What will you trade first for the clouds?

[Guest otter55]

i will not trade anything. if my p4 3.06 maxed out gaming 'puter will not allow me to run all sliders maxed as i now do w/fs2002 i will spend whatever $$ are necessary until it will.$$ spent on fs are chickenfeed compared to the costs of operating/maintaining my real aircraft.i know not everyone feels this way but you asked :)don

[greggerm 312]

>If you have to trade other "big" performance-affecting>aspects of FS2k4, what will they be?First, I'll trade my processor/mobo/memory for a new, faster one.Then I'll trade my nVidia 4200 for a new, faster one (of any brand).Then I'll trade insults if it still doesn't perform as I want. :)

[michal 44]

>Where did you find information concerning the suggestions that>the clouds in FS04 are framerate killers? I am just curious. >Read Tom Allensworth's remarks on this forum about clouds and their impact on performance.Michael J.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

[Guest]

Hey Michael,I can't seem to find his post. Can you link it for me please. ThanksRobb

[Guest]

Hey Don,I was just thinking. I'm on my fourth computer in 8 years. The grand total for computers and upgrades over the past four years amounts to aproximately $10,000, not including pay-ware add-ons, yokes, pedals, and joysticks, charts, FS itself, etc.Even if you add the other items in the total cost, I still spent only enough to get my PPL, and then fly roughly 30 hours total in a rented aircraft. Over a period of 8 years! That works out to 3.75 hours per year compared to the thousands of hours I've spent flying in the sim. And the various types of aircraft I've flown in the sim would not even remotely be possible in the real world.Yeah it'd be nice to have my PPL and a 150 to bang around in, but I like to fly too much. More than I can afford anyway. So the 10 or 12K I've spent on flight sim is fine by me. But hey, a rich friend in need of a flying partner wouldn't hurt either :)And as for detail in FSACOF, I just bought a new PC and am enjoying the crisp visuals, high detail, etc. etc. to ever want to go back to lower details now. I'll buy the new version, but if I can't run it properly, I'll stick to FS2K2 for the time being.CF-AOAKyle

[JimmiG 244]

Same here. If it's too slow with all knobs and sliders turned up, I'll upgrade my PC ;)

[michal 44]

>I have a question. If the main feature of FSCOF is clouds/Wx>and they wont run on a users machine, why bother buying COF at>all? Why not just stick with 2k2. According to someone on the screenshot forum who played with COF at this year E3 show "sunsets/sunrises sell this game". Michael J.

[Guest Tim13]

Well, I didn't realize that upgrading the PC was an option for this question. Then without a doubt, I will swap out my 2.53gig P4 for a 3.06gig P4 as soon as the 3.2's hit the shelves. It will be worth the couple of hundred bucks for the upgrade.Now, that was easy! LOL. Tim13

[Chris Willis 8]

Hi Robb, "Flight One Software's FSClouds for FS2000 were great if you guys remember. They were large, puffy and generally very realistic. The best thing about them is the the framerates actually went up when they were used. I suspect that what is happening is that the extra lines in the program used to generate general weather conditions, including the clouds, is what would be behind the extra loss of framerates in FS04."Clouds can be tweaked for increase alot on performance, I have did that's on fs2000 50% better performance with the same quality (I did not do that in fs2002, it was not needed for performance). I recommended you to wait for an accurate full preview before reading any quick premature talk on performance, specialy with fair system, with combination setting/slider. This can take up to 4 days to see the result. There some Important thing on preview they will not able to reveal, because they are simply not developper.Cheers!Chris

[Guest]

Thanks Chris, will do but was wondering just what Tom had actually said in reference to Michael's previous post.Robb

[Chris Willis 8]

Hi, He said, clouds area real fps hit, with amd 1.3ghz gforce2 64 meg video card. But I doubt he test all weather slider according to his system specialy when I saw the the first batch of the screenshots. It was not an true final conclusion to me because we never knew his setting at all, and specialy a good final test take much more than 1 day.The new weather engine, they should have add more option on weather many slider from what I have understand In the video, and I have saw an screenshots that's display a new Weather Area, not available in fs2002. It should have many thing in there to controls your performance according to your system clouds,quality, clouds %, similar to CFS3 etc . And add to this there is always another way to improve this, by adjusting/improving the files in msfs that's will never revealed in any preview.ThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

[Guest]

Hmmmm,I wonder why Mr. AVSIM is using a weezly little 1.3Ghz processor to run FS2004? That's a standard deviation lower than the typical FS2002 user. Luckly I am using AMD's fastest processor at the moment, the AMD 2.25Ghz TBb 333Mhz DDR bus, so hopefully I won't experience the same dip he experienced. And, as you so well point out, there are will be many more options to control FS2004 weather settings and they might not be finished tweaking the final product.Thanks,Robb

[michal 44]

this is from someone else's post:Well, I have to say that I enjoyed playing with FS2004 at this year

[Chris Willis 8]

hI, "I was using a: Dell XPS with Hyper-Threading3GHz with 800MHZ Front Side Bus128 MB DDR ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Graphics Card 512 MB DDR SDRAM at 400MHzMy worries are that this new simulator was only impressive because I was playing it on a pretty powerful machine"Yup, like fs2002 at release, 1.3ghz, gforce2 64meg ultra was available at the market time, I can said this now below: My worries are that this new simulator was only impressive because I was playing it on a pretty powerful machine when I set all Slider to Max (even when I never put the slider at my home to max). My recommendation is: Never put ALL slider to full right, you can reduce the Mesh are killer frame, Ai traffic, Autogen, clouds, water reflection etc, you frame will increase alot for some tweak without reducing the quality of the sim. I remember a guys said at E3 (fs2002), the sim was like fs2000, nothing to impresse, he never knew it was beta :-lol And I think it was the same guy! Same thing for the autogen pop up , beta!ThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

[Guest]

Ugh....Having just read the post quoting that clouds produced a noticeable fps hit on a 3.06ghz machine, and the concerns voiced about potential poor performance on anything much less powerful, I'm on my knees praying that the code optimisation phase that MS are supposed to be introducing for this release is a gargantuan success.Not everyone is in a position to go out upgrading their PC's and certainly not to that level.