Stephen Posted February 22, 2023 Report Share Posted February 22, 2023 NEWS! Updated - New Environmental tool VisualXP Ultimate by SimAdditions This NEWS! item has been updated to cover the new options of package pricing versions, as set out below. Personally I'm not attracted to applications or certainly the Lua app, that have interaction with the basic default X-Plane engine, don't get me started on the hundreds of different shader versions that we had to toil through as everyone had their own perspective on how X-Plane should look... I had hoped with the release of X-Plane 12 and it's new complete environmental engine, those days would be in the past, obviously not. I'm not completely honest here. I used throughout the X-Plane 11 run, the Dark Skies xEnviro, oddly not for it's clouds, but for the interface that allowed you to tune X-Plane's look and feel. Odd is the fact that you can change the look of X-Plane via you Graphics Card (mine is Nvidia), but that only changes your monitor look and feel, and not actually the Simulator's. But with xEnviro you could actually do this management aspect and that is what is important here. Struggling with dark images coming out of X-Plane 12, I found I couldn't adjust them internally, so I missed that xEnviro interface, being honest I don't miss the huge xEnviro sucking down of my framerate either. I had hoped that X-Plane 12 would have put all that in the past? But it didn't, and I struggled with the lighting in X-Plane 12, notable is the fact that X-Plane 12 is still in reality a working beta, but I did miss the interaction I had with xEnviro.... which brings us to this new environmental tool from SimAdditions. VisualXP is a tool that will enhance your X-Plane Atmosphere, Clouds, Water, and Scenery(Lights and Shadow) visually. The Atmosphere feature will enhance the Sun lighting, Ambient lighting, Scattering color temperature, Sky colors, Fog density, Aerosol, Visibility range, Horizon scattering, and Zenith scattering. The Clouds feature can control the cloud formations, clouds visibility range, clouds brightness, clouds density, thickness, cloudiness, and clouds details, all of these will work together to give better clouds forms. The Water feature can control the water wave foams, sun gloss, water wave strength, and scaling. there are sliders to control these functions as well. The Lights feature can simulate real-life fog at night where there are multiple lights that illuminate the fog. We also can Enable one of the great features of X-Plane "the Fog Spotlights" which add realistic spotlights for all objects in X-Plane. we can control the light spots' strength on the ground as well, we have sliders to control the size and the strength of the lights as well as spots lights. A main feature in Lights is "the Fog Spotlights" which add realistic spotlights for all objects in X-Plane. we can control the light spots' strength on the ground as well, we have sliders to control the size and the strength of the lights as well as spots lights. The Weather feature can deliver Live Weather, Weather Search, and Weather Briefings. The Briefing Tab will give you all the weather information including clouds altitudes pressure, all aloft for winds directions, winds speed, temperature, dewpoint, winds share, and turbulence, also the status of the water waves. Notable is tha VisualXP is for Windows Only at this point, again like xEnviro. There are three Variations of VisualXP, which are called "Plugin Levels" these plugins level are "Ultimate, Premium, and Basic". The Ultimate version will include all features of VisualXP, while the other levels have some limitations. The Premium level has the mentioned features except for the "Scenery" Tab (Lights functions and sliders) and the "Weather Briefing" tab which is included in the Weather Master Tab. The Basic level will have an Atmosphere, and Clouds Only. These three variations to give the user the ability to choose the one that fits he/her needs. VisualXP Interface Packages consist of: VisualXP Basic Priced at US$9.99 The basic version only includes: Atmosphere and clouds VisualXP Ultimate Priced at US$25.97 The Full package including Atmosphere and clouds; Water; Scenery; Weather - Live Weather; Weather - Weather Search; Weather - Weather Briefing A considered Simulator tool, and an effective one... Images are Courtesy of SimAdditions VisualXP Support is here SimAdditions Support __________________ Yes!... VisualXP by SimAdditions is now Available from the X-Plane.Org Store here : VisualXP Basic Priced at US$9.99 VisualXP Ultimate Price is US$25.97 Requirements X-Plane 12 Windows Only - Not Compatible with Mac or Linux at this time Things Things To Be Considered Before Buying If you are using DataRefTool or DataRefEditor, you need to disable them before using ViualXP, VisualXP will stop working instantly once one of these plugins is detected as Enabled. and it will inform you with a message in the user interface to disable these plugins. Do not use any other plugin, scripts, or mods that controls one of VisualXP features as that will make conflict and will make bad visuals. The performance will be different from one plugin level to another because of the features that each one has, the higher level will have more performance effects, but no worries with the plugin sliders you can lower the settings to fit your device capacity. The plugin can't work in offline mode, a connection to the internet must be available for the license system and downloading weather. We cannot offer any demos at the moment. The plugin has been developed using the windows 10 platform and will be for windows only at this time, sorry for Mac and Linux users, we will support these platforms in the future. The functions of the plugin can be increased or decreased depending on the X-Plane 12 version and the ability that Laminar Research offers. ___________________________ News! by Stephen Dutton 22nd February 2023 Copyright©2023: X-Plane Reviews (Disclaimer. All images and text in this review are the work and property of X-PlaneReviews, no sharing or copy of the content is allowed without consent from the author as per copyright conditions) All Rights Reserved Anthony96 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anthony96 Posted May 12, 2023 Report Share Posted May 12, 2023 Does this work for xp11 to Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aescribens Posted September 16, 2023 Report Share Posted September 16, 2023 When is the Mac version projected to be released? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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