Hi folks,I have a problem with Fs9 loading weather/clouds, my FPS die from around a steady 25 to 8 for up to 30 seconds. This problem only occurs when actually looking at the sky if I quickly look down at the vc instrument panel the FPS instantly return to 25, when the slow down has fininshed FPS return to normal values when looking at the sky,if I set only one layer of cloud it does not occur or turn off Anisotropic filteringThe strange thing is that I have just install a 320 STATA 11 hard disk,up from a 40 gig IDE, the 40 gig IDE had exactly the same device drivers (chip/video), same sim weather display / cfg tweak settings as before, same settings addon weather engine including running Anisotropic at 16x,on the 40 gig it ran with no problems at all with the addons loaded up as before and real time weather being downloaded from the net, maybe there is a process running in the background that is causing this problem.I have tried all manner of adjustments over this last week and cannot get it to run as before.Things I have done:Spyware check ( Trend Micro ) virus check (always off when running sim o & O named defrag.Different video drivers.Updated chip drivers.Different TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT= setttings.different FPS settings.I am kind off lost on this, being simming since FS98 and never had a problem of this nature before 'upgrading' hardware has always resulted in an improvement in my simming...!My spec:Conroe 945G-DVI motherboard.E6600 cpuGainwood 7900GS video ( 93.71 drivers as before )2 gig ram.As already stated I had no problems before with my old IDE unit sim ranjust fine with:Track IRLevel D 767Active Sky 6.5Radar ContactMesh scenerysadded high detail airports, Flytampa etc with all scenery sliders maxed except 'detailed cloud' level this was set as medium.I would really appreciate any thoughts on this guys, best to all,

Hi folks,Seems I have cured my snag, with my old setup I had sound ecceleration at max with sim sound as high, now I have it set at 'standard' and 'medium' and this has cured the FPS drop. Why there should be a difference I dont know i'm just happy the problem is resolved.cheers,

Hi,Other things to check:sound driversmake sure DX9 is up to date.Make sure Windows Media Player is up to date. Yes, this can make a difference in FS!Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

Hi Jim,Thanks for the reply, I had already updated those items, althoughI did not know that Windows Media could cause a problem, will have to remember that one.cheers now,

>Make sure Windows Media Player is up to date. Yes, this can>make a difference in FS!>>Jim>>http://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpg>http://www.hifisim.com/How Jim, please explain?

Hi,Certain parts of FS04 hook into WMP. Don't have it installed? It's OK because parts of Windows have the files. They are video-audio type files. Some see this if they do a reinstall of Windows and don't update their install and then they wonder why they have lost FSP in FS04.Thanks,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/