Freeware volumetric clouds experimental release

[Colonel X 1,430]

3 hours ago, mSparks said:

 

Yeah thanks, I pass! I think we have enough half-bred, worse than default alternatives already.

This is for Laminar to fix. Everybody tried, everybody failed.

[Humpty 751]

Math is torture

Edited July 28, 2020 by HumptyDumpty

[mSparks 2,086]

2 hours ago, Colonel X said:

Yeah thanks, I pass! I think we have enough half-bred, worse than default alternatives already.

This is for Laminar to fix. Everybody tried, everybody failed.

If you're pitching for a refund I'm afraid there is a strict no refunds policy on all freeware.

Could be worse though, you could have placed your bets on Microsofts newest version of flight.

Edited July 28, 2020 by mSparks

[Bjoern 1,157]

4 hours ago, Colonel X said:

Yeah thanks, I pass! I think we have enough half-bred, worse than default alternatives already.

This is for Laminar to fix. Everybody tried, everybody failed.

Thanks for your opinion on a free open-source project. I will advise the author to cease all development because it does not conform to your standards.

[Colonel X 1,430]

5 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

Thanks for your opinion on a free open-source project. I will advise the author to cease all development because it does not conform to your standards.

Yeah I am fully aware of the fact that my comment was unhelpful and superfluous. But then again, I am just speaking my mind. It's a culmination of the emotions I have towards X-Plane's various cloud add-ons. They're just all pretty bad, and I am really tired of this (after having easily spent $100+ on sky add-ons alone). You now see dozens of games with better cloud/weather depiction, and you don't even fly in these games. In X-Plane, the sky is the main environment you're in for most of the time. I just can't put up with it anymore. Nobody can fix this except for Laminar. It's ok to have freeware hobby projects, but none of these will ever cut it, as the "marriage" of terrain and sky at the horizon will never look right with X-Plane's current (current since early 2000s) band-aid sky box technology. That's also where the most promising of all, X-Enviro, fails, and it's only Laminar to blame for not providing a framework where the sky can be integrated seamlessly. I know I shouldn't be criticising freeware, nobody should. But in the context of the overall state here, I do think it's relevant and quite a few folks may feel the same.  

[mSparks 2,086]

1 hour ago, Colonel X said:

and it's only Laminar to blame for not providing a framework

That, and the fact not very many people have the RTX3080 required to do much better.

In VR these are roughly equal to truesky VR on the PS4. So if you really have a good idea of what is required to do better then literally the entire industry would love to know it.

[jspahn 268]

2 hours ago, Colonel X said:

Yeah I am fully aware of the fact that my comment was unhelpful and superfluous. But then again, I am just speaking my mind. It's a culmination of the emotions I have towards X-Plane's various cloud add-ons. They're just all pretty bad, and I am really tired of this (after having easily spent $100+ on sky add-ons alone). You now see dozens of games with better cloud/weather depiction, and you don't even fly in these games. In X-Plane, the sky is the main environment you're in for most of the time. I just can't put up with it anymore. Nobody can fix this except for Laminar. It's ok to have freeware hobby projects, but none of these will ever cut it, as the "marriage" of terrain and sky at the horizon will never look right with X-Plane's current (current since early 2000s) band-aid sky box technology. That's also where the most promising of all, X-Enviro, fails, and it's only Laminar to blame for not providing a framework where the sky can be integrated seamlessly. I know I shouldn't be criticising freeware, nobody should. But in the context of the overall state here, I do think it's relevant and quite a few folks may feel the same.  

Unfortunately, for you, justifying your criticism just makes you look very sad...

Sorry but that’s very rude and to be honest even your criticism of payware is more of an opinion piece than anything....

[Colonel X 1,430]

Very rude, I don't know. How about honest, or outspoken, direct, cynical, angry, maybe even educated? Makes me look sad? Don't know about that either. Are you a counselor?

I appreciate your efforts with SkyMaxx (bought it twice), but as I wrote earlier, I think it's also held back by Laminar. It had its time, 2015ish. It's 2020 now.

Of course it's just my opinion. 

[GoranM 3,764]

3 hours ago, Colonel X said:

Very rude, I don't know. How about honest, or outspoken, direct, cynical, angry, maybe even educated? Makes me look sad? Don't know about that either. Are you a counselor?

I appreciate your efforts with SkyMaxx (bought it twice), but as I wrote earlier, I think it's also held back by Laminar. It had its time, 2015ish. It's 2020 now.

Of course it's just my opinion. 

Honestly, we DO get it.  There are people, such as yourself, who now think X-Plane, and everything about it, is outdated, ugly, obsolete, etc...

But it's also your opinion.  It's obvious X-Plane isn't for you, so wouldn't it make more logical sense for you to frequent the new FS2020 forums, instead of constantly hanging around here, talking about how bad X-Plane is. There are those of us here who actually enjoy X-Plane, and having one or more people in here, constantly hammering into us at how bad it is in the eyes of those few who hate it, is really off-putting.  Just let us enjoy it.  It's not too much to ask.  No one is holding a gun to your head.

Who knows, maybe one day X-Plane will have improved enough for you to dip your toes in it once again.  

[Colonel X 1,430]

Um Goran I think you're mixing something up here. I have been a diehard XP fan for almost 10 years now. I have more bans for evangelizing X-Plane in the P3D forum than any other user here. I am always backing Laminar and their lean and mean approach.

However, as you can see, I am also fed up with band aiding X-Plane clouds/weather, I have spent hundreds of hours doing so already, starting in 2012. Austin has his own vision, he is the boss, and he failed to align them with industry standards. He doesn't even seem to understand the issue. 

It's all good, but can I please have my rant?

[GoranM 3,764]

1 hour ago, Colonel X said:

Um Goran I think you're mixing something up here. I have been a diehard XP fan for almost 10 years now. I have more bans for evangelizing X-Plane in the P3D forum than any other user here. I am always backing Laminar and their lean and mean approach.

However, as you can see, I am also fed up with band aiding X-Plane clouds/weather, I have spent hundreds of hours doing so already, starting in 2012. Austin has his own vision, he is the boss, and he failed to align them with industry standards. He doesn't even seem to understand the issue. 

It's all good, but can I please have my rant?

Who determines the industry standards?

And Austin doesn't let everyone know his complete thought process behind what goes into X-Plane.  What you perceive as him not understanding the issue, couldn't be further from the truth.  People keep saying "Austin is into mobile now" and "Austin is into XAVION now".   Austin is still very much active in X-Plane.  And he notices EVERYTHING.  

But please, don't let me get in the way of a good rant.  It's just that these rants blur the line between ranting and making this into another FS2020 vs X-Plane thread.

[mSparks 2,086]

5 hours ago, Colonel X said:

However, as you can see, I am also fed up with band aiding X-Plane clouds/weather,

Everyone is.

But that really isn't what this is about - far from it. You said, for example

18 hours ago, Colonel X said:

I pass! I think we have enough half-bred, worse than default alternatives already.

Please link me one other volumetric clouds project that works in VR and/or Linux, and not just xplane, but any sim.

5 hours ago, Colonel X said:

lean and mean approach.

Succeed or don't try. 

Then listen to everyone complain because they didnt try (because they couldn't succeed yet)

5 hours ago, Colonel X said:

for evangelizing X-Plane in the P3D forum than any other user here.

Theoretically, P3D now has VR truesky. Would you happen to have a review of it? Perhaps with some in sim footage.

 

Edited July 29, 2020 by mSparks

[Pastaiolo 1,688]

The effort, considering it is freeware, is very much appreciated.

But Colonel X has a point in the fact that certain more complicated things, such as weather, would be better handled directly by LR (and probably will for XP). You also have to remember that most of the current weather addons are dealing with stock weather engine limitations, including xEnviro which a year ago or so was still the only "proper" third party addon offering volumetric clouds (considering that TrueSky was only present in FSW, which was not sold anymore on Steam and it wasn't present in P3D yet).

Sure Colonel X could have worded his opinion a bit better, but it's not a reason to tell to someone that if they don't like something they should just leave. This is a tendency which is showing as of late in this forum too from the so called "die hard XP fans", even when certain critiques comes from other XP users. Every time someone says something is not up to what is achievable nowadays, the comment is flagged as "word not allowed" "msfs word not allowed" and so on. A distinction should be made instead between those going around forums claiming "P3D and XP ARE DEAD, LEAVE!!" and those saying "I am happy with XP on a lot of things, but on X, Y and Z things could be better"

To get back on topic, i particulary like the lighting these volumetric clouds takes on sunset, and overall it's very pleasant for the eye. I downloaded the latest modification done by mrSparks and will try it later on again 🙂

[mSparks 2,086]

58 minutes ago, Pastaiolo said:

could be better handled directly by LR (and probably will for XP)

Certainly will be, for XP12.

But if you are flying 2D then 2D cloud sprites will probably always be the best looking solution, not to mention raytracing capable hardware is still niche and hammers fps on low end hardware (flight 2.0 clouds, while "dramatic and exciting" look like something out of a "Jupiter" game to me)

XP12 is a way off, and some of us like flying in VR now, in which case any 3D cloud is better than a 2D one. and xenviro is windows only without VR support.

Edited July 29, 2020 by mSparks

[mSparks 2,086]

 

7 hours ago, Pastaiolo said:

such as weather, would be better handled directly by LR

XP weather was mostly sorted a  long time ago:

https://x-plane.joanpc.com/plugins/xpgfs-noaa-weather