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Kittster

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Kittster last won the day on May 14 2020

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  1. I'd have to say that Ambient lighting looks very exciting. It would be the Cats Meow!
  2. Hi Funkytown, I can't help you with answering specifically questions about your system. But I just purchased xEnviro last week and have flown it about 1,000 miles. Two of them were in heavy storms. Today I parked my plane down in Antarctica and came up to chase the storm from Texas to St. Louis. I think I have made the right decision to purchase xEnviro. Others in here will say wait till the improved performance ver 1.14 and they have good reasons to suggest holding off. I jumped the gun. I'm kind of used to beta versions and I think of everything as always being a Work in Progress. Yes, there are some issues in it and the performance improvement I got from Vulkan (about 10-12 fps) I lost when I turned off Vulkan and went back to OpenGL. But... I think I gained 200% in being immersed in a new environment that totally blew me away. I loved the rain rolling off the windshield, the rolling clouds, allowing occasionally shafts of light coming in. Mountains that really looked covered with shadows (can't wait to see snow). I am in the process now of trying to tweak the sliders and I gave up a lot of Anti-aliasing, but that's okay as I can live with it until version 1.14 comes out. Eventually they will get it working with Vulkan. I know, $60 for XPlane and $70 for xEnviro seems like a lot to fork out. But you know if I had continued with golfing in retirement a new driver would cost a lot lot more and once you buy it, they won't improve it. I think I had a nice $70 joy ride on the last two flights to justify the expense. I was kind of tired of SkyMaxxPro suddenly getting a weather update and then jerking the plane around trying to get the sky updated. It seemed very awkward. SkyMaxxPro had a lot of good things going for them, but xEnviro seems a lot easier to configure and you can see the results as you move the sliders which you cannot do in SkyMaxxPro. Best of luck to you in making up your decision to buy or not to buy. All I can say is I'm glad I did.
  3. Thanks Clecorouge, I can see and understand the changes. I will make adjustments with NVIDIA control panel today and then tweak xEnviro to match your settings and then give it another whirl. Hopefully tonight.
  4. Ladies and Gentlemen, I bit the bullet and purchased xEnviro tonight. What the heck, if it gives me fits, I'll go back to SkyMaxxPro and Vulkan. So, I'm still down south just north of Antartica and my weather on my smartphone shows a severe winter storm going on. Inside xPlane, I'm experiencing the same thing - only with lighting this time. Its like nothing I have ever seen before. I have not tweaked any sliders yet so wanted to just run as is for a little while before tinkering with it. Clecourouge, I wished your screenshots were in english so I could understand them better. The last one maybe a goal for my xEnviro settings, but think I will watch some YouTube videos on how others do it. Right now I would say I'm a very happy camper, glad I took the chance. My FPS inside the plane are at 42 fps and outside in chase mode at 55 fps. I did pull back on my AA and set it to 2xSSAA+FXAA. I'm sure I will make many more tweaks in the future. But right now, I think I can begin to feel what Sir Ernest Shackleton felt as he led his men from the Endurance out of that disastrous situation when his ship the Endurance got stuck in the pack ice. All of your comments were well received, even the ones suggesting I should wait till 1.14. But I've worked all my life, had a heart attack, open heart surgery, retired and I figured its just plane time to start living life again. I'm glad I took the chance. Shackleton did and he survived. He would be proud of me. So - Captain Kitten, please don't let me or the other followers down on going forward with your performance upgrades and eventually getting to the Vulkan inclusion. That will make it truly quite masterful down the road.
  5. Wow, I really like the last two comments. I think my PC is beefy enough to handle this and enjoy the enhanced weather, but I also like the other comment to wait for ver 1.14 and check the comments. Both are good suggestions. The jury is still out on my end. I've had one heart attack 5 years ago. Should I wait and give up some precious time living life to the fullest or go for it and hope the development team is faithful to deliver going down the road? Its always something isn't it.
  6. Thank you so much for all of your comments, I had no idea there would be this many so quickly. I am helping my wife watch her 96 year old mother who has been confined to a hospital bed in our home for over a year. Flying - even late at night at least gives me a break from some heavy duty chores. I am going to include the specs on my system to see if this helps to swing the pendulum one way or the other. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 graphics card with 6 GB of Ram, i7-9700K CPU @ 3.60 GHz with 32GB of Ram on Win 10 64 bit. I'm pretty well convinced to go ahead and purchase it as I would rather fly in something more aesthetically overall pleasing than higher frame rates. Any additional comments are welcome. To some degree its kind of like operating on faith that XE will eventually working using the VULKAN API and then what a glorious day that will be for everyone.
  7. Hello everyone. I'm a newbie to this forum and just read the whole thing before I started this message. I'm writing because I'm sitting on the fence trying to decide about purchasing XE now or waiting until it has been patched to properly work with Vulkan. I looked at XE about 1½ years ago and thought the comments regarding the hit in performance FPS was a bit larger than I was willing to take on. Since then things have changed. I have beefed up my CPU and Video card. While not the fastest gaming PC around, it is way above average in my opinion. With X-Plane 11.50 b6 I can fly with all the graphics settings maxed out. I am somewhat disappointed in SkyMaxPro though. While it works pretty good most of the times, it has its issues which is why I'm rethinking XE again. I have recreated Amelia Earhart's flight around the world with SkyMaxPro, but its realweather did not always update. Right now I am recreating Earnest Shackleton's Trip down to the northern tier of Antarctica and I'm currently heading towards Elephant Island. SkyMaxPro is not giving me what I believe to be the correct real weather. On weather apps on my phone, I should be flying in pretty much a whiteout snowstorm, but instead I'm getting a virtually cloud free sky. Just looking at waves on the water for hours on end is kind of - lets say - boring. Looking at what XE can do, I'm inclined to consider purchasing it and giving it a whirl. I turned off Vulkan while giving it another try. I'm getting 70fps in chase 5view with 43 fps inside the cockpit. I just lowered my altitude from 20,000 ft to 2,000 ft and picked up rain on my windshield while still having a cloudless sky. The raindrops are not moving at all on the windshield while flying 240 Kts (this does not seem very real to me). I also just updated my SkymaxPro to ver 4.9.3 which was just recently released. So, I don't really have a question, just some comments and thoughts while I think out loud. I feel if I purchase XE, I will lose some fps but perhaps not as many as I would have with the old PC 1½ years ago. I would gain some incredible looking clouds and hopefully its real time weather would be able to update even down just above the Antarctica. I'm thinking I have more to gain than lose. I looked at the version history and see periodic updates being released in what I would consider a timely manner So when Captain Kitten says eventually they will get around to Vulkanizing it, I believe the captain. I think the developments approach to making XE better and improve performance before chasing after Vulkan makes sense to me too. Probably trying to do both performance and address Vulkan on the same release would be difficult to troubleshoot issues that would arise (as surely they will). Being a former developer in my working days, my team always liked to address one set of issues at a time for the same reasons. To buy or not to buy that is my dilemma going to bed tonight I did see another persons comments that it is too expensive, but not really I paid just about the same thing for SkymaxPro and the Realweather connector. Actually removing those would give me back about 2½ fps so that;s kind of a plus and minimizes fps loss that I would anticipate from XE 1.13 I do like the videos I'm seeing where there is fog, moving raindrops on the windshield, multi-layer clouds, snow effects on the ground etc. It seems I have more to gain than I have to lose. Am I missing something? I'm inclined to purchase this product this week as I continue to do some more research. The more I like what I'm seeing and then get even more exciting about the future upgrades. Any comments from anyone are welcome - Kittster
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