XPX & xEnviro: KSFO to KLAX in a B733

[Guest Mik75]

Thank you!

I haven't done anything special here, Carlo! All shots are straight out of the sim, resized with Win Paint, and uploaded on 666kb.com. ;-)

[Bartolomeus 34]

Amazing set of shots. Looks great!

[Guest Mik75]

Thank you! ;-)

[wolke85 150]

And again: Great XPlane shots from Yours here Mik!

WOW!

[Guest Mik75]

Thanks so much, buddy!

xEnviro just makes me want to hit shift & space extremely often... ;-)

[CFIJose 5,485]

Those are some pretty amazin' pics Mike!

 

Thanks for sharing.

[avgaskoolaid 292]

What's it going to take Allen? Would you mind elaborating? Your thoughts could be useful.

 

JJ

I'm not the guy you quoted, but as it sounds like you're considering purchasing xEnviro I assume you'll appreciate as many points of view on the product you can get.

 

I have used both SMP v3 and xEnviro. Make no mistake that xEnviro fundamentally changes how weather is depicted in XPlane. Some people like the look, others don't, but nobody familiar with either product can deny this. Skymaxx pretties up the default clouds and tweaks their placement, but it does not do away with them altogether in favor of something completely new like XPlane does (unfortunately, I don't think that SMP v4 will improve this). Most importantly, I have not experienced any instant weather transitions over time or moving from place to place like I always saw in Skymax, even with Real Weather Connector, which was designed to fix this problem.  xE does not look nice in all circumstances, but it is absolutely a step in the right direction. It's expensive, but it does the work of 3 programs, Skymaxx, RealWeatherConnector, and FSGRW, which combined would cost more than xEnviro. There are still some bugs: the 'orange clouds at night' effect is far too pronounced, clouds can look low-resolution close up, and I've experienced the winds not changing from high altitude to low altitude as I descend on 2 occasions, making for 75+ knot crosswinds. However, I am happy with the purchase and have not considered moving back to SkyMaxx. 

 

Quick one-sentence summary: It makes XPlane weather something I actually like flying through, and not something I try to avoid.

[ryanbatc 12,770]

Dang!  Really nice set!  Haha at the mach readout in shot 9

[Pugilist2 878]

Impressive set of shots!

[Guest Mik75]

Thanks, guys!

It's even so much nicer to see it in person and in motion!

No matter wether you're sitting in a .737 (right, Ryan? ;-), flying at high flight levels, or down low and slow. I've stated that several times before, and I am absolutely convinced that weather never looked and felt more realistic in X-Plane before!

[Jean-Jacques 120]

I'm not the guy you quoted, but as it sounds like you're considering purchasing xEnviro I assume you'll appreciate as many points of view on the product you can get.

 

I have used both SMP v3 and xEnviro. Make no mistake that xEnviro fundamentally changes how weather is depicted in XPlane. Some people like the look, others don't, but nobody familiar with either product can deny this. Skymaxx pretties up the default clouds and tweaks their placement, but it does not do away with them altogether in favor of something completely new like XPlane does (unfortunately, I don't think that SMP v4 will improve this). Most importantly, I have not experienced any instant weather transitions over time or moving from place to place like I always saw in Skymax, even with Real Weather Connector, which was designed to fix this problem. xE does not look nice in all circumstances, but it is absolutely a step in the right direction. It's expensive, but it does the work of 3 programs, Skymaxx, RealWeatherConnector, and FSGRW, which combined would cost more than xEnviro. There are still some bugs: the 'orange clouds at night' effect is far too pronounced, clouds can look low-resolution close up, and I've experienced the winds not changing from high altitude to low altitude as I descend on 2 occasions, making for 75+ knot crosswinds. However, I am happy with the purchase and have not considered moving back to SkyMaxx.

 

Quick one-sentence summary: It makes XPlane weather something I actually like flying through, and not something I try to avoid.

Hi Hamoody, Thank you for your feedback. I truly appreciate you taking time to elaborate on your positive assessment of xEnviro. I purchased it and am amazed. It truly cranks up the immersion factor of XP11 and looking forward to it's enhancement in subsequent versions.

 

Regards,

 

JJ

[be77solo 125]

What's it going to take Allen? Would you mind elaborating? Your thoughts could be useful.

 

JJ

 

Hi JJ,  Honestly I'm just still too spoiled as a very happy AS2016/ASCA user on the P3D side.  As a long time user of ASN, things only got better with AS2016, and I'm just not quite ready to plunk down the $70 for xEnviro with what I've seen, even if that's not a fair comparison.  These shots look great, but I do a lot of bush/smaller plane flying and the screenshots I've seen in that scenario haven't been as convincing and just seem "flat".

 

Other immediate concerns holding me back are the lack of custom weather (I know historical weather is planned in a future update at some point), and the complaints I've read about lack of turbulence on the aircraft.  I love actually feeling the weather as much as seeing it, so that has me reluctant as well.

 

Excited to see what it grows into, but for my $70 I'm just not sold yet.  Very curious to see what SMPv4 offers as well, as I did enjoy my copy of SMPv2.

 

The most immediate problem though is the struggle I'm having to get XP10/11 to run well on my desktop using an AMD video card I built earlier this year.  This has really cooled my initial excitement to dive back in fully with the X-Plane series.  This however is by no means a knock against xEnviro of course.

[Jean-Jacques 120]

Hi JJ, Honestly I'm just still too spoiled as a very happy AS2016/ASCA user on the P3D side. As a long time user of ASN, things only got better with AS2016, and I'm just not quite ready to plunk down the $70 for xEnviro with what I've seen, even if that's not a fair comparison. These shots look great, but I do a lot of bush/smaller plane flying and the screenshots I've seen in that scenario haven't been as convincing and just seem "flat".

 

Other immediate concerns holding me back are the lack of custom weather (I know historical weather is planned in a future update at some point), and the complaints I've read about lack of turbulence on the aircraft. I love actually feeling the weather as much as seeing it, so that has me reluctant as well.

 

Excited to see what it grows into, but for my $70 I'm just not sold yet. Very curious to see what SMPv4 offers as well, as I did enjoy my copy of SMPv2.

 

The most immediate problem though is the struggle I'm having to get XP10/11 to run well on my desktop using an AMD video card I built earlier this year. This has really cooled my initial excitement to dive back in fully with the X-Plane series. This however is by no means a knock against xEnviro of course.

Hi Allen,

 

I will concede that after using ASN (I haven't used AS2016/ASCA), everything else seems 'not up to snuff' for now anyway. For me ASN for FSX/P3D is 'la crème de la crème' in terms of simulating weather and other atmospheric elements! But I'm done with FSX and P3D for various reasons including, among others, their high memory usage and high maintenance in terms of dollars and time (keeping ORBX addons up-to-date for example is almost a full-time job!). I find that XP offers me a more simple approach to simulating flight along with a very believable world 'out of the box' (airports, terrain) which can be enhanced at very little cost and more often free of charge because of very active and talented community members willing to share the result of their work. But, and there's always a 'but', XP's weather rendition is just unacceptable to me, especially after nearly a quarter century that XP was born (around 1992). But even with this serious deficiency along with others, its many favourable features cause my scale to tip towards XP. Luckily, a team of very talented individuals somewhere in Russia caused XP's world to become much more acceptable, and that's an understatement. Yes xEnviro lacks in certain areas. i.e., historic weather which you mentioned and a feature of ASN that I enjoyed very much but judging from the team's first cut at a believable weather engine for XP, I'm confident that things will get even better hopefully in the near future. I decided to show my support by purchasing xEnviro which in Canadian dollars was much more than the US $70 price. Flight simulation is one of my main hobbies which enrich my life.

 

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

Regards,

 

JJ

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

JJ

 

You forgot it has a great replay system also Jean  :wink: actually the AI Aircraft have service trucks and loading them also how cool is that and they actually look like believable aircraft 

[Jean-Jacques 120]

You forgot it has a great replay system also Jean  :wink: actually the AI Aircraft have service trucks and loading them also how cool is that and they actually look like believable aircraft

 

Hi Rich, Right on!

 

JJ