I was so about to buy this expensive add on and stopped at last minute thinking if my specs could handle the burden of xE, then I look again at those videos with amazing clouds and the cycle starts all over again. If the devs could only find a way for giving us a demo for trying out the plugin... 😔

I have been chasing videos too during the last couple days, but I'm a bit in doubt it would work acceptably in my rather old rig. Some of the videos are in RTX 3090s ... Wow !

On 12/27/2020 at 12:17 AM, Greazer said:

The developer seems to have skills

"Seems to have" are you kidding me.

I'm a software developer myself and although I've developed applications (medical industry) with certain level of complexity, my apps could never come close to the complexity of xE or any other weather app. Kudos to those guys and every other developer out there, these guys are extremely smart with extreme high level  programming skills if you ask me. 

Edited December 28, 20205 yr by CarlosF

1 hour ago, CarlosF said:

"Seems to have" are you kidding me.

What I'm waiting for (after four years) is something useable. Useable meaning there are no show stoppers. However there has always been show stoppers with this addon and their plans keep changing. After this much time of waiting, I can only imagine when XP 12 eventually does come, they release an all "new" version of xEnviro with no upgrade path that costs another 70; and I will be furious.

27 minutes ago, Greazer said:

What I'm waiting for (after four years) is something useable. Useable meaning there are no show stoppers. However there has always been show stoppers with this addon and their plans keep changing. After this much time of waiting, I can only imagine when XP 12 eventually does come, they release an all "new" version of xEnviro with no upgrade path that costs another 70; and I will be furious.

I've been waiting waaaayyy more the four years for XP to come up with a decent weather system (paid for every version since v9) and still there's none. XP's current weather system after all these years in development, is quite pathetic,  so xE is the best option out there. Yes, it has its issues, but even with its shortcomings, it still is the best addon, $70 is might be a bit high for you, but from my point_of_view, its a decent price to pay for the amount of work that went into it and what it offers.

Edited December 28, 20205 yr by CarlosF

2 hours ago, Greazer said:

After this much time of waiting, I can only imagine when XP 12 eventually does come, they release an all "new" version of xEnviro with no upgrade path that costs another 70; and I will be furious.

Well, we may not need a product like xEnviro in XP12 if the rumoured update to weather and atmosphere ever comes... but at the moment we know nothing about it.

I might be wrong but a full scale new weather and lighting system would take Laminar several years to develop and optimize, we will likely see small bits released every few months, starting soon I hope. 

 

On 12/29/2020 at 3:56 AM, peroni said:

we will likely see small bits released every few months, starting soon I hope. 

 

That’s a reasonable assumption but I’m wondering if LR have been doing a lot of visual work alongside Vulkan development (or outsourcing it). Tweaking the fm is unlikely to offer much of a compelling upgrade from XP11, and their relative radio silence recently has me intrigued. Maybe they have something interesting up their sleeve.

Well,

I am still considering if I should, or not, buy xEnviro 1.15...

Yesterday night I loaded the Toliss A319 and ade an approach to an airport using real world weather, just in the same situation I had just used in MFS...  X-Plane feels so much more smooth, and... for the time being, realistic in feel and systems ( I was comparing to the modded NEO )...

2 hours ago, scotchegg said:

Maybe they have something interesting up their sleeve.

Austin seemed to hint at this but didn't want to reveal or show anything just yet whilst everyone is still hyped over MFS.

On 12/27/2020 at 7:17 AM, Greazer said:

xEnviro is the most frustrating add on. The developer seems to have skills but he cannot nail it.  There are always buts, like but the performance is terrible or but the clouds are pixelated or but there's problems changing views................

I agree 100% about your „but“ theory

1.16 Vulcan hotfix released.

On 12/27/2020 at 9:17 AM, Greazer said:

xEnviro is the most frustrating add on. The developer seems to have skills but he cannot nail it.  There are always buts, like but the performance is terrible or but the clouds are pixelated or but there's problems changing views................

You've unknowingly pointed a fact about limitations of the current hardware.

As I've mentioned before at https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/592321-pixelated-clouds/?do=findComment&comment=4441052, here's the rule of thumb with volumetric clouds, you can't have all of these three things at the same time: High performance, high details and lack of artifacts. If you need high details and lack of artifacts, performance will suffer. If you need high performance and lack of artifacts, you'll have to give up on detail. If you need high performance and high details, artifacts are inevitable.

That is simply all can be done with the current hardware - there isn't a "no compromise" experience available yet. So it's not about the developer(s) of xEnviro "nailing it", but limitations of the current hardware.

Edited January 2, 20215 yr by BiologicalNanobot

I never bought xEnviro, but shouldn't XP 12 be probably close to announcement, and there being a chance, even if remote, that weather graphics and effects will get a comprehensive update with it, I would surely embark on xEnviro.

The main reason for me is actually the reason that doesn't appeal to some of you - I seldom used historic or manually defined weather with any weather injector / simulator combination. What I do when I play some circuit in a sim is checking for the kind of situation I am up to, using " badbadweather.com " and then go flying there 🙂

Now, I've seen the graphics provided by xEnviro, and following the suggestion by my friend Zulfi I gave EC a try, using even a script that optimizes the setup for low end rigs like mine, but the end result is still not satisfactory, specially under dense coverage scenarios, and I honestly fear I would get those same results with xEnviro ( ? ) 

One aspect I like in MFS is the depiction of convective cloud systems. It appears from a few shots / videos that xEnviro does a great job at even representing such clouds, although from what I've seen they appear not to develop as well as in MFS but still...

Then, the other aspect that interests me the most in a weather engine, and one that I really can't judge because I do not own it, is how well, and based on what models does xEnviro work ? One thing I have been testing in MFS in the few airliner flights I have already simulated is as close to model data that are used for an OFP designed with SimBrief the weather is depicted in MFS. So far I can say I am positively satisfied with the results (*). Would like to get feedback from xEnviro users on this.

 

(*) Close to would be disappointing if it ended being - exactly like - but it isn't. Just as Aerowinx PSX NG introduces a "weather corridor" feature that allows for weather parameters to be injected along a route from an OFP with any of the officially accepted formats ( like those generated by SimBrief ), but introduces a "bias" from the weather model data, so that in the sim it doesn't end up unrealistically similar to the OFP forecast, MFS's weather engine does the same to it's weather feed ( from Meteoblue ). I wonder how xEnviro performs in this particular aspect ?

Edited January 3, 20215 yr by jcomm