released a few days ago? Seriously? And only REWORKED?

 

I hope I understand them wrong but I think I see dollar signs in their eyes. 70 is more verified already and then this...

Things could change though and this might not be final or official...we have to wait and see...but i was surprised positively with the immediate support on their facebook page. Also someone wrote on their facebook page the custom weather option will be added in the next update, but need to verify this statement.

[jcomm 5,890]

From a post I did at the .ORG and was answered by the developers I understood something which pretty much justifies why X-Enviro can be so much more close to real in setting it's weather around the area our virtual aircraft is flying through, even with the limitations still imposed by X-Plane, and I strongly hope Ben and Austin can relax in the XP11 cycle, as soon as possible, to at least open room for 3pds to do their work.

 

Some can recall a post  I made yesterday regarding the limitations that any weather injector suffers from when using only observation data ( METAR and even some PIREP / AIREP / TAF / GAMET ) - the height of some cloud bases above the MSA at a given area / airfield.

 

To cope with this limitations products like Active Sky use a sophisticated network of compound info, pretty much like those I use professionaly in my daily work at the MetOffice. Most of the forecast and nowcast products are available through some well known sources. We use ECMWF and Meteo-France and run our own local models for mainland Portugal and the Azores and Madeira islands which need a much higher resolution. But access and processing of Radar and Satellite imagery can actually give the additional information used by sophisticated weather injectors, and even access to syntectic satellite images that display the forecasts ( from the numerical models and ensembles ) as satellite images !

 

From the devs answer at the .ORG I believe they also use some of those sources to build the huge area in use around your coordinates, in order to achieve the smooth and ultra-realistic transition I am seeing in all movies and shots I've been able to see around.

 

It's expensive, just as most add-ons for XP still are, due to the rather smaller user base, but with the advent of XP11 and more users starting to move into this platform, I believe that the increase in sales, and the competition, will help bringing prices down to at least where we're used to in MSFS ....

 

This being said, I didn't buy X-Enviro ( yet ). Truth is I did buy XP11 more as a way of supporting it than as a wish I had. My main flight simulators are still IL2 Battle of  and DCS World, where even some aspects of weather ( very important for aviation ! ) and the Moon!!!!! are correctly represented. There is simply no graphical sky representation ( even if for a very restricted set of fixed weather scenarios ) like what I have in IL2, where sometimes even cloud streets that we glider pilots love so much,  form !!!

[sparkie66 81]

Why do we in the xp community put up with buying semi finished products.

 

I see so many threads on incomplete xp addons it unfortunately drives me more and more away from the platform.

 

Compare prices all you like but stuff from say hifi or orbx just works. As advertised! Whereas the advertisement in our community usually > the actual product, and i dont understand the defending if that practice. Sometimes its like i stumbled into a linux forum.

[Guest Mik75]

Just a quick question, because I couldn't find any definitive answer anywhere.

Do the xEnviro clouds draw shadows on the ground?

That is essential for me. As good as it looks, but I'd certainly wouldn't buy it if the cloud shadows wouldn't work.

Thanks for clarification.

[jafferhussain11 34]

Why do we in the xp community put up with buying semi finished products.

 

I see so many threads on incomplete xp addons it unfortunately drives me more and more away from the platform.

 

Compare prices all you like but stuff from say hifi or orbx just works. As advertised! Whereas the advertisement in our community usually > the actual product, and i dont understand the defending if that practice. Sometimes its like i stumbled into a linux forum.

absolutelty true ! this is what i felt when i moved to XP and saw that most of the addons were half baked so to speak,but i hope we have more devs from fsx side come here too, ASsky,A2A etc...

[jcomm 5,890]

Hi Roland,

 

I understand your "pain"... As a DCS World user, I buy their ultra sophisticated ww2 and helicopter modules and sometimes wait more than a year for the final release, but they're still pretty much high standards from the early release!

 

Same applies to Aerofly FS 2, IL2 Battle of Stalingrad and probably many other sims...

 

I guess it has to do with the user base, and the required investment.

 

But heck, even PMDG fails!  See what happened to their 777, and I have reported some months ago a bug in the display of the speed tape, before first flap retraction, and it was never updated, and probably will not be...

 

And, AFAIK, X-Enviro is already very usable!

[pilot83 387]

Why do we in the xp community put up with buying semi finished products.

 

I see so many threads on incomplete xp addons it unfortunately drives me more and more away from the platform.

 

Compare prices all you like but stuff from say hifi or orbx just works. As advertised! Whereas the advertisement in our community usually > the actual product, and i dont understand the defending if that practice. Sometimes its like i stumbled into a linux forum.

Xplane just started to get more addons, this is the second weather add on along with Sky Max Pro...and its their first release. I dont think its fair to compare to well established developers since years and years. I think releasing an unfinished product or a product in beta will help the developer to shape their products towards what the customer wants by getting all the feedback from the users and improving the product. Im sure that the other sim's developer first release had many bugs and issues they improved it with time towards what their customers wanted.

[jafferhussain11 34]

yup and they even had a whole fly by overhaul after many months ithink , but they went on to deliver an absolutely solid product which is the 777

 

"even PMDG fails!  See what happened to their 777, and I have reported some months ago a bug in the display of the speed tape, before first flap retraction, and it was never updated, and probably will not be..."..

 

 

[sparkie66 81]

Xplane just started to get more addons, this is the second weather add on along with Sky Max Pro...and its their first release. I dont think its fair to compare to well established developers since years and years. I think releasing an unfinished product or a product in beta will help the developer to shape their products towards what the customer wants by getting all the feedback from the users and improving the product. Im sure that the other sim's developer first release had many bugs and issues they improved it with time towards what their customers wanted.

For 70 bucks i think a dev is fair game for comparison.

[carlito777 712]

I don't understand all the complaining. Nobody has to buy the product, right? And from the videos I have seen so far, it already looks much better than Skymaxx Pro which is a nice toy for screenshots but doesn't display weather that comes anywhere close to reality. I'm really on the fence of buying X-Enviro. The only thing that is holding me back is the hefty price tag...

 

Here is another video on X-Enviro where the sky looks absolutely realistic.

[jcomm 5,890]

I fully concur Carlo.

[tonywob 4,768]

I'm waiting first to see what SMP4 brings. From q8pilot's video, it looks like it has some issues, but the biggest for me is that it can't use another weather engine and it doesn't respect the weather settings in X-Plane. I'm sure once SMP4 comes out, we'll see some decent comparison reviews.

 

Other than that, it's pretty awesome that we now have choice and competition is really good for us consumers 

[carlito777 712]

I'm waiting first to see what SMP4 brings.

 

That was also my plan, especially since I already own SMP v3 and the upgrade is only 20 dollars. However, from their screenshots it doesn't look promising. Looks just like SMP v3. Still completely unrealistic. But let's wait and see.

[pilot83 387]

That was also my plan, especially since I already own SMP v3 and the upgrade is only 20 dollars. However, from their screenshots it doesn't look promising. Looks just like SMP v3. Still completely unrealistic. But let's wait and see.

me too 20 usd upgrade only but not many screenshots at high altitude, though they said they fixed the horizon and draw distance emptiness at the horizon, the box effect. Was there any FL 300 screenshots?

 

Double your maximum cloud draw area! Big performance improvements allow clouds to be drawn across an area up to 320 km across surrounding your plane. Go ahead and crank up SMP's cloud draw area setting and achieve fast, realistic scenes at FL300 and above

[hhbrbg 136]

I don't use facebook.

now we are two...