User Manual

Important: After successfully activating TerraMaxx, you MUST go to Plugins > TerraMaxx within X-Planeand turn on your season setting of choice! Failure to do this will result in TerraMaxx NOT running!

Introduction

Thank you for your purchase of TerraMAXX, a global enhancement for X-Plane 11. Our goal was to drastically enhance the ground environment in X-Plane. After over 3 years of painstaking development we are proud to provide you our efforts.

Not only are many phases of seasons represented, we also applied normal mapping to the ground terrain and high definition vegetation which brings more depth and realism to the world. An example of the impact of the normal maps below:

TerraMAXX Features

· Automatic swapping of X-Plane’s default scenery with seasonal representations of summer, autumn, mild winter, and deep winter based on your simulated location, date, and temperature

· Replacement tree textures with 4X the resolution of default and seasonal variations

· Optional post-processing effects to give autumn and winter scenes season-appropriate hues

· If you indicated that your GPU has more than 5GB of VRAM when installing, high-resolution normal maps for default scenery will be installed, to give the appearance of more depth to the terrain

** Important Note about Custom Scenery **

TerraMaxx only affects default scenery and gateway airports. It will not affect therepresentation of any custom scenery or orthophoto packages you have installed,

unless that custom scenery package was designed for compatibility with TerraMaxx.

Using the TerraMAXX PluginTo configure TerraMaxx, select X-Plane’s Plugins menu, then TerraMAXX, then Configure. You should see a screen like this:

Season Mode

This allows you to control how TerraMAXX decides which season to represent in your flight.

“Auto” mode automatically selects a season based on your plane’s latitude, your simulated date, and the simulated temperature at your plane’s location. For most users, this is the mode you’ll want. However, bear in mind that if these conditions change enough over the course of a flight to cause a change in season, it can result in a lengthy scenery reload mid-flight.

“Off” disables TerraMAXX and uses X-Plane’s default scenery instead.

“Summer”, “Autumn,” “Mild Winter”, and “Deep Winter” allow you to manually select a fixed season, regardless of the simulated date, location, or temperature.

Deep Winter Temp

This controls the temperature cutoff between “mild winter” and “deep winter” when the season mode isset to “auto”. “Deep winter” represents heavier snow and ice on the terrain. This setting is displayed asdegrees Celsius.

Post FX

In autumn or winter conditions, this will apply a post-processing effect to give your overall scene a season-appropriate hue. Note that this feature will conflict with our Maxx-FX product which can be used for the same thing; if you are using Maxx-FX, you should disable this option.

For Scenery DesignersCustom scenery package may be made compatible with TerraMAXX by using X-Plane’s REGION_DREF command in your library.txt file. The TerraMAXX plugin will set the following datarefs to indicate the season it is currently representing:

maxxxp/seasonsxp/is_summer

maxxxp/seasonsxp/is_autumn

maxxxp/seasonsxp/is_mid_winter

maxxxp/seasonsxp/is_winter

For example, if you have autumn-specific scenery in your package, you can include:

REGION_DREF maxxxp/seasonsxp/is_autumn == 1

In your region definition for your autumn-specific resources, to only have them used while TerraMAXX believes it is autumn. You may refer to our library.txt inside TerraMAXX's Custom Scenery package for an example.

Performance Considerations

The X-Plane ecosystem has become very complex starting with the Version 10 run and the implementation of the 64 bit backbone. With this available pipeline we are able to enjoy more add-onsand graphical goodies in X-Plane. With that being said it is easy to overload the sim which degrades performance. In the world of flight simulation, support for getting the most out of a particular product is extremely complex but there are some considerations one can look at in the case of TerraMAXX. By no means is this a bulletproof guide for optimal performance, just a few ”good to know's” to get you on track.

Normal MapsDuring the install process, provided by X-Aviation, you can disable Normal Maps by using the

“your system has less than 5gb of VRAM” option. This applies even if your GPU is over the 5GB mark.Normal maps do carry a performance hit and you can free up resources by not using them.

X-Plane Rendering OptionsWe aren't going to explore tweaking X-Plane for optimal performance, there are a huge amount

of resources available to the community. But I will mention a couple considerations in regards to TerraMAXX that you may find helpful. One should apply these tips along with traditional rendering tweaks for the best overall experience.

Texture QualityWith the use of normal maps one can dial down “Texture Quality” inside

the X-Plane 11 rendering options. Normals bring more detail to the ground textures and dialing this setting down will not impact the overall scene and free up resources. I am happy with my setting at High.

Number of World ObjectsDialing this down will of course free up resources also. I typically keep mine at High.

Lateral Field of View (FOV)Setting this high can greatly affect fill rate and degrade performance, I typically go no

higher then 90 degrees.

Compatibility

X-Plane 11.20 or higher is required for TerraMAXX.