xEnviro soon to be released

[Matthias Geiss]

Apparently, the developers of xEnviro are ready to release and it should be available at Simmarket and the .org store soon.
$69,90 is a bit steep for me, so I'll wait for first impressions from users. First release will be Windows only, Mac and Linux versions are planned for 2017.

http://simrussia.com/xenviro_en/

[Regent 013]

I was curious about it but didn't buy it, so far, i'm not sold. it really is expensive, for what little it actually does, its not compatible with a long list of add ons/plug ins/software. and the freeware competition it has is established very well

[Kyle.Sanders]

I'm not a fan... I'm staying with SkyMaxxPro
https://youtu.be/r5qXZEboc1M

[Shawn Goldsworthy]

I don't have it myself. From what I have seen from the streamers........... It is very ok. It doesn't bring much to the table in XP11. It does add some nice features in XP10. The stock XP11 weather engine already has a lot of the nice features that xEnviro brings on XP10. I won't even comment on the price tag.

[Matthias Geiss]

I didn't buy it either and I'm leaning towards SMP v4 at the moment (using v3).
The main issue for me is that the clouds - while looking good at high flight levels - seem to be pretty low res when flying near to them and also look much more 2D than Skymaxx clouds.

[Shawn Goldsworthy]

Yeah, the stock clouds kind of suck. The thing I hate about Skymaxx (XEnviro does the same thing) is the not so 3D clouds. The clouds look great from a distance. They look great when you are in the cloud and also look great when you pop in and out. Where they look like crap is when you are flying next to them and they are really only a 1 pixel wide cloud. They give you the illusion that they are 3D by rotating towards you as you fly past them. So you get this little 1 pixel wide cloud that slowly spins towards you as you fly past it. If you're a look out the front only pilot, you never notice this, when you look to the side though, it doesn't look so 3D anymore.

[Regent 013]

I swear those are a bad reminder of the days of only 2d panels. I realize mine aren't much better with just NOAA but, you know, my clouds are free. and non default.

[RyanK]

I just picked this up the other day and so far, I think I'm happy with it. Many of the negatives were fixed with the first few updates and I think it has a ton of potential. The clouds are pretty low res, but so are real clouds sometimes. They're 2D, which means they only look ok up close, but they do look great from a distance. Texture improvements and volumetric clouds are on the roadmap for the 1.xx run. X-Enviro does lighting, haze, and sky colors very well. Coming into KSAN the other evening with basically stock X-Plane 10.5 plus X-Enviro actually looked pretty spectacular.

[John Bakelaar]

I have both SM Pro 4.0 and xEnviro. I'm much happier with xE. First you get what appears to be horizon to horizon coverage rather than the group of clouds that follows you around with SM. There is a greater variety of clouds in xE and fronts forming in the distance....very immersive. I agonized over the purchase as I was happy with SM3.0. I was worried about the 2D but it hasn't been an issue. As far as price goes, keep in mind you are basically getting two plugins with xE. Many users of SM use Real Weather Connector as well. xE accomplishes what RWC does without anything additional....you already paid for it. So, it is expensive but I think it's fair for what you get. The one negative I have...and I hope it is changed in future updates is the ability to create custom weather. You have to turn it off to do that presently.