MaxxFX and Ortho4XP

[jdr37 4]

Can anyone tell me if MaxxFX works OK in conjunction with Ortho4XP.

[Colonel X 1,430]

2 hours ago, jdr37 said:

Can anyone tell me if MaxxFX works OK in conjunction with Ortho4XP.

Yes it does. But instead I'd recommend Reshade, it's free and a lot more powerful: reshade.me, it is however not as convenient to set up. But once you wrapped your head around it, it's essential.

[jdr37 4]

Thanks for your response. I have seen your previous posts RE Reshade but also saw a lot of posts RE problems, crashing on exit primarily, and also saw some videos of both Reshade and MaxxFX and it seemed to me that MaxxFX rendered a better picture with dark green forest which is what I basically want improvement on.

What are your thoughts about the crashing and coloration?

 

[Bob Tildesley 6]

There is also XVision which does wonders for the shaders....and a bunch of other stuff.

[Colonel X 1,430]

X-Vision is essential if you are looking to improve scenery and atmosphere. Look into their online manual to see exactly whats possible. Better greens for sure. It's the one add-on I believe every XP user needs.

Reshade is a post processing tool that adds effects on top - color calibration, noise, bloom, chroma effects, vignette - use it to make the sim shine and calibrate it to your display, but do not expect wonders. It's free so why not try. Only if you like tinkering and tweaking though. Out of the 50 or so available shaders, you only need a handful. Pirate Bloom for example makes the night lighting really shine, and blows up the bright parts of the sky - a final step in improving lighting in XP. It's very effective in improving some long standing issues with XPs outdated sky rendering, especially the blending of terrain and sky and the good ol' gradient banding in the sky. Reshade is able to fix that, and that's a thing.

Reshade does not crash at all, those crashes were related to older versions.

Edited September 13, 2019 by Colonel X

[Colonel X 1,430]

Oh and if you are looking to improve forests - the free HD Forests by Mister X is a must have.

[Sethos 4,335]

13 hours ago, jdr37 said:

Thanks for your response. I have seen your previous posts RE Reshade but also saw a lot of posts RE problems, crashing on exit primarily, and also saw some videos of both Reshade and MaxxFX and it seemed to me that MaxxFX rendered a better picture with dark green forest which is what I basically want improvement on.

What are your thoughts about the crashing and coloration?

 

The ReShade crashing was in a previous version, that's why people were using a very old version to fix it. The latest release(s) work perfectly with X-Plane 🙂

[Paraffin 2,197]

15 hours ago, Colonel X said:

X-Vision is essential if you are looking to improve scenery and atmosphere. Look into their online manual to see exactly whats possible. Better greens for sure. It's the one add-on I believe every XP user needs.

Since we're all about to move to the Vulkan/Metal graphics API in the very near future, that brings up some questions about this type of add-on. There is a prominent warning on the X-Vision web site: "Please keep in mind that the further functionality of the tool is fully dependent on new X-Plane versions functionality" (following Ben's advice that art datarefs can be changed at any time).

That's made me a little nervous about buying X-Vision, especially with Vulkan/Metal on the horizon. Has the X-Vision developer mentioned anything about plans for the transition to Vulkan/Metal?

[Colonel X 1,430]

Vulkan is at least 12 months from going final. It's 20 bucks.

X-Vision is a business. I'd expect them to do anything in their power to stay relevant after the switch. And Ben has mentioned, Vulkan will not improve any graphics (only performance), so X-Vision will be as needed then. X-Plane will still rely on shaders - I don't see why X-Vision would not be able to continue improving them. 

Edited September 14, 2019 by Colonel X