Hi mj,Let's start over! What is the specific problem you are having? There have been updates to ASv6 since then that I don't want to suggest things without any details. Please let us know and we can go from there!Thanks,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Development Team Active Sky V6 Proud SupporterHiFi Beta TeamRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/AirSource Member: http://www.air-source.us/FSEconomy Member:http://www.fseconomy.com/

Hey JSkorna. I'd like to add a bit to this discussion if I might. You may recall I made a post about this very same problem on Pete Dowson's forum some time ago, and kind soul that you are, you went out of your way to help me out, which I greatly appreciate, but sadly I still haven't found a solution. I figured I'd just forget about it since FSX was coming, but then I tried the demo...and well...ouch, I'll stick with FS9 until DX10 hardware comes out. ;)The first poster's problem of severe frame drops when clouds are being drawn on the horizon is exactly the same issue I have. The problem arises any time I have the cloud draw distance set to greater than 30 miles, but it seems to be largely dependent on the number of clouds in the scene when that draw occurs. For instance, if there are just a few cumulus clouds hanging around, I can have the cloud draw distance set out to 80 miles, and new clouds will draw into the scene without a frame drop, but once coverage reaches around 25% or more, look out, its slideshow chaos during fade ins. :) Here's the rub. In the timeframe between these "draws" on the horizon, I can have a sky completely *packed* with clouds and maintain beautiful fps. Six layers, double overcast, thunderstorms, basically a sky with the consistency of a stew, all drawn out to 80 miles if I like, and maintain 30 fps easily, but the second a new section of clouds needs to come into view on the horizon, boom, 5-10 fps (if I'm lucky) for 10 seconds. This of course repeats every 30 seconds to 2 minutes, depending on speed of flight. The only true escape is to hover in a chopper and never go anywhere, hehe. I use a trackir as well, and if I turn my head away from the clouds that are drawing into view, so that they are quickly taken off the screen, the fps jumps back up to normal. The new clouds fading in *must* be present on the screen to create this drop in frames. Also, interestingly, if you hit the pause key during this frame drop, fps jumps back up to 30, essentially catching the clouds in mid-fade. Going to slew mode during the draw has no effect, frame rate still plummets. It is definitely something to do with the way FS handles drawing new clouds, but the interesting part is that it only occurs with clouds that have been created by Activesky. I cannot reproduce the problem with clouds created by FS's own weather, internal or downloaded. I have this problem with or without activesky running in the background, and using my registered FSUIPC or unregistered makes no difference. I can even save a flight with massive clouds created by activesky, shut down FS, remove FSUIPC entirely, restart FS, load that scene in again, and the problem will be there. Something within FS is seriously busted it seems, at least for a very small portion of users. The only thing I think I have in common with the 1st poster's system is that I also use an AMD Athlon 64 processor, a 3400+ in my case. Another interesting point is that it still does this even if you set 3D clouds down to say 30% leaving the rest to be done by impostors. Boggles.It may be due to the fact that the clouds coming into view at max distance are drawn into view in square sections, sort of like scenery tiles, but I suspect the real problem lies in z-sorting. My guess is that because the clouds on the horizon need to be sorted at the back of the scene, the clouds in front of them (which is every cloud in view) need to be redrawn over top to keep the sorting correct, and that the drop may be due to the system having to re-sort all those clouds per frame until the new ones are fully faded in. I've tried just about everything I can think of to fix this problem. Every video driver setting, agp aperture, fastwrites on or off, bios setting, chipset drivers, dxt vs 32 bit clouds, and every activesky/FSUIPC setting that's available to me. Antialiasing and anisotropic filtering have no effect on the problem, on, off, or with any combination of settings. I don't run any virus/spyware stuff when fs is running and I do not use file indexing. My system and FS are tweaked out to perfection....except for this one little gremlin that simply won't die. This is the rig:amd 64 3400+Asus K8V SE deluxe1gb corsair memATI X850XT 256 mbCreative Labs X-FI soundtwo 7200 rpm SATA drives, non raidall drivers up to date, latest DX9c dist, nothing overclockedAnyway, not sure that helps, but buddy, you're not alone! :) One other poster, in Holland I think, had this problem as well, mentioned it in a very old post on Pete's forum as well. He never found a solution either.Cheers!

Hi,Thanks for that very good explanation and observations of what is happening. It helps us to better understand. It does appear that it only occurs with a very small number of users (I think 5 reports total in the past year), and based on the observations, is most likely graphics related. From memory, at least one user who had this issue e-mailed us that it had been solved (unfortunately with no identification of what solved it).The strange thing I cannot understand is that you say it only occurs with ActiveSky-set weather, and not with default weather. There is technically no difference here. I, as I'm sure those experiencing this do, want to get to the bottom of this. Obviously we can't duplicate between any of our in-house systems (5), private beta testers (50+), or public beta participants (500+) which makes it really difficult, but perhaps something can be done in the way of trying different things or identifying add-ons/applications/environments that may contribute to the issue.If I may ask all those experiencing this, to please list your full system components list as well as a list of all installed add-ons, your graphics driver version, and advise if any "tweaks" have been made to FS9.cfg (and if so, which ones). Further to that, if those users could please test default cloud textures (use the ASG options/restore feature) and disable ActiveRadar (move/delete the ActiveRadar.dll in FS9Modules) to also help isolate things away from these items?Thanks a bunch,

If I might add...I too have seen this behavior (sporadic frame drop with lots of clouds, yet other times, I can run 5 layers of cumulus with no drops at all) and I have a 7800 GT card (9/13/06 91.94 driver) like the original poster.I am still experimenting with it...and in doing so it does NOT appear to be a background process (filemon/task manager).What seems to help is dropping cloud texture resolution to 256x256 or 128x128. I think there is a 7800GT-specific issue re: this.I think there IS an issue specific to 7800GT cards, which causes this problem. I say that because all of the reports of this I've seen, were from 7800GT users...including this thread (original poster).One recent thread involved cloud redraw. Jim S. was involved in that discussion and perhaps he remembers it. The user also had a 7800GT. I too have seen the slow cloud redraw issue with the same card. I think it's all related. (??)I am not yet sure if it is related to AA or not. The fact that an ATI user (was it haldir in this thread?) reports the same thing, though, perplexes me. Previous to this, it has ONLY been 7800GT users. Maybe he has a virus/trojan/spyware going on.I am still experimenting with this though.I have already decided, that I will probably migrate directly to FSX, so maybe it will be a non-issue with that.RhettAMD 3700+, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, etc. etc.

Hey Rhett. Yup, I have an ATI radeon and I have the same issue certain Nvidia users are seeing, as we've seen in the posts here. I had the same problem with my ATI 9800 128mb and moving up to the X850XT didn't help at all. I did get a 15% better framerate overall, but the cloud draw framerate crash remains. At one point I thought my old sound blaster live card might have been the culprit and it was long overdue for a visit to the rubbish bin anyway, but upgrading to a top of the line X-FI had no effect. As for the trojan/spyware issue, I keep my system crystal clean in that regard with spybot, adaware, and ewido security suite. AVG and Norton handle virus scans but they've never turned up a thing. I should mention that I reformatted and reinstalled everything from scratch about 4 months ago, upon buying the X850, with a totally clean XPSP2 and FS install. With only Activesky and FSUIPC added in, no aircraft or scenery, the same problem arose immediately. That being the case, I don't know how any addons could be causing the issue, but I'll round up the list and post a full system spec/addon sheet soon.I thought it might have been an Activeradar issue as well, so removed that. No change.I have a sneaking suspicion this might be an AMD Athlon 64 / ASUS / VIA chipset thing, just a hunch. The reason I say that is that the default MS AGP driver included with SP2 actually outperforms the latest VIA Hyperion AGP driver on my system, in every game, and that in itself is a tad nuts.Hifi, you mentioned another user had conquered the problem but didn't know exactly what solved it? Did he leave a papertrail of any sort as to what he changed at all?Man, if there were some way to just force FS to "pop" clouds in and forget that fading crap, I'd be stoked. Who cares if they pop in 80 miles away anyway. Hehe.Cheers guys! And thanks for the help!

>>I thought it might have been an Activeradar issue as well, so>removed that. No change.>>I have a sneaking suspicion this might be an AMD Athlon 64 />ASUS / VIA chipset thing, just a hunch. The reason I say that>is that the default MS AGP driver included with SP2 actually>outperforms the latest VIA Hyperion AGP driver on my system,>in every game, and that in itself is a tad nuts.>All of you, read all of this post and see what you think:Well I don't know if the "popping clouds" issue and the "cloud framerate drop" are the same issue, or if they're even related.As we know, nVidia cards, particularly the 6xxx series, tended to AA the clouds. But the 7xxx series are supposed to not do that so much. And they DO avoid it 90% of the time. It's just every once in a while, it still happens. Dropping to 256x256 textures seems to have helped, but I have only done limited testing. I will do some more.But I do not think the cloud framerate drop has to do with AA...read on...One thing I discovered, in lots of testing with my FS rig, is that it does not like global texture size set to "Massive". It is fine most of the time, but sometimes it will give a noticeable stutter when a texture is popped in...this is a rarity, but most noticeable when you shift view to see an airport tarmac below you, when flying above it. The reason for this is simple--the sim has used all of your gfx memory, and has to push old textures out to make room for the new. Thus the hiccup.This also dovetails with the sayings of MS, who say for FS, it is better to have a slower vid card, with LOTS of ram, than a fast vid card, with less ram.So I'm thinking this cloud stuttering issue is simply one of the gfx card memory getting filled, and having to pop out old textures and put in the new ones. What do you all think? Is this a possibility? Good news is, I think in FSX the texture loading I/O has been streamlined.RhettAMD 3700+, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, etc. etc.

Hi All,Very interesting discussion so far!Mace, if that were true, wouldn't more users be reporting this? Especially 128MB card users? I don't have the answer, but I like to throw things out for discussion!.Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Development Team Active Sky V6 Proud SupporterHiFi Beta TeamRadar Contact Supporter: http://www.jdtllc.com/AirSource Member: http://www.air-source.us/FSEconomy Member:http://www.fseconomy.com/

Interesting idea, that the vid card was running out of texture room, I can totally see that problem popping up in a scene with tons of ai, ultimate terrain, and complex aircraft. I can't see how it's possible in the case of this specific problem though, as this stutter with new cloud draw occurs even over the middle of the pacific, a thousand miles from any landmass, and with default aircraft, which are pretty vram friendly.I'll try dropping my max texture load value to minimum though and see what happens. :)One funny thing I've noticed with clouds though. If you drop the number of mipmap levels from say 8 to 2, the clouds actually get thinner, just like dropping the coverage slider down. They seem to be composed of fewer polygons, weird.As for the momentary stutter when an airfield comes into view etc, I get that same problem. My FS/system combo absolutely hates any scenery texture larger than 512kb. For instance if I use those Airport Environment Upgrade textures, its a stutter fest the second I fly within sight distance of an airport, as those textures are loaded in. After they're loaded its smooth again. I reduce all the sizes of scenery textures to 512kb or less by removing the largest mips. Aircraft textures can get away with being larger as you only have to load them once in awhile.

>Hi All,>>Very interesting discussion so far!>>Mace, if that were true, wouldn't more users be reporting>this? Especially 128MB card users? I don't have the answer,>but I like to throw things out for discussion!.>Yes that is a good point Jim. But one thing I will say, is that Microsoft themselves said that the architecture is such, that when all of the video ram gets used, the sim pushes out old textures, to make room for new ones.And this explains why I can see a stutter on texture load, if using "Massive" size textures, but not at the "Medium" setting. What I am saying is, I don't know FOR SURE if the video mem usage is the reason for that particular stutter, but it seems likely to me.But then, this may not really be the same issue as the cloud stutter. Maybe THAT particular issue has to do with too many cloud layers enabled? And that's it. (?). I have 5 enabled. I should test with 3 enabled or 4, and see if I can reproduce the problem.RhettAMD 3700+, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, etc. etc.

>Interesting idea, that the vid card was running out of>texture room, According to MS, that IS what the sim does, no matter how much vid ram you have, it will load in textures to fill it--and once it's filled, it will remove old textures that haven't been used recently, and put in new textures.I guess if you had a 1mb card, it may not ever get filled on a routine basis.. ??>I can totally see that problem popping up in a>scene with tons of ai, ultimate terrain, and complex aircraft.>I can't see how it's possible in the case of this specific>problem though, as this stutter with new cloud draw occurs>even over the middle of the pacific, a thousand miles from any>landmass, and with default aircraft, which are pretty vram>friendly.>That's also a good point. It can occur over the mid-ocean. That makes me think it's just a matter of the # cloud layers, and texture size, and vid ram.>>As for the momentary stutter when an airfield comes into view>etc, I get that same problem. My FS/system combo absolutely>hates any scenery texture larger than 512kb. For instance if I>use those Airport Environment Upgrade textures, its a stutter>fest the second I fly within sight distance of an airport, as>those textures are loaded in. After they're loaded its smooth>again. I reduce all the sizes of scenery textures to 512kb or>less by removing the largest mips. Aircraft textures can get>away with being larger as you only have to load them once in>awhile. >I too use AEU and it seems fine on my system...BUT..I don't think Global Max Texture Size affects AEU at all. I think GMTS is just for runway textures, tarmac textures, and terminal building textures..mostly it seems.Anyway my rig doesn't like Massive, it likes Medium and is nice n smooth at that setting with AEU and ASV6 also.For sure I am going to play with cloud layer #'s some moreRhettAMD 3700+, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, etc. etc.

Yup, I can see your point where large texture sizes, especially ones that are not used all the time, such as runway and tarmac textures, get bumped out and cause those brief load stutters, but I don't see how the cloud textures can fall into that category. I recall reading a post about this, on Tdragger's blog I think. There are basically something like 10 main cloud textures, all of which are fairly small in size, if you use a reduced resolution set (the default ones are massive) but 80% of the clouds we see in FS are rendered from just one texture, cumulus01.bmp. Unless you have a totally clear sky, that particular texture is always in vram, it never gets a chance to get bumped out because it's needed to render every single frame 99% of the time. Part of the reason clouds are able to render so quickly with a low resolution version of that texture is that video cards have a small but very low latency cache memory, just like that on a cpu. That small cumulus01.bmp fits in there quite nicely I'd guess, and most of the time the vid card doesn't even need to fetch it from vram, its usually in the cache. Fill rate is also a factor of course, the larger the texture the longer it takes to display.Number of layers I'm not sure on. I can get this stutter with one layer or ten.My experience with this problem is leading me to think that there's a cap somewhere in FS with respect to how many cloud polygons it can render or sort per frame without some sort of struggle, at least with respect to our particular systems. It obviously doesn't affect very many people, or if it does, they just haven't noticed it. I doubt it would be as much of an issue if I didn't use a track-ir.Whatever it is, its definitely hogging massive cpu time, because every time this stutter shows up, so do the blurries, and I never get those (under mach 1) between stutter periods. One thing about activesky created clouds vs normal FS ones is that the AS versions seem to be much denser on average. They seem to be composed of a great deal more polygons. This might explain why we can't reproduce the problem with FS's own internal weather, regardless of density and layers. There's a reason that AS clouds look infinitely better than the default FS ones. ;) Maybe I'm way off base on that one though. Maybe its a difference in the way FS and AS set station based weather? No clue.One thing I have noticed about the stutter is that it does seem to be tied very closely to the density of the section of clouds fading into view. For instance a very low density area of cumulus clouds, say 3/8 coverage or less fading in produces a very mild stutter, sometimes almost unnoticeable, but a total overcast section coming in results in a slideshow. Personally, I think there's a hidden variable in the fs9.cfg file:DRIVE_USER_INSANE_WITH_UNTRACEABLE_CLOUD_STUTTER=1:)

Last night I flew around Portugal in the default Baron, and it was rainy and cloudy with lots of cloud layers.I reduced permitted cloud layers to 3 (was at 5).I experimented with 128x128 cloud textures and 512x512 cloud textures. I forgot how nice the 512 x 512's are. I had not flown with them in a while. My rig, now well tweaked, seems to handle any resolution with no problem. I couldn't say that 6 months ago, when I was still tweaking it out. Sure 512x512 is slightly lower frames, but nothing to write home about. A 7800GT is nice vs. a GF3 I had before.I did not notice any cloud frame rate cut-outs this time. In the soup, my average frames did drop into the 25-ish range, but with just some clouds, it was way up to the lock at 40. This is with 100% AI and all sliders right except Global Max Texture Size. Man the 3700+ is very nice.The cloud frame drop, which I rarely see, would have dropped the fps to about *10*, so I did not see that.Really I've only seen such a drop about twice out of maybe 100 sessions so I'm not too concerned about it myself--especially in light of the fact that I will probably migrate direct to FSX here in a few weeks.I'm sure FSX will be a whole 'nother configuration animal, with its own little idiosyncracies. I actually plan to run it bone stock for a little while, but the first add-on I will attempt to port over will be ASV6.RhettAMD 3700+, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, etc. etc.

Hehe, lucky you, I'm envious. How far did you have your clouds rendered out to? Myself, anything more than 30 miles, and its guaranteed stutter, so that's what I live with. It stutters even with that, but at least it doesn't bring my system to its knees. What was your visibility in that rain? As soon as my vis drops to 9 miles, aka "the white wall", it won't stutter no matter how many clouds there are.I'm placing full blame now on my AMD/VIA chipset combo and looking forward to running this mobo over with my car as soon as I can afford to. ;)

I think it's set on 59 miles. But anyway:Last night I flew from Portugal up toward France, using the same weather. When I got above that weather system, there were a lot of cumulus clouds, and AT FIRST, frame rates dropped to 15-20, but THEN, after a few seconds, with the *view unmoved* the fps went back up to the lock of 40. So it appears that something is slowing things down when the clouds are being rendered. Once they are rendered, it's fast and smooth. I think this IS related to the "clouds drawing slowly on the screen" issue. Maybe. Anyway that's an observation I saw last night.Hladir you should get rid of the VIA chipset, I have detested VIA chipsets from way back. I would run over and crush it with a car, yes.RhettAMD 3700+, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 3-3-3-8, etc. etc.

I didnt read all the answers here, but the answer to topic starter is simple.There isnt much point in upgrading your videocard if your processor cant keep up with it. Or in other words, the 7800GT cannot perform as good as it wants to because the processor cannot handle the data fast enough.I got the same system as you, but with a Pentium 4,3. In FS I got just about everything on max, and it runs smooth with ASv6.A faster processor will help you.