Cactus0521

I used to have FSX on my old system but I kept FS9 too. At times I preferred FS9 because you could load it with reams of AI, even put 5M photo scenery into it using FSEarthTiles, which I did for California, and it would just run like butter, with contrails filling the sky when I would fly in the flight levels. But as I got into photo scenery (my free Colorado scenery is available at Avsim, where I used to hang out before I found quite active Facebook sim pages where we share vids and screenshots and do not get into arguments so much) FSX also became a sim of choice, I started flying it more and more on my aging system, because I had it tweaked well and it could run well--without much AI though, AI really choked it. In 2017 my system with FS9, FSX and some freeware source code I wrote for those programs (Soft Horizons, hosted at Avsim, and Landclass Assistant, Hosted there as well, and finally a FS9 compatible ultralight trike) were all lost. I still wanted to sim, I realized I had to move up to P3DV4 and Xplane11, because they compliment each other, or I would lose interest in the direction our hobby is going. So I got my current MSI Nightblade, not the fastest kid on the block but by far, not the slowest, and it did not ouch my wallet, lol. I got those two sims and added Aerofly FS2 to my civilian sim mix, which is really the true successor of FS9 and FSX, minus AI, and minus other goodies but so fluid that it makes flying an aircraft feel more like the real thing I've come to enjoy when I rent a 172 with a CFI aboard, just to cruise around the Class B airspace I live in in Arizona, and to get good flying tips and muscle skill tips. I only fly alone when I sim, I never fly alone in the real world, because at my age, touching upon the golden years, my heart might go yippety yippety someday with the euphoria flying gives me, and someone will need to bring a perfectly good airplane down. It begs the question, which is the best way to go to heaven, making love to someone, or just having fun in whatever peaceful hobby you enjoy the most. Like most babies, I feel heavenly when I am in a motorcoach or any other form of transport and someone else is doing the driving--lol, that is what we start to crave when we grow old anyway, as I near 60--being rocked to sleep by our mother in the sky--at least for those of us who are not afraid to fly, drive, walk or crawl, lol

I have tried several lua scripts to get my Xplane11 environment the way I like it, but I wanted to consolidate all of them with my modifications into one script that uses the default Xplane11 sky and cloud bitmaps and maximized performance on systems with low VRAM, like mine, which only has 3GB VRAM below I am pasting the result for forum members and Xplane11 simmers. I have uploaded the same script to the Flightsim.com file library, but it has not been posted there yet, so I am also making it available here. I have used the coding and logic suggested by the lua experts, but I found some challenges, especially cloud shadows that were too faint. I have corrected those challenges, and also have changed the haze settings to be less sharp at a distance, closer to an average flight world wide rather than a flight with pristine conditions. I am also including a link to an almost 30 minute youtube video I made on 9-26-19 to show how the environment looked on the quite stormy day we had in Arizona yesterday, with building mesocyclones, one of which I almost got nailed by as I was walking home with my arms full of groceries--the heavy rain and thunder you will hear reported in the ATC background swept in from east of Sky Harbor and hit my part of the city hard, for a full week of Hurricane Lorena leftovers including a Tornado Monday night. ___________________ --Hello! Welcome to John Cillis's combined lua tweaks! It's pretty extensive, so it may conflict with similar luas, that is why I have made it one script. Please scroll down and have a read, there's some important notes to be had shared by other lua experts: --Add -- before set( to disable effects --Go down to the DSF section for an important note for anyone using VR! --Clouds --overdraw_control affects how many clouds are drawn. Higher numbers mean less cloud puffs but better performance. --plot_radius affects size of cloud puffs, reduce this if you encounter clipping issues. My personal sweet spot is 1.25 --Suggested overdraw_control value is 0.5, will give you more puffs than default, and should cost less in performance than the initial value --Lua was designed around the Default XP11 Clouds, your mileage may vary with different textures --Custom Values for cloud type start at 3 and end at 5, default has first res set at 0 set( "sim/private/controls/clouds/ambient_gain", 1.155) set( "sim/private/controls/clouds/diffuse_gain", 0.8) set( "sim/private/controls/clouds/first_res_3d", 3) set( "sim/private/controls/clouds/last_res_3d", 5) set( "sim/private/controls/clouds/overdraw_control", 0.5) set( "sim/private/controls/clouds/plot_radius", 1.5) set( "sim/private/controls/clouds/cloud_shadow_lighten_ratio", .99) set( "sim/private/controls/clouds/shad_radius", 1.0) set( "sim/private/controls/clouds/limit_far", 0.1) set( "sim/private/controls/clouds/shadow_size", 4096) set("sim/private/controls/shadow/cockpit_near_adjust", 2.0) set("sim/private/controls/shadow/cockpit_near_proxy", 2.0) --Sky --I've honestly forgotten what this does, but if you toy around with it I'm sure you'll be able to find out. --I think the default value for the first is 13? I wrote this part a fair while back, but I believe it has something to do with the fullness of the colours, I.E a less thin horizon, for instance. set( "sim/private/controls/atmo/atmo_scale_raleigh", 10) set( "sim/private/controls/atmo/inscatter_gain_raleigh", 2) --Fog --Higher Number = More Fog, contrary to the name of the value set( "sim/private/controls/fog/fog_be_gone", 0.8) --Cars --Controls distance cars are visible and...Don't know what lod_hdr does, but it saved me frames being lower and I saw no visible difference. --Default value for both is 20000 set( "sim/private/controls/cars/lod_min", 7000.000000) set( "sim/private/controls/cars/lod_hdr", 2000.000000) --DSF --The first value controls the minimum view distance of the Distant Scenery textures. --These settings below have a small performance impact in particular. If your FPS is hit, lower the min_dsf_vis_ever value. Default is 20000 --If you have a VR setup, it would be wise to comment out the first value, as others reported issues when it was active. set( "sim/private/controls/skyc/min_dsf_vis_ever", 15000) set( "sim/private/controls/skyc/max_dsf_vis_ever", 100000) set( "sim/private/controls/skyc/dsf_fade_ratio", 0.75) set( "sim/private/controls/skyc/dsf_cutover_scale", 1) --Shadows --Controls the angle shadows are visible. Not typically necessary as lots of people use shadow tweaks already. Add a -- in front of both of the settings if you are one of those people. Default values are 15 and 5 respectively --The Cam size controls shadow resolution, may affect FPS. Disable to get more jaggy shadows but possibly more performance set( "sim/private/controls/skyc/max_shadow_angle",-89) set( "sim/private/controls/skyc/min_shadow_angle",-90) set( "sim/private/controls/fbo/shadow_cam_size", 8192) --White Out Inside Clouds --This is seperate because I haven't tested this value enough yet. It seems to work fine, and visibility changes appear to still happen regularly going through many cloud layers, but there could be unforseen issues. If there are any, leave a comment on the .org or PM me on X-Pilot set( "sim/private/controls/skyc/white_out_in_clouds", 0) --X-Visibility Plugin --For X-Plane 11.25+ --Developed by: ChinNoobonic & SNowblind7 xvis_version = "1.0.2" xvis_build = "2018-09-23" --PLUGIN OPTIONS xvis_plugin_on = true --enable plugin xvis_debug_info = false --show debug info xvis_atmoTop_visibility = 30480 --elevation to apply the max visibility, default is 30480 m xvis_minFog_value = 0.6 --minimum fog value. Recommending values 0.0-1.0, default is 0.6 xvis_atmoTop_Fog = 1.5 --fog value after passing atmoTop_visibility xvis_highAltFogMult = 1 --reduce to 0.5 or 0.25 if you feel the haze at higher altitude is too strong, default is 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --INTERNAL VARIABLES (Don´t change!) dataref("gnd_imm_max","sim/private/controls/skyc/gnd_imm_max", "writable") dataref("lit_imm_max","sim/private/controls/skyc/lit_imm_max", "writable") dataref("lit_imm_min","sim/private/controls/skyc/lit_imm_min", "writable") dataref("sky_imm_max","sim/private/controls/skyc/sky_imm_max", "writable") dataref("sky_imm_min","sim/private/controls/skyc/sky_imm_min", "writable") dataref("cld_imm_max","sim/private/controls/skyc/cld_imm_max", "writable") dataref("cld_imm_min","sim/private/controls/skyc/cld_imm_min", "writable") dataref("visibility_reported_m","sim/weather/visibility_reported_m", "readonly") dataref("realFrame_time","sim/operation/misc/frame_rate_period","readonly") dataref("view_y_meters", "sim/graphics/view/view_y", "readonly", 0) dataref("fog_be_gone", "sim/private/controls/fog/fog_be_gone", "writable") dataref("vis_graphical","sim/private/stats/skyc/fog/far_fog_cld", "readonly") gnd_imm_max = 20 cld_imm_max = -1 cld_imm_min = 0 local fog_threshold = 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- function change_visbility() if xvis_plugin_on then local fog_Ratio = (vis_graphical * xvis_highAltFogMult)/visibility_reported_m if xvis_minFog_value > fog_threshold then fog_threshold = xvis_minFog_value end if visibility_reported_m >= 9000 then sky_imm_max = -1 sky_imm_min = 0 lit_imm_max = 1 lit_imm_min = 0 elseif visibility_reported_m sky_imm_max = 20 sky_imm_min = -2 lit_imm_max = -1 lit_imm_min = -34 end if fog_Ratio > fog_threshold+0.1 and view_y_meters if fog_be_gone fog_be_gone = fog_be_gone + realFrame_time * fog_Ratio else fog_be_gone = fog_Ratio end elseif math.floor(view_y_meters+.5) >= xvis_atmoTop_visibility then if fog_be_gone >= xvis_atmoTop_Fog+0.1 then fog_be_gone = fog_be_gone - realFrame_time * fog_be_gone else fog_be_gone = xvis_atmoTop_Fog end else if fog_be_gone >= xvis_minFog_value+0.1 then fog_be_gone = fog_be_gone - realFrame_time * fog_be_gone else fog_be_gone = xvis_minFog_value end end end end function draw_debug() local infoBox_x = 40 local infoBox_y = 600 local line_pos = 0 graphics.set_color( 1, 1, 0) line_pos = line_pos-12 draw_string_Helvetica_12( infoBox_x, infoBox_y+line_pos, "reported_vis:" .. visibility_reported_m ) line_pos = line_pos-12 draw_string_Helvetica_12( infoBox_x, infoBox_y+line_pos, "calculated_vis:" .. vis_graphical ) line_pos = line_pos-12 draw_string_Helvetica_12( infoBox_x, infoBox_y+line_pos, "fog_be_gone:" .. fog_be_gone ) line_pos = line_pos-12 draw_string_Helvetica_12( infoBox_x, infoBox_y+line_pos, "view_y_meters:" .. view_y_meters ) end if xvis_debug_info then do_every_draw("draw_debug()") end do_every_frame("change_visbility()") Ultimate Sky and Clouds Environment.txt

Ditto - looks like a cool system!

I recorded this video long ago, mid 80's, to celebrate the Calistoga Glider Port in the Napa Valley. Me and my friends would either ride our bicycles the 25 miles from Napa to where Highway 29 turns east before the ascent of Mt. St. Helena. Although an extinct volcano, flight simmers or pilots know that deep in the earth, the heat from that volcanic area created the Geysers Power Plant, not very well known among alternative energy solutions. Enjoy the Video - if it gets boring, go forward, it gets pretty interesting towards the middle and the end, no spoilers though... :pilot:

With Albuquerque Center from Live ATC, and a little background music.... I also have Reality XP up in a window so you can track airspeed and distance covered.... I created the video from GeForce Experience, and edited it with Microsoft Photos, shrinking it for better loading times.