Yet, without question, most folks will continue to choose the lower quality and more expensive product - for reasons not known to me. Therefore, it changes the whole look of the sim and is, in my opinion, the most realistic weather representation in X-Plane Ive ever seen, so far The Skymaxx and 圎nviro developers are in our private test program and have been great about jumping on new builds while remaining radio silent while we test this new tech. So, at the moment, there is no debate about which is the better quality product. SMP, on the other hand, provides fair to good frame rates with much longer draw distances than 圎. Plus, the low quality cloud rendering is currently provided at a huge expense in terms of frame rate. I'm not sure that 圎's rendering is on the right track. These images are representative of the approach used to provide light scattering under similar lighting conditions.
Yet, a huge number of people consider the cloud rendering in 1.09 to be absolutely incredible - amazing beyond belief - ultra realistic!īut, you can judge for yourself. Right now, IMHO, 圎's cloud rendering is broken - and I'm not sure that the approach that is being taken is fixable. Fans of 圎 have been defending 1.09 with almost religious fervor. But this has turned into something that transcends the product quality. SMP is by far the most realistic (and also the most stable). I own SMP, 圎 and UWXP, so I have tried all of them at length. So, whenever I want really high frame rates over any scenery, however complex, I use UWXP. UWXP offers a great alternative but again, the 2D textures limit the realism. The default XP clouds are OK, but suffer from the limitations of 2D textures. The only real competition for a full-scale weather environment at the moment is 圎nviro.
Clouds and scattering are particularly well done - although it would be nice to have something other than cumulus. SMP provides a very good rendering of the atmosphere. There is no issue (or difference) in using the Steam edition, as you found out with SMP. RWC is a plugin, not a separate program, so it seamlessly integrates with SMP. If you want to go one step further, FSGRW is very good. It does a great job of displaying real-world weather in real time, using X-Plane's default real world weather. If you haven't already purchased it, I would recommend RWC.