Question, Why are frame rates really good early in the morning and late at night? Like for example, at KATL, my frames are great early in the morning just around dawn time, and late at night around 10pm....but really at any other time of day around 2/3pm frames arent that great....this is also the case in the NYC area....at like KJFK.KEWR.KLGA....Eventhough there are so many planes at all the gates...frames are good...

Question, Why are frame rates really good early in the morning and late at night? Like for example, at KATL, my frames are great early in the morning just around dawn time, and late at night around 10pm....but really at any other time of day around 2/3pm frames arent that great....this is also the case in the NYC area....at like KJFK.KEWR.KLGA....Eventhough there are so many planes at all the gates...frames are good...

Is is possible is has something to do with the amount of AI traffic around ?Regards.Ernie.

Might possibly be weather-related. Early in the morning, the ground has not heated up, so there is less warm air rising, hence there are less cumulous clouds about early in the morning. With less clouds to draw in FS, one presumes it would take take less processing power for FS to operate and require less guts from your graphics engine too. At night, you can't see as far of course, so FS presumably doesn't have to worry about drawing stuff that would not be visible in reduced lighting conditions.That might not be it at all, just a idea.Al

Weather of different times of a day only stand if the user actually downloads the faithful metar. Would it be any different if the user hits "download current" on hifisim and then choose dawn, day or dusk in FS?

Might possibly be weather-related. Early in the morning, the ground has not heated up, so there is less warm air rising, hence there are less cumulous clouds about early in the morning. With less clouds to draw in FS, one presumes it would take take less processing power for FS to operate and require less guts from your graphics engine too. At night, you can't see as far of course, so FS presumably doesn't have to worry about drawing stuff that would not be visible in reduced lighting conditions.That might not be it at all, just a idea.Al

Does FS really model this? Would be great if it did. :(

FS models it if you have real world weather downloads on, but to some extent, what it draws also depends on what cloud sets you have installed too of course, for example, in FS9 I have replacement clouds that are more convincing, but they will undoubtedly be using more processing power since they are of a better quality than the default ones. Performance is also likely to be somewhat dependent on the weather engine that one uses to interpret a real-world METAR, since they tend to differ in their interpretations a bit, I know this from online flying with friends when we have been using different weather engines but both using real-world download information; when chatting to one another, it is apparent that we are seeing slight differences in cloud coverage because of the different third-party weather engines we are using.Not sure why someone is concerned about performance in FS9 though. Frankly, even a half-decent computer should be able to run a full-blown thunderstorm at JFK with full traffic whilst performing barrel rolls in a PMDG 747 and still get decent frame rates. In FSX I could see it being a concern, but FS9 is a seven year-old piece of software which came out at a time when having 2 Gigs of DDR RAM was a pretty high end spec, so it should have no problem at all on a decent computer these days.Al

AI traffic I believe plays apart but there is some truth about certain times of the day and framerates. For me the worst time of day for framerates is dusk just as all the lights come on. Of course with newer systems the issue is somewhat mute but a reality just the same.

I believe that a lower resolution is used for ground textures during hours of darkness, so this could maybe account for better fps at night.Dave

Thanks alot guys!! This idea always puzzled me.....My System Specs are:Geforce 9600GT Overclocked 512MB3GB Corsair DDR2 MemoryAMD Phenom 9750 Quad Core 2.40GHZ Processor800W PowersupplyOperating System is: Windows XP Professional 32BitAnyone have any recommendations on how to improve my system so I can have 30+ frames in areas like the NYC and Atlanta at all times during the day?

Thanks alot guys!! This idea always puzzled me.....My System Specs are:Geforce 9600GT Overclocked 512MB3GB Corsair DDR2 MemoryAMD Phenom 9750 Quad Core 2.40GHZ Processor800W PowersupplyOperating System is: Windows XP Professional 32BitAnyone have any recommendations on how to improve my system so I can have 30+ frames in areas like the NYC and Atlanta at all times during the day?

Get a video card with 1gig of ram on it...

What about a faster processor? Ive always been told that FS2004 rides alot on the processor