It looks llike xEnviro beat someone to the punch with their dynamic snow!

 

Way cool.

I'll believe it when I see it. Xenviro is king of promising stuff and taking years to deliver on only then to release buggy software that falls short of promises. Never say never but I have become a little cynical towards them after forking out 70 USD when they first released the add-on. They also do not seem to respect the comments/feedback of their user-base from what I have seen on the org forums. Poor customer relations. Let's see.

Until xEnviro allow users to set their own weather and use it offline it remains deactivated for me. I wish they'd put more effort into addressing the many gripes and issues with the current product rather than trying to make tech demos to wow new users.

It does not use shader tricks, does not work with orthos and has a fairly complicated installation procedure, but it's the only option for seasonal textures so far.

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/147671-four-seasons/

Edited August 23, 20187 yr by Bjoern

43 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

It does not use shader tricks, does not work with orthos and has a fairly complicated installation procedure, but it's the only option for seasonal textures so far.

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/147671-four-seasons/

Useless since it does not work with orthos! + it does not look natural when fly from one region to next where there should and should not be snow.

7 hours ago, steve310002 said:

I'll believe it when I see it. Xenviro is king of promising stuff and taking years to deliver on only then to release buggy software that falls short of promises. Never say never but I have become a little cynical towards them after forking out 70 USD when they first released the add-on. They also do not seem to respect the comments/feedback of their user-base from what I have seen on the org forums. Poor customer relations. Let's see.

It's been pretty buggy since day one for me. Plus the long development cycles that only introduce new bugs 😞 It would be nice if they could just fix what they already have! But I am keeping my fingers crossed for the next update! Hopefully, we can see some screenshots soon of Active Sky endeavor into XP!

3 hours ago, tonywob said:

Until xEnviro allow users to set their own weather and use it offline it remains deactivated for me. I wish they'd put more effort into addressing the many gripes and issues with the current product rather than trying to make tech demos to wow new users.

I kind of like not being able to set my own weather. It forces me to chase bad weather in locations I would not normally fly!!!

2 hours ago, strider1 said:

Useless since it does not work with orthos! + it does not look natural when fly from one region to next where there should and should not be snow.

It isn't perfect, but then nothing else will work with orthos either. You buy into a fixed, "sunny sky at noon on a Summer day" terrain model with orthos. Which is one reason (among many) why some of us don't use orthos. 🙂

I do agree it's not ideal for transitional areas. On the other hand, it's the only way at present to make flying in some areas like the mountain ranges in the Pacific Northwest and most of Alaska look more realistic. 

 

1 hour ago, strider1 said:

I kind of like not being able to set my own weather. It forces me to chase bad weather in locations I would not normally fly!!!

I like challenging weather too, but I fly only light GA and helicopters. In the areas I like to fly, there are extreme storm-driven winds that would mean staying grounded for part of the year if I couldn't adjust the weather.

We all have different approaches to flight sims though, and I understand why dealing with heavy weather is attractive when you're flying something that's able to handle it.

25 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

It isn't perfect, but then nothing else will work with orthos either. You buy into a fixed, "sunny sky at noon on a Summer day" terrain model with orthos. Which is one reason (among many) why some of us don't use orthos. 🙂

I do agree it's not ideal for transitional areas. On the other hand, it's the only way at present to make flying in some areas like the mountain ranges in the Pacific Northwest and most of Alaska look more realistic. 

 

I like challenging weather too, but I fly only light GA and helicopters. In the areas I like to fly, there are extreme storm-driven winds that would mean staying grounded for part of the year if I couldn't adjust the weather.

We all have different approaches to flight sims though, and I understand why dealing with heavy weather is attractive when you're flying something that's able to handle it.

You do have the option to disable xenviro from the plugin menu, then you can use default weather!

1 hour ago, strider1 said:

You do have the option to disable xenviro from the plugin menu, then you can use default weather!

I did try that for a while (bought it when it first came out). It's too big a change in the overall look of clouds and sky colors to hop back and forth, almost like flying two different flight sims. Might work for someone else, though. Or anyone flying in an area without extremes in the weather.