Ok, so far i am a little bit dissapointet. Contrails disappear over white clouds, and if you want to fly above FL300 with clouds to the horizon, you have to choose the highest cloud draw distance, which results in low FPS. And my map stopped working, but i don't know if Skymaxx broke it or its just a Xplane bug.

 

This is what i can say after one hour flight.

 

Will most definitely wait for this one. That didn't sound too good... 

What the trailer of Skymaxx 4 hides - as far as I can tell - is that the weather is the same all around.

No fronts in the distance or clear on one side and clouds build up on the other side.

Clouds look all the same type - cumulus.

 

Wouldn't a proper weather plug-in solve that....? I love how you fly from one kind of weather to another in P3D with ASN. The sky constantly changes. The same weather everywhere sounds very boring.

 

 

Wouldn't a proper weather plug-in solve that....? I love how you fly from one kind of weather to another in P3D with ASN. The sky constantly changes. The same weather everywhere sounds very boring.

 

That, and the correct daylight, Moon and it's phases, FSLabs A320, RealAir and A2A modules, Seasonal textures, still make a big difefrence between the two platforms, no matter how really nice XP11 is looking already in beta...

 

Well, there are expections, I guess, like Goran's SaaB 340 which I do not own myself but bought to offer some friend when it was released, and had the chance to test at his home, some stuff by Felis ( trully UNIQUE ), and probably the iXEG 737 too...

 

The upcoming Citation 500 will probably set a new reference in terms of study-type stuff for X-plane...

Well.... :-/

Oh, wow. Looks exactly the same as SMP v3. Completely unrealistic and only cumulus around the aircraft.

Those shots look exactly like V3 and therefore completely unrealistic. Very disappointing.

Unfortunately it does. Maybe someone is so kind to show a 1:1 comparison shot with XEnviro, same location, same time, same weather. I won't find the time to do so before later today. 

Unfortunately it does. Maybe someone is so kind to show a 1:1 comparison shot with XEnviro, same location, same time, same weather. I won't find the time to do so before later today.

 

Based on these first impressions I will certainly not buy SMP v4. Not even at 20 dollars.

Even this screenshot doesn't convince me. This is not how broken or overcast looks from FL200-300. Anyways. I'm done complaining. I won't buy. Nevertheless, I wish you all the best with your new release. There are certainly VFR pilots who will love the puffy clouds.

 

 

I wish you all the best with your new release.

 

Thanks, Carlo!

Ok, well... so if I want to enjoy nice weather I will have to use P3D, it seems. Apparently neither SMP4 or X-Enviro will do the job as ASN does with HDEv2 clouds. XP11 is a clear weather sim right now and that does get kinda boring after a while. And I don't dare yet to buy any addons for XP: I want to be totally sure it is worth it. Bummer, because I really hate to go back to the late loading scenery of P3D... I just can't, really. Shoot...

I had a quick flight in X-Plane 11. My initial impressions are that visually it's not massively different than SMP v3. My frame rate did plummet from around 50fps to 30fps which I think is related to the cloud draw distance, so I need to play around with the sliders more. It looks very nice though in XP11 combined with the new lighting and after a short flight I'm quite happy with it. I only flew low-level (around 2500ft) in the default Cessna, but it beats the default clouds hand-down (At least they are white and not a nasty dark colour). 

 

Some things I did notice it did that I don't remember from previous versions are what looks like patches of low-level fog, e.g. Flying over a forest I noticed small patches of fog or cloud below me and this looked very realistic. 

 

I will play more and post screenshots later. I'm interested in how it looks for an airliner, and also in mountainous terrain.

Well, contrary to others, I am very well satisfied with the work done by the SkyMaxx-Pro team.  XP-11 now looks great and I, not expecting that my computer will turn into the real world, consider this project a success. Remember, the program can only generate the weather conditions fed into it and I doubt that anyone has experienced all of them yet.  You have the option to extend those clouds to where ever you want at the expense of valuable framerates.  Those default clouds have turned into beautiful, puffy, and, to me, realistic clouds as opposed to the dark grey presentations that the default program renders.

 

I have been a SkyMaxx-Pro user since day one and have always been satisfied with the results and for a $20 payment, I have invested just a little more in total for years of beautiful clouds than the competitor costs for a one shot purchase.

 

Thanks Cameron for your efforts and this beautiful product.

 

John