Brian Mackie

Mr BitstFlyer can consult AI, three monkeys, chicken entrails, tea leaves or the Dalai Lama for all I care - what counts is the result, and with AutoHaze, he most certainly delivered. I don't see any helpful products coming from the knocking critics in this thread.

Thanks, Davehibes. Our author came back and clarified that existing users should install both files (helper and lua) when they upgrade, so the question was useful. The other issue - multi-screen related - is being studied by MrBitstflyer, too. The number of pages in this thread illustrates 1) the level of users' interest in AutoHaze and 2) the author's unusual focus on making it even better for us. I'm hugely impressed. What he has achieved will, I hope, be noticed by the folks at Laminar Research.

May we invite a moderator to terminate this "discussion", which has strayed way off topic and into the realms of near-personal attack?

Duped. Ignore.

Feel free to help me, Davehibes. I don't have an issue with installing the latest version. Dead easy, and I was merely asking the author about the helper file. But maybe you know something about the multi-monitor observation. If so, please share. That's what this thread is all about.

For the avoidance of doubt, is the Helper exe required to reinstall? I've done that anyway, Windows having identified a tiny file size change... One curious thing I observe is that when enabling two smaller monitors for pop-out G1000 displays, when I go to FWL Macros>AutoHaze Settings, there is no AutoHaze settings box appearing on any of the monitors. When I disable the G1000s and the small screens and go back to a single monitor, the settings box appears on the main monitor. This only happens when I've assigned a pop-out instrument to the small monitor(s) in XP.. So, running two subsidiary monitors with no popouts assigned still results in the AH settings box appearing on the main monitor. Odd...

Complicated to set up? I'd advise you to either read the very short and simple guidance notes, or avoid this plugin.

The advantage of Windows, of course, is that you can run MSFS and XP on the same operating system, side by side. And you can try XP12 for free - it is light years ahead of XP11 in many respects. Whatever you do, try for as much VRAM as possible and don't stint on the CPU either.

I was wondering the same as GoranM. My AO does a pretty good job with Australia and NZ, but the ini file is the key to success or abject failure. Our OP might like to try Lyndiman's NZ orthos, all in ZL17 and rusing XP12 bathymetry. I couldn't find anything useful or downloadable on Australia. https://lyndiman.com/lyndimans-new-zealand-ortho-photography-set/ And neither AO nor Map Enhancement have the XP water effects. AO is also a work-in-progress, and users should expect to do some work installing updates (which aren't always right first time).

No sign of any pauses on first 10-minute tests. Just a momentary flash as we begin to load a new flight, which I'd expect. Looks like you've cracked it.

Great! Thanks again. The version is showing as 1.9, rather than 2.0...

As others have reported, I've now begun to experience the about-five-second freeze in X-plane followed by the Powershell pop-out (flashes by) and another second or so before XP resumes. Using the 1.9 version, at 300 second interval between checks (now extended to 900 to reduce the bother)..

My firewall already excludes the entire X-plane installation and the three calls display for less than a second each. Hiding them would be nice, but it's no big deal.

The mandatory updating of ANY software is usually bad for consumers - just ask anyone using Windows 11 who woke up one day and found Microsoft had unilaterally broken their operating system with a faulty update. I'm not quite ready to ditch Windows (it's getting closer), but avoid products such as MSFS like the plague.

Working well with the latest changes, but it would be good to hide the Powershell calls. They're a little distracting.

Well done! AutoHaze really does make a difference, and improves on HazeAdjust. Just to clarify, we should paste the API key(s) over the existing text in the txt file? Like Baber20 and Flic1, I couldn't create an OpenWeatherMap account, but since it's just a fallback, no problem. Thanks very much for producing this.

There is a significant number of users who fly GA. For them, accurate scenery is important for navigation, not merely for nice-looking aerodromes or finding their house. How do I know? Because when I learned to fly, GPS was an idea in the mind of God. I believe real-time ATPLs will agree, too. They also started by looking out of the window.

Thanks for the heads-up, Philipp. I'm in New Zealand and will make sure not to change the clocks here until we know you've fixed the bugs.☺️

It’s called market forces, and it applies to everything apart from niche operators such as Bentley or Ferrari. For the rest, to capture and hopefully retain a market share, you pile it high and sell it cheap, as one of the originators of supermarkets said. IRL, consider a small light GA aircraft like a Cirrus, add a microlight to the mix, and compare them to your motor car. The Cirrus costs a fortune because of all the ticket-clipping that goes with regulatory burdens on things like, for example, certified spares. The market is smaller, because a PPL costs far more than a microlight pilot's licence. The microlight is much less restricted, but because the user base is still relatively small, the purchase price is still high. Compare your real-life Tecnam microlight’s actual build content to that of even a modest, mass-produced vehicle (where a licence to drive costs next to nothing in comparison to aviation) and you see the rule of Economy of Scale in action. Most of us spend way more on hardware – joysticks, throttles, rudder pedals and so on – than we do on a simulator program. The producers of these add-ons know that the market for them is far smaller than that of the sim programs. As the quality of an add-on increases, the market for it shrinks and the price-point rises. Over on the other side, MSFS has this pretty much sorted, with its users locked into an ‘optional extras’ system that improves its bottom line. LR is late to the party on this, and while I appreciate their expressed good intentions on planning to open an XP store, I can’t help feeling that there’s an income stream in mind as well. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Why not have a look at X-Crafts offering? Like XP, always a work in progress, but their commitment to continuous improvement knows no bounds.

This works

Google TDSGTNXi

AO, Simheaven X-World and Global Forests, sometimes combined with Lyndiman Orthos for NZ. Might be an idea to include AO in your poll options, to perhaps get a clue as to its popularity compared to ME? As for loading times, X-world makes no difference on our system. And AO loads very quickly - a typical boot time of AO itself is 20 seconds, and on-the-fly downloading causes no issues. Extended loading times for XP (best 50 seconds to worst at 1m 20s) seem to be caused by scenery file complexity at the chosen start airport. I am running AO via a pretty average Starlink connection.

And so would I. Fly very low-level over any large expanse of water for a while, and you notice (unless you are unlucky) how the sky begins to merge with the water and interferes with what your eyes take in and how your brain interprets it.

Smoke from fires is a good daytime indicator of surface wind direction - as my original flight instructor advised back in 1985. Wouldn't it be great to replicate that in XP? Displaying human-induced air pollution over cities in realtime simulated weather might be a bigger ask...