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Guest RonB49

So what does Fall Weather have to do with FS Performance?

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Yeesh! I was feeling so nice about how FS2004 has run on my machine since installing it months ago. I remember thinking then, "I wonder how this will be when the nastier weather starts . . . ." I'm afraid I got my answer this evening, flying from Chico, CA to Arcata at FL18 in the default Lear 45. Rediculously poor performance. Oh, it was flyable all right, but gone was the liquid smooth I was enjoying previously. I always keep Augogen at High Density, always run clouds 100% full 3D with max distance, but usually medium density. Using default real weather, she dropped down to 7 fps in one area, but often was around 14-16. I think upon TD at KACV she was doing about 17 fps, which is certainly fine for landings, but not the lovely smoothness that really improves the sense of reality for me. I usually am locked close to 25, but now with complex weather showing up perf has really taken a dive. I am spoiled now by high res settings. I'm sure I can do some tweaking (as in turning down quality settings) to get myself back into the 20's, but it's not what I'd like to do. And I WILL NOT be upgrading my lowely 2.53GHz processor anytime soon. Just isn't worth the 12% boost. After all: 10 FPS x 112% = 11 FPS. My only hope will be R420, and I kind of doubt that will help all that much, but we can always hope! Can't imagine flying any 3rd party ware in any sort of complex weather.Noel


Noel

System:  9900K@5.0gHz@1.23v all cores, MSI MPG Z390M GAMING EDGE AC, Noctua NH-D15S w/ steady supply of 40-60F ambient air intake, Corsair Vengeance 32Gb LPX 3200mHz DDR4, Sabrent NVMe 2Tb x 2, RTX 4090 FE, Corsair RM 850W PSU, Win10 Pro, LG Ultra Curved Gsync Ultimate 3440x1440, TCA Boeing Edition Yoke & TQ, Cessna Trim Wheel, RTSS Framerate Limiter w/ Edge Sync for near zero Frametime Variance achieving ultra-fluid animation at lower frame rates.

Aircraft used in A Pilot's Life V2:  PMDG 738, Aerosoft CRJ700, FBW A320NX, WT 787X

 

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It's the clouds. They cause a huge performance drain.First thing to do is make sure you have the "fps and fix" cloud textures from Chris Willis (ffpv2.zip in the library). They will probably give you back some of your missing frames.I have a P4 2.4 and a Radeon 9500 pro. In my testing, changes in screen resolution don'thave much of an impact on performance UNLESS there are lots of clouds. The clouds seem very resolution dependent. I can run at 1600x1200 just fine on a clear day, but not if there's a bunch of clouds.Also, take note that downloaded weather is MUCH more demanding than custom weather and weather themes. All of the weather themes run very nicely on my system, but real-world weather (which I assume is much more complex in terms of cloud layers and such), will often bring things to a halt no matter what the resolution. My hope is that one of the weather utilities will have a feature at some point to optimize downloaded weather for better performance (For example, using visibility settings to "flesh out" an overcast). I am sure we will also see weather utilities that let us create new weather themes on the fly.For now, you may have to make some compromises. If you can bear to run at lower-res in clouds, you might try setting up your desktop at 1600x1200 (or whatever), and the sim at 1024x768. Run in a window until your performance starts to drag, and then ALT-ENTER into full screen to get back your fps. Also, be sure to look at the alternate cloud textures, and perhaps scale back the distance on your clouds to a few miles below your viewable distance (I have max visibility at 60 and clouds at 40).

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Thanks for that. I have tried the fps and fix from Chris and have ended up taking it out again as the clouds lost their definition by comparison (spoiled!). I have done some flying with FSMeteo and noticed much better performance overall, though that program has some issues as well. You are so right about the default clouds being the culprit overall. I have really enjoyed real weather so I am loathe to give that up, but it's a good though for sure. Perhaps there is a compromise in using the real weather then editing it in the adv weather settings. I just need to crank some stuff down for the winter it appears. Good idea on the alt-enter to switch resolutions. I don't think there is a machine out there than could have taken care of the flight I took today. I used ActiveSky in FS2002 so maybe the version 2 will be better on that as well. Noel


Noel

System:  9900K@5.0gHz@1.23v all cores, MSI MPG Z390M GAMING EDGE AC, Noctua NH-D15S w/ steady supply of 40-60F ambient air intake, Corsair Vengeance 32Gb LPX 3200mHz DDR4, Sabrent NVMe 2Tb x 2, RTX 4090 FE, Corsair RM 850W PSU, Win10 Pro, LG Ultra Curved Gsync Ultimate 3440x1440, TCA Boeing Edition Yoke & TQ, Cessna Trim Wheel, RTSS Framerate Limiter w/ Edge Sync for near zero Frametime Variance achieving ultra-fluid animation at lower frame rates.

Aircraft used in A Pilot's Life V2:  PMDG 738, Aerosoft CRJ700, FBW A320NX, WT 787X

 

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Hi, "always run clouds 100% full 3D with max distance,`forget about clouds draw distant at max setting, set them at 30 mile , clouds percentage to 100% or lower, max visibility at 60,use the weather/clouds slider.There is nothing to do with any weather if you want many clouds in the screen, far clouds, unlimited 3d clouds layers etc, on some situation it need power. In fsuipc there is layer limitation and height to improve peformance. I am glad that`s Ms finally add them in the sim, before it was few one type clouds cumulus here and here like fs2k2, IL2 and lomac which do not represent at all the real weather and formation clouds type. Newer system will handle better the general weather for futur and futur version. Weather require room and FPS if you don`t wont basic stuff.Ps: AA 4x with clouds, the peformance drop, with 2x AA, no difference.ThanksChris WillisFSW GROUP[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html|Clouds And Addons For MsFs


Kind Regards
Chris Willis

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Slightly OT for Chris.I thought FS9 would do away with the stretched clouds of FS2k2 Chris but I have screen shots which still show some stretched clouds using either FS Meteo or ActiveSky and your cloud BMPs.Rgds

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I never found clouds or weather to slow down FS2004 much. Just use some sense with the distance visiblity slider and it should be possible to have full 3d clouds with good performance.The only framerate killer for me were the fast food houses and gas stations. They cause framerate to drop by 50-75% on final for me. I always disabled those by renaming FS9AutogenDefault.xml to something else such as default.bad.You can also disable the vector objects by editing the .cfg file. I don't remember the exact name of the line, but it's called something like "draw_vertex_objects" or similar. Just search for "vertex" or similar.


Asus Prime X370 Pro / Ryzen 7 3800X / 32 GB DDR4 3600 MHz / Gainward Ghost RTX 3060 Ti
MSFS / XP

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Guest FPSFREAK

Noel,As others have said try turning your cloud draw distance down. I personally do not experience any of the issues you do while using realtime weather.2 Other things that may interest you:1. You talk of a 12% increase by switching CPU's. It's going to be more than that. Especially if running an 800Mhz FSB P4C. The 2.4 P4C will do 3-3.2 Ghz with your current cooling setup and the right memory but that's not what's going to give you the kick in the pants. It's the 1000+ Mhz FSB you'll be running that gives you bandwidth galore. That PC2700 your running just can't hold a candle to the newer PC3200+ and up that's available. Now I'm not saying you HAVE to upgrade as your current machine is still quite powerful. Just wanted to point out the incorrect performance boost you would see.2. I see you've OC your CPU. You do know that with some cheap $10 heat sinks and the stock HS fan unit your 9700 will do around 375/350 100% stable. with a Zalman HP and a 40MM fan my 9700 runs at 415-420/365 100% stable. Runs neck and neck with any 9800Pro and soundly beats any 59/5950.Try the cloud draw turnback first. If that doesn't help at least you have one alternative to upgrading.Bobby

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Guest RonB49

Turn off your frame rate counter; forget that it exists. That's what I did after I got all the latest Omega drivers installed and all the tweaks nicely tweaked. I'm much happier and much calmer now. Excuse me now while I meditate.Hmmmmmmmmm, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, hmmmmmmmmmmmm! R-

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