Captain Kitten

Alright, let me first say that I am sorry for not updating all of you for a while. I haven't had the time for it first of all and second: I don't believe in vacuum hyping. Which means hyping something for sales alone when you can't back it up. But I see that several people question if we're even alive - or if xEnviro is in a dead end. So here is an update to lay that ball dead. Some won't accept any form of "excuse" what so ever and will always demand an update to xEnviro regardless. Let me just start with answering those with the fact that you bought the version you got at purchase. Not a certain update cycle. With that said: We're still developing. It has taken a looong time and I am aware that this has been the case for several of the major updates so far. Development has been slow because of several factors. First of all we have day jobs that have demanded a huge chunk of our lives. Ever since Covid started several of us in the dev-team have what is called critical professions that are under high pressure and have been for a long time. Apart from that we have private lives that also demand it's time and in periods have made it impossible to concentrate on other things. xEnviro is developed by a small team and we're vulnerable to halts. Image from 1.17t43 So where is development per today? Spherical buffer is a complex transition and a new tech developed by us within noise rendered volumetrics. It will give huge benefits both in performance potential and visually. How much will remain to be seen. At launch of 1.17 clouds will probably not look very different than 1.16 (apart from artifacts fixes and performance). But xE will rest on a structure that we hope will give it a huge advantage going forward. This is the 5th performance path that has been mentioned in the past. Also in XP12 when that launches. But about that... We're still waiting for some clear answers from Laminar in regards to if we get the needed tools to continue developing weather at this level in xp12. We know that xp12 most probably will get volumetric clouds but the tools have been very limited so far and this might be even worse in xp12. xE has always been independent of Xplane to a large extent and that will be our savior also this time around. We'll see if laminar wants to have 3rd party weather addons in the future but if not; we'll manage to brute ourselves in. As we have done for the entire xE life so far anyway. Anyway, sorry for not having updated you and that this update is not of a "here's what we got" or with images of 1.17. We don't have that much to show anyway since the work is on the back end. 1.17 is over 90% done. But the remaining 10% doesn't translate in to time. I won't promise you an update soon either. I am currently stealing time from my day job to write this and I have to get back to that now. But if we have any news worth mentioning I will update asap.

Sadly I don't have any news worth sharing.. Andrey has a schedule from hell at the moment, flying people back and forth in his country. This year has been hell for all in the dev team so far. And coding has suffered a lot as a result. but we hope things will normalize soon. When Andrey is back we will make a plan and I'll have more of an update (I hope). I'd say we're 85% - 90% done - but the last 15% can't be translated in to time. Sorry for not giving more info but this is the reality we live in atm.

It will be released in this forum. If you find it anywhere else it is not a legal copy.

(EDIT: This guide was originally posted in the xEnviro club but is moved here since it can help everyone.) Our support team has some advice to test out to gain more fps with xEnviro and X-Plane in general. This example is tested on a an 8-year old i7-4790K @ 4.4GHz and a first-generation GTX1080 on a 2560x1440 monitor (2K). Here are the settings used on this machine: Remove Nvidia Inspector First, get rid of nVidia Inspector. Everything you need is in the default Settings menu for nVidia drivers. The Inspector was causing some people problems. Ortho tips If you use ortho, be aware of the zoom level. The higher the zoom level the higher the impact. ZL16 and below has little to no effect and in some instances you can even gain FPS. But this is not a given and very case to case sensitive. nVidia drivers If able to; run the nVidia drivers from a different SSD than X-Plane 11 (Always have XP on an SSD/M.2 if possible). Also do not allow nVidia to install the nVidia Experience (offered when updating), and choose the Express installation to retain previous settings. Use latest drivers but never jump the gun and see what others experience first. nVidia Control Panel Most settings should be default under the Global Settings tab. Exceptions are: Anisotropic - Application controlled Anti-aliasing Mode - Application controlled Anti-aliasing Setting - Application controlled Anti-aliasing Transparency - Off OpenGL rendering - Auto Texture Filtering Quality - Quality Texture Filtering - Trilinear - ON Threaded Optimization - auto Triple buffering - off Everything else is default Have a specific Program Settings tab for X-Plane 11. Everything here should be default from Global Settings except: AA Gamma Correction - OFF Power Management - Maximum performance Texture Filtering (negative LOD bias) - Clamp Texture Filtering Quality - Performance Texture Filtering Tri-linear Optimization - ON Threaded Optimization - Auto Vertical sync - Adaptive The other AA stuff at the top of the list are Application controlled by X-Plane. X-Plane settings: Flight model per frame - 2 (you can try 3 or 4 if you need more frame rate) Visual effects - High (HDR) Texture Quality - High Antialiasing - 2X (you can use None on higher res monitors with no problem) Lateral Field of View - max 150 (this can cause boundary limitations and higher settings cost frame) World Objects - High Reflection detail - Off Use VSync - NOT checked xEnviro specific: These work very well for 2560x1440p: (only the first three affect fps) Environment Settings: Cloud static quality - Medium Cloud dynamic quality - Medium Cloud detail range - Medium Cloud blur - 50% Cloud crossfade speed - 100% Seasonal changes - 50% Leave drifting snow - OFF unless it is actively snowing Leave wet aerodrome surface - OFF unless it is actively raining Your xEnviro Support Team Team (If you have more tips, please post them in this thread and I'll update the post when able)

hello world 1.17 task #1: Spherical buffer - ongoing Status: 1.17.t30 Spherical buffer initial proof of concept test - done Spherical buffer core code conversion (t01 - t28) - done Spherical buffer pipeline initiated (t29 - txx) - done Spherical buffer adjustments and adaptation - ongoing Spherical buffer evaluation - ongoing 1.17.txx test team push - imminent 1.17.bxx test team push - not started (Image by beta test team member xE 1.16) I have been pretty silent lately, so far this year in fact, and I apologize for that. In a sense I am eating my own words at the moment. "...but we are trying to get away from the huge gaps between releases." 1.15 was released 25th of december. 1.16 was the Vulkan hotfix and... Yeah. Time flies. But there has been a lot that has demanded the teams attention in real life both in regards of our day jobs and privately. So progression on the new update has been slow. Since we have some new users asking about the known issues we listed in 1.15 I'll repeat them here. Several of these will probably be solved by the spherical buffer conversion and if they persist we will have room for improvement in later updates. So here's the list of known issues Precipitation follows camera Snow coverage may appear in the regions where no snowfall encountered recently Default X-Plane night triggers lights artifacts Cloud edge artifacts In cloud artifacts Cirrus clouds may affect colorization of clouds beneath Low level clouds may be combined You can find an updated list at xenviro.net To add to the silence, there has not been anything interesting to show visually at this stage of 1.17 development. xEnviro has been in peaces again. 1.17 has just left pre' Alpha state which is just pure code. We are currently done with the code conversion and are now adapting all of xE code to the new tech. We are constantly evaluating if this is a sensible direction to take. If you are wondering what spherical buffer is, you're not alone. I won't disclose what spherical buffer is other than that it's nothing new. But as far as we know this has not been done before in this application, let a lone in X-Plane. So we're treading unknown grounds again but we're taking this risk because the benefits are huge if we pull it off. Treading new ground is nothing new. We were the first to go public with volumetric clouds in flightsim scale. We think that was the only sensible choice at the time and one of the best decisions we have ever made albeit controversial and demanding. As per usual I do not give any ETA's for the release but we have made progress and this is just an update to tell you all that we're still alive and working on 1.17.

Send me a PM with the new name you want. I'll get to it as soon as I can

Spherical buffer = Perf upgrade nr 2 This update is basically another performance update. This was one of the 5 performance paths we had in the 1.14 update plans. We did not implement it then since it will take us at least a month to implement and test if it even works in the X-Plane environment. We decided to add it later so we wouldn't delay 1.14 longer than necessary. Fingers crossed that we're not in a dead end. The reward will be great if it works and so far it looks promising! First ever image of Spherical Buffer in X-Plane. And in any sim as far as I am aware.. Don't quote me on this Yep - Minecraft comes to mind. It's the tech that counts at this point. With the Spherical Buffer we hope to be able to get to the point where we can start adding more features like thunderstorms, multi screen support and VR. If you wonder what Spherical buffer is - read up on space observation tech. How we implement it and parts of it's functions are trade secret at this point With a bit of tweaking we're back to more familiar clouds. But with some huge tricks up their sleaves I seriously hope we can exploit. Crossing fingers and toes that this will turn out well in the end. We just won't know until we add back all features in the next test runs. Let me explain in short what happened in the past updates: 1.14 Major performance update Additional functions and features as a result of a complete rewrite of the core This was the incredibly long update that took a year to finish... 1.15 Vulkan update (11.50 compatible) Dynamic seasons only available in OpenGL since the needed access is not available in Vulkan. 1.16 X-Plane 11.51 hotfix (X-Plane 11.51 and above) Not compatible with earlier versions of X-Plane (in Vulkan) A comment on dynamic seasons I see that there is confusion about dynamic seasons. And as much as we want dynamic seasons ourselves, it has never been a part of our feature list. It is an experimental feature because we could add it in our pipeline and get it to work. In OpenGL. We will try to convince Laminar that X-Plane needs dynamic seasons and MAYBE we will get the access needed to actually execute that feature without the flaws it suffers under in its current state in OpenGL. So far we have had a closed door but we will continue the talk. (We have a poll running in the facebook group where you can add your vote for our seasons - so maybe Laminar will see the community whish for such a feature.) You can also address this to Laminar directly. Any pressure from the community will help us in getting the access we need. But I repeat: dynamic seasons has never and will never be promised as a feature in xEnviro. And we are running two pipelines of development currently to keep your whishes for this feature active in OpenGL. How long we can keep this up is a huge question mark though.

1.16 is released and is for 11.51

xEnviro 1.16 This is a xPlane 11.51 compatibility hotfix. Download here

UPDATE ON 11.51 hotfix: We have the fix, still ironing other minor bugs that appeared alongside - and testing hotfix beta. I expect it to be out while still writing 2020. Until then You can still use xEnviro in OpenGL Server update today from 12:00 zulu We will be updating the servers one by one today so downtime can be an issue. This should not last for longer than 2-4 hours. (Image from beta tester in hotfix test)

IMPORTANT AS LAMINAR NOW HAS UPDATED TO 11.51 WE WILL GET TO WORK ON OUR UPDATE FOR IT AND HAVE IT OUT ASAP. IF YOU WANT TO USE XE UNTIL THEN, DON'T UPDATE OR USE OPENGL VERSION! (Change to opengl by unticking vulkan option in graphics settings in X-Plane). Just be careful updating to 11.51, Several reports on 11.51r1 crashing their sim on load.

It's not compatible wit VULKAN version of 11.51 (which just released) We are working on that. In the meantime you can use the OpenGL version.