After two beta rounds with about 30 forum users, I'd like to invite everyone here in the forum to try out Ventura Sky, now that it is in a pretty solid state. Minor code editing is required during the installation process, that's why I decided not to post the file to the usual outlets yet. I am waiting to hear from Joan, if he'd add official support for Ventura Sky in his NOAA plug-in, installation would truly be plug and play, and that would be a good time for an official release. A user manual with detailed installation instructions is included and should do for now! Ventura Sky Beta 3 is free. It's possible to test Ventura Sky without having SkyMaxx Pro and RWC installed - it's fully functional, however, there won't be any clouds. Official screenshots in this thread: http://www.avsim.com/topic/494639-coming-soon-ventura-sky-for-x-plane-1050/

 

You can get the full Beta 3 package here, or if you'd just like to take a look at the manual, click here (Corrected)

 

 

Here is a summary of what Ventura Sky can do for you:

 

• Interpolation of real-weather visibilities

Smooth shifts (10m per frame in reference mode, 300m per second at 30fps) between visibilities reported by the NOAA plug-in, enabling a consistent, immersive weather and atmosphere experience in X-Plane. No more slap-in-the-face visibility changes on short final, or at anytime during your flight.

 

• Visibility limitation

Solid visibility limit (25700m or 16sm in reference mode) below 10000 feet, independent from cloud layers (as opposed to standard X-Plane, where visibility will be set to unlimited once you pass the first cloud layer). The limit helps blend autogen and night lighting into the haze, increasing the visual consistency, and as a bonus, it improves performance significantly.

 

• Altitude based visibility at high altitudes

Above 10000ft (in reference mode), your visibility will be based on your altitude, slowly increasing as you climb, decreasing as you descend. 100sm visibility will be reached at about 40000ft. Once you descend below 10000ft, the nearest METAR station visibility provided by the NOAA plug-in will be deployed seamlessly. Atmospheric scattering will also be interpolated during this transition.

 

• Sky colors and aligned lighting

The Ventura Sky sky color set as been aligned with (SkyMaxx Pro) cloud lighting and improved atmospheric effects, creating a color calibrated, homogeneous atmosphere at all altitudes and all times of the day. The sky colors have been adjusted to give you a pristine, clear blue sky at the reference limit of 16nm, lower visibilities will gradually receive humidity.

Edited September 14, 20169 yr by tonywob
Corrected Broken link

I just wanted to post my First Impressions of this add-on.

 

I have been using it since the first beta release. My experience with it is very positive. I can't speak for everyone's system, but on my installation I noticed more frames. I took a flight from MisterX's KBOS with antwob's MassPro with autogen one notch below extreme, and I never dropped below 40fps using the IXEG 737.

 

Now for the important stuff. Is this a true replacement for RTH? In my opnion yes. This is a solid piece of art guys. As a fan of RTH's atmosphere, Ventura does it and more. I have not had a chance to test a night flight yet, but beta 2 mentioned some imporvements to night lighting. I'm looking forward to checking that out in beta 3.

 

This is a very exciting year for X-Plane. I would like to thank the author of this plugin for delivering something new and exciting to the XPX community!

I have to agree. It's a solid product.

My fps has increased significantly on my system. Is it a good replacement for rth? Yes it's good on its own although i would prefer the haze be a tiny bit more blue. If I try to make the haze more blue with maxxfx it darkens the cockpit too much.

The night lighting is fantastic.

 

Overall great script. Many thanks to Frontendrob

Funny everyone talks about performance while improvements here are only a byproduct hehe. Well can't ever get enough of it!

 

 

Yes it's good on its own although i would prefer the haze be a tiny bit more blue.

In my script, under "VENTURA SKY SETTINGS", you'll find:

 

raleigh_loalt = 5.0

raleigh_hialt = 1.5

 

Change to your liking. Higher value = more blue. I do not recommend it though, as I aligned all colors properly, and things tend to get out of balance quick. For example, more blue will not match the sky as well at dusk. There's a reason Laminar is very conservative with these settings. Ultimately, the script could maybe be improved to set the scattering depending on local time.

 

 

This is a solid piece of art guys.

Thanks!

please someone make a video

Tested this morning and it works fine. Will try and test more tonight.

 

Don't do what I did and copy/paste line 106... the word 'float' is messed up and caused an error until I manually corrected it in Notepad++.

 

One other minor point, the manual still says copy the beta 2 lua file instead of beta 3.

hello 

currently Im a user of ortho4xp which one its requirements is to have a python 3 install

 

with this version of python the plugin pythoninterface dosent work (requires v2) 

Im wondering if you guys know what can i do to have them both installed at the same time

Will test latter today, so I hope - really looking forward to it !

Is  it necessary to have NOAA plugin installed?

Sounds interesting, although it means I need 2 payware addons and 2 freeware addons to be able to run yours. Is there a reason why you don't allow X-Plane default clouds?

 

 

I also have a technical question about this part of the manual:

 

 

We’re using an „unused“ dataref here, but take notice that you can’t use the 19th AI / multiplayer
plane, so better disable it if you’re currently using it.

 

Isn't it possible that you create your own dataref and use this one instead of using the 19th AI plane's speedbrake dataref? Or is it not possible to access datarefs created in a Lua script via a Python script (but only default datarefs)?

Hi,

 

i've follow teh nstruction but when edit the phyton file of noaa Xplane not load.

 

I' don't understund where i can wrong, i'm programmer and edit file every day...are only 9 line and need only a # in the head of any rows.

 

I've the latest version of noaa plugin, i've removed any script on RTH but nothing to do.

 

Is ther a phyton log to understund where is the erros? 

Thanks in advance

I'm very interested as to how this develops and what people's opinions hold. Firstly thank you for your work in this for the community, it's an example of why I am more than happy with XP and its community.

 

I don't feel it is for me at the moment however as, doing a lot of Caribbean VFR, I'm using the adaptive watercolours script which makes it all the more immersive but would look like any other group of islands if I wasn't able to use it. Also using FSGRW for my weather is a must as I am very fond of the coverage and custom weather stations.

 

As I said before, I'm very curious as to how it will develop and thank you again for your work! Looks pretty amazing

Hi,

 

i've follow teh nstruction but when edit the phyton file of noaa Xplane not load.

 

I' don't understund where i can wrong, i'm programmer and edit file every day...are only 9 line and need only a # in the head of any rows.

 

I've the latest version of noaa plugin, i've removed any script on RTH but nothing to do.

 

Is ther a phyton log to understund where is the erros? 

Thanks in advance

 

Make sure you use the correct ' signs. If you copied the particular line from the manual, the final two ' are wrong.

...will Ventura Sky Beta 3 work with FSGRW in place of  the NOAA plug-in someday in the future

 

 

Make sure you use the correct ' signs. If you copied the particular line from the manual, the final two ' are wrong.

Hi,

 

yes, I use notepad ++ and it show 'fload' in black and not in gray because the ' was wrong, i've correct btu noaa plugin is not load in XP.

 

Is there a metod to upload my python file? may be that other eyes watch an error that i don't find