X-Enviro seems in many ways about clever trickery which only looks good from a distance. I agree in some cases it looks stunning (from a distance) like the video above showing NYC at dusk but watch the following video near the start at 1:41 where you see this weird 2d sprite effect where the clouds are literally billboards that follow you around and rotate to face your direction. I was seriously considering buying it until I saw this. 

 

 

thanks for that video,  thats why i love streamers.  I was on the fence, but that sure did convince me otherwise

Well I think we ought to give xEnviro a chance.

 

The price is relative; if you have upgraded SMP since v1 you have often paid for the upgrade to next version. Add RWC into the mix and things get pricey. XE I believe gets you free upgrades for the life of XP11 (correct me if I'm wrong please).

 

Also this is just v1; other weather tools have had years to evolve and improve. I expect to see the same thing with XE.

 

So I have bought this and will probably buy SMP4 too as a way of supporting and nurturing XP developers.

I have upgraded SMP from V1 - V3 and never use them - because, I´m flying very often (in real) and never seen ONLY cumulus clouds (whichever type they are) but ruther stratus clouds (middle, northern europe), except thunderstorms....etc....The problem with SMP is that ONLY cumulus clouds are depicted (most of the time), yes I know there are some type of stratus clouds, but I never seen them in the XP10 flying with real weather. so the shape and look are great with SMP (no doubt about that) - performance is good, more or less, but pretty unrealistic - nice for screenshots - xEnviro is opposite - the clouds are not so nice (at the moment) but the last 2 test - flights represented that what I see "out of the window" - good performance, great "workaround" of the sudden weather-rewrites (very smooth so far) and good workaround of the ungrateful XP weather "engine"   :wink: -  so for me the favorite one ( I said for me, you have YOUR choice) !

 

I have upgraded SMP from V1 - V3 and never use them - because, I´m flying very often (in real) and never seen ONLY cumulus clouds (whichever type they are) but ruther stratus clouds (middle, northern europe), except thunderstorms....etc....The problem with SMP is that ONLY cumulus clouds are depicted (most of the time), yes I know there are some type of stratus clouds, but I never seen them in the XP10 flying with real weather. so the shape and look are great with SMP (no doubt about that) - performance is good, more or less, but pretty unrealistic - nice for screenshots - xEnviro is opposite - the clouds are not so nice (at the moment) but the last 2 test - flights represented that what I see "out of the window" - good performance, great "workaround" of the sudden weather-rewrites (very smooth so far) and good workaround of the ungrateful XP weather "engine"   :wink: -  so for me the favorite one ( I said for me, you have YOUR choice) !

 

Thanks! Very helpful feedback.

Lets wait for SMPv4 and see the reviews on it though personally will upgrade to v4 because i have v3 already but i want to share one screenshot for x-enviro at 36,000 feet above NYC
I unticked light scattering in x-enviro settings and i changed manually in data ref editor the value of the following line to 20 "atmo/inscatter_gain_raleigh=20", x-enviro light scattering was setting it to 2, This gave me the blue haze. I will ask x-enviro if they can give us a slider for this value.

 

http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/mediawiki/DataRefEditor

 

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People tend to forget that xEnviro does a spectacular job at drawing clouds at the horizon. It's only when you get really close it falls short. This is the closest feeling of ASN and REX combination I had in X-Plane. If they can improve the look of the close clouds in future versions and give us the option to reduce wind smoothing, increase gusts and haze, in my opinion, I won't have a reason to go back to using SMP.

 

While SMP creates good looking clouds it falls very short with the clouds on the horizon. The clouds also don't feel realistic for my taste.

 

EDIT: I would really like to share some screenshots or even a video but I fly with multiple monitors.

thanks for that video,  thats why i love streamers.  I was on the fence, but that sure did convince me otherwise

I feel stuck in two minds about this. The streaming video I posted looks pretty bad in places but then you see other videos like this one below that look pretty amazing. 

 

 

The creator of this video recommends in the description with staying with SMP for the moment. However, it does look very nice, again from a distance, and I notice it looks much better when ever it is dusk or dawn. Its frustrating as I see so much potential if it weren't for the awful 2d clouds and the 70 USD asking price.

Lets wait for SMPv4 and see the reviews on it though personally will upgrade to v4 because i have v3 already but i want to share one screenshot for x-enviro at 36,000 feet above NYC

I unticked light scattering in x-enviro settings and i changed manually in data ref editor the value of the following line to 20 "atmo/inscatter_gain_raleigh=20", x-enviro light scattering was setting it to 2, This gave me the blue haze. I will ask x-enviro if they can give us a slider for this value.

 

http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/mediawiki/DataRefEditor

 

img hosting

 

That looks good, much better than what SMP3 does at the moment just drawing a horde of cumulus clouds. But those look like 2D sprites no?

I'll give a quick run-down now that I've had some time to play with the software and get acquainted with it for the benefit of people comparing it to SMP. It's true that xEnviro is more expensive than SMP, but it simply has more features than the SMP base pack. It does the work of SMP and RWC, which are $60 together, and also FSGRW, which would bring the total up to ~$90. Right now, I have some complaints with the software, namely the inability to look up METAR data and the overdone orange cloud effect, but no software can be expected to be perfect on v1.0. So, I'm happy with my purchase so far. It allows me to finally ditch those awful cotton puffs hovering around that make up all weather in XP, even with SMP+RWC+NOAA. Anyone who has ever been outside before can see that this depiction is an absolute joke, and from what I've seen it doesn't look like SMP v4 will fix this. Considering xEnviro's depiction of smooth clouds that aren't just chains of puffs, and the amazing dynamic sky colors, I'm really excited for the future of the product. However, my excitement is all dependent on the timing of the next bugfix. If they lay out their roadmap soon, and deliver the fix within a few weeks, it will show that they are taking their product seriously. If they talk up the fix for months and months but don't deliver (looking at you, LES), xEnviro and the devs will earn a place on my "go **** yourself" list and I'll give SMP v4 a closer look. 

Please note that all these shots are taken with the blue haze tweak, light scattering box unticked and "atmo/inscatter_gain_raleigh=20"






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Please note that all these shots are taken with the blue haze tweak, light scattering box unticked and "atmo/inscatter_gain_raleigh=20"

 

 

 

 

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A shame about the 2D clouds but they still look good from a distance.

EDIT: I would really like to share some screenshots or even a video but I fly with multiple monitors.

but I can share few of them :-) : some of them are with standard xEnviro (all settings activated in xenviro) settings and some of them (more blue haze) are with my scattering settings (I haven´t found my optimum yet, but I´m searching for the best settings)

look at the cloud draw distance :-) ! yes, there is some lot of work to do but for the first release xenviro is doing a very good job (an I do not belong to any "beta" team it´s only my opinion) and sorry for the image size (3 x 27")

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How did you take those pictures?

but I can share few of them :-) : some of them are with standard xEnviro (all settings activated in xenviro) settings and some of them (more blue haze) are with my scattering settings (I haven´t found my optimum yet, but I´m searching for the best settings)

look at the cloud draw distance :-) ! yes, there is some lot of work to do but for the first release xenviro is doing a very good job (an I do not belong to any "beta" team it´s only my opinion) and sorry for the image size (3 x 27")

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those are some stunning shots. Say what you want about XE, but SMP (at least v3) never looks this good.

yeah jet airline operation at 30k feet seems like one of the real strong points of xenviro. Those shots blow v3 out of the water