HighSkyTech Lead Developer, Egor, has today posted via the .org forums a development update regarding their xAmbience Pro utility for X-Plane 11. Based on the post, the HightSkyTech team will not be affected by COVID-19 and is completely safe. Since this is a rather big development update, we have divided the article into a few sections.
clouds
xAmbience Pro will feature numerous new, and very much welcomed features. One of them being, for example, new clouds, to be specific volumetric clouds.
New clouds are a whole new story. Now they are voluminous. In terms of plan, they have a volume, even if it is not a noise-rendering, but it is already a step in the right direction.
The clouds are illuminated in different ways, like real clouds. For example, street lights or the sun will illuminate them. In the release version, there will be a cloud lightning effect, turbulence effect or rainfall effect in the clouds, for example.
night environment
We have worked on this. Now the effect of light from the city lights will be reflected in the atmosphere and clouds in the event:
-If there is a strong haze
-If it is overcast
-If the clouds are close to the ground, or other weather events that contribute to this.
performance and updates
From what you read, you might think, that this will be “FPS killer”, but based on the post, the program will intelligently control “some levers” and the developer promises minimum 30-50 FPS.
In case of the updates, the developers promise to bring new big updates each week that will be automatically downloaded through the addon software.
realistic weather?
HighSkyTech has decided, that they will include in the basic price of $35, a custom weather injector that will feature, for example, air currents in the clouds or custom turbulence.
HighSkyTech is aiming to release the addon in April 2020 and will cost $35.
The screenshots featured in the post are not representing the final product. The original post can be found here.
