SkyMaxx Pro 4.5 in beta

[Guest]

This sounds promising:

http://sundog-soft.com/2017/04/skymaxx-pro-4-5-coming/

• "Procedural sky box (based on the Hosek model) to accurately simulate sky colors for any time, place, and weather
• Improved blending of distant clouds into the sky
• Cloud draw distance increased by 20%
• Stutters with high cloud draw area settings reduced
• More realistic and distinctive representation of “HD cloud puffs” stratiform clouds
• More variety of cloud shapes and positions
• New, much-improved cloud textures for “crisp” and “soft” cumulus clouds
• Added glare effect surrounding the sun
• Our own ephemeris model, for accurate placement of the sun, moon, stars, and planets at night
• Accurate moon phases and orientation of the moon
• Various bug fixes and graphical polish"

I didn't purchase X-Enviro yet, so I am curious what the competition has to offer. The single screenshot surely doesn't look too bad, but better performance is also quite important.

[tonywob 4,768]

3 minutes ago, domae001 said:

Our own ephemeris model, for accurate placement of the sun, moon, stars, and planets at night

Our friend @jcomm will be pleased ;-)

[jcomm 5,890]

Wow!  I'll be back to XP11 if that works as advertised!

Grrrrreaaaaaat !!!!!

[JLuis 409]

Thanks for info, but I will pass.

[hjsmuc 393]

Who will be the vendor for this?

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, hjsmuc said:

Who will be the vendor for this?

I do not know, but I presume it will continue to be X-Aviation 

[hjsmuc 393]

So I'll pass. Quite happy with XEnviro anyway. 

[jcomm 5,890]

For me having the Moon and Sun rise / set times fixed, as well as Moon phase, is really a MUST!

[hjsmuc 393]

Just now, jcomm said:

For me having the Moon and Sun rise / set times fixed, as well as Moon phase, is really a MUST!

Agree, but I am hopeful that someone else is also offering a fix for it in the future, be it freeware or payware. Can't be that difficult. Still wondering why it's not part of the stock solution (I know, priorities )

 

[jcomm 5,890]

1 hour ago, hjsmuc said:

Agree, but I am hopeful that someone else is also offering a fix for it in the future, be it freeware or payware. Can't be that difficult. Still wondering why it's not part of the stock solution (I know, priorities )

 

Yeah, I never really understood why it isn't Heck! ELITE, my IFR sim, is doing it since the early nineties, MSFS starting with fs2004, Flight Gear from it's first version, and combat flight simulators like DCS World and IL-2 Battle of do it too...

Aerofly FS 2 does not :-/, neither Aerowinx PSX...

[avgaskoolaid 292]

I'll reserve judgement until they post more screenshots. I'm absolutely loving xEnviro, but I feel like the developer doesn't have his priorities organized properly- the 1.07 update is taking so long because he's totally changing the cloud rendering system from 2D to 3D clouds, which is great but it's more something you'd expect to see in 1.5 or 2.0- there are many more small bugs/missing features that need to be fixed first. If Skymaxx 4.5 fixes that awful default cloud rendering look, where pretty much the only clouds you see are groups of puffs floating around close to your aircraft, in favor of a look more like xEnviro, I might be tempted to switch back at least for the time being. An overhaul of the night sky and more natural dynamic sky textures (compared to XP's default system) are something I'm really interested in seeing. 

[Paraffin 2,197]

2 hours ago, hamoody said:

I'll reserve judgement until they post more screenshots. I'm absolutely loving xEnviro, but I feel like the developer doesn't have his priorities organized properly- the 1.07 update is taking so long because he's totally changing the cloud rendering system from 2D to 3D clouds, which is great but it's more something you'd expect to see in 1.5 or 2.0- there are many more small bugs/missing features that need to be fixed first.

Well, it's a new product, and I think it's good that they're responding to one of the criticisms of the first release -- that clouds were too often very obvious 2D billboards. If they can move to 3D (or more likely a mix of close 3D and distant 2D) without too much reduction in frame rate, I'll be impressed.

I bought XEnviro to try out, but even with 3D  clouds I'll probably keep it shelved, because they confirmed it will never have full manual control of the weather. For the locations and plane types I usually fly, it's a deal-breaker to only have real injected weather. It would ground me too often.

So I have SkyMaxx Pro v4 too, but I haven't re-installed it yet because I've been testing the new default clouds in XP11. Which are pretty good! I think the need for an add-on weather plugin is a bit less now than it used to be in XP10, but if you look at the feature list for both SkyMaxx Pro and XEnviro, they both bring some features that you don't get in the base sim. I'm looking forward to seeing what this new version of SkyMaxx looks like.

[Jimm 437]

I would be interested, if they could figure out how to not get the weather to "pop in".  In my experience, both with XP and other rival sims, the weather always seems to pop in, instead of a progressive transition.  I have seen this happen with XE, and at inopportune times, and I have seen the frustrated users deal with it, usually by turning off XE, until the flight was over.

I currently use the default weather, which has come a long way, but still has a ways to go before it qualifies as a worthy alternative.  XE has been tempting, at some times, appealing in what it can provide, but I've been listening to everyone's assessment of it, and it hasn't been convincing enough to switch.  I passed up SkyMaxx's offer to upgrade from V3, again, for the reason I mentioned initially, so with the emergence of further refinements, I am all ears for now.

[Pugilist2 878]

If SkyMaxx Pro v4.5 gets rid of their popcorn clouds, increases the draw distance, and gets some realistic sky colors like xEnviro's, I will purchase

[Colonel X 1,428]

This looks like a substantial improvement. Nice to see that they aren't giving up now that Laminar has upped their own cloud game.