Just want to make sure that I'm on the right track with this. Clouds are pretty much a video card GPU load, right? I just want to make sure because I had my Radeon fry on me and had to get a video card at a moments notice, (was doing something for work at the time). The only video card that the local reseller had was an Nvidia GTS-450 so I bought it. Believe it or not, that video card really rocks with one exception...it doesn't like clouds very much. On a partly cloudy day it does well. My old i5 Core, 3.2mhz system will produce 40-50fps easily. But when the cloud cover gets much denser then that, the FPS will drop down as low as 5FPS. No, really, that's 5 FPS!So I'm guessing that I need a video card with a bit more teeth in order to have Active Sky running in bad or very cloudy weather. I'm also guessing that this is not due to the i5 core but is a GPU function. So please let me know if you agree so I can justify a top of the line NVidia card and thanks for the help :)Mark

Oh absolutely Mark, there's no way out but to pony up and spend the money. Actually I haven't the faintest clue, but now you can tell the wife "the guys on Avsim say I need a new GFX card" :) .Jim

Hi MarkYou don't say what else you are running at the same time.I have a 2.5 ghz Q8600 quad core and a GTX460 card. I fly the Flight 1 Cessna 175 and have no problems with frame rates (locked at 60 fps) and smoothness when I have a couple of cloud layers of reasonable thickness. But I know from experience that if, say, I have a very complex airport loaded then fps drop - but nowhere near 5 fps!! BTW, I have most of the the sliders in FS9 maxed out as well.Your CPU and video card should be more than up to the job so I would suggest that your problem might lie elsewhere. Worth having a look before buying a new card.David

The only apps that I have running are Active Sky and Active Sky graphics. There are only a few services running as well but I've go it down to a bare minimum. The system consumes 175mb at boot, (out of 4gb), and I then simply load AS which auto loads ASG. The motherboard is a Gigabyte H55M-S2V and the memory is running at 1333mhz.It's actually a pretty fast computer. I've run multiple instances of SQL Server 2008 along with Visual Studio 2010 on the thing and it's never complained before. So I don't know what is causing this severe slow down when I'm in a cloud bank. For example, I was flying from PHTO to PHLI the other day and ran into a large weather system on the way to Maui. Just looking at the weather dropped my frame rates to 20fps and when I entered it it went down to 5fps.But once I was on the other side of the weather, my frame rates when straight back to 40-50fps. Go figure. I would enjoin in any ideas here because this nVidia GTS-450 is performing like a champ with everything else. I don't want to get another vidoe card if I don't have too. I would much rather get the underdog to win the race :)MarkEdit: By the way remember this is a GTS card, not a GTX card...

HelloIf you have ASKy then have you tried one of the lower cloud textures....With ASKy you can choose between 512,256 128 and 64 bit and you can also select dxt3 as well.Obviously the lower the cloud textures the better the performance.I use 128 and the clouds still look good to me.Andy

Mark,Clouds are almost 100% GPU dependent. What AA and AF levels are you using in the graphics card?

HelloIf you have ASKy then have you tried one of the lower cloud textures....With ASKy you can choose between 512,256 128 and 64 bit and you can also select dxt3 as well.Obviously the lower the cloud textures the better the performance.I use 128 and the clouds still look good to me.Andy

This is a good suggestion. I found out recently that with the REX HD clouds all enabled and a complex weather pattern with several cloud layers, I got a very noticeable drop and with complex scenery it got down into the single digits. So reluctantly I lowered my expectations and installed lower resolution clouds and all was well again, without any great decrease in visual quality. If you are not using HD clouds, then you really shouldn't be having such a FPS hit and it might be something else causing it

Mark,Clouds are almost 100% GPU dependent. What AA and AF levels are you using in the graphics card?

Hey Jim, I'm sure that you already know this but there are two places for settings using the nVidia Inspector utility. One for global and one that is application specific. I've included both below and have no idea how to use them properly. I only know how to change the values :) By the way, I have never seen an aircraft or terrain look better in my life using these settings. There are no jagged edges or shimmering anywhere in the sim. I'm so impressed with this card that it really is a joy to look at. If somehow I can keep that as well as keep the frame rates man...what a pleasure looking at this sim will be...MarkGlobal Profile...Antialiasing - Behavior Flags : Treat 'Override any application setting' as 'Enhance the application setting'Antialiasing - Gamma correction : AA_MODE_GAMMACORRECTION_ON_IF_FOSAntialiasing - Line Gamma : OGL_AA_LINE_GAMMA_DEFAULTAntialiasing - Mode : Override any application settingAntialiasing - Setting : AA_MODE_METHOD_SUPERSAMPLE_16X_BIASAntialiasing - Transparency Multismapling : DisabledAntialiasing - Transparency Supersampling : 8x SupersamplingAnisotropic filtering mode : ANISO_MODE_SELECTOR_CONDAnisotropic filtering Setting : 16xTexture filtering - Anisotropic filter optimization : OnTexture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization : OnTexture filtering - LOD Bias : 0.000Texture filtering - Negative LOD Bias : ClampTexture filtering - Quality : High qualityTexture filtering - Trilinear optimization : OnFS9 Profile...Antialiasing - Behavior Flags : AA_BEHAVIOR_FLAGS_AA_RT_BPP_DIV_4Antialiasing - Gamma correction : AA_MODE_GAMMACORRECTION_ON_IF_FOSAntialiasing - Line Gamma : OGL_AA_LINE_GAMMA_DEFAULTAntialiasing - Mode : Override any application settingAntialiasing - Setting : AA_MODE_METHOD_SUPERSAMPLE_16X_BIASAntialiasing - Transparency Multismapling : EnabledAntialiasing - Transparency Supersampling : 8x SupersamplingAnisotropic filtering mode : ANISO_MODE_SELECTOR_CONDAnisotropic filtering Setting : 16xTexture filtering - Anisotropic filter optimization : OnTexture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization : OnTexture filtering - LOD Bias : 0.000Texture filtering - Negative LOD Bias : ClampTexture filtering - Quality : High qualityTexture filtering - Trilinear optimization : On

I haven't bought anything except aircraft and scenery. until just recently. I bought ASV as it looked conservative (it is) in frames and reliability.When I get heavy clouds it slows downs but I love it!!!! Not the slow down. This is the best product I have bought since the Level D 767 and the PSS 777 and 757.I flew into Paris (payware) the other day in cloud and it just rocks in the Level D!! FS is a great hobby. To fly these things for real would cost you around $5000 per hour if you got a cheap rate for a bird that is old (like 767).Daniel

Swoop, try these settings for your FS9 profile:Antialiasing - Behavior Flags : noneAntialiasing - Gamma correction : offAntialiasing - Line Gamma : OGL_AA_LINE_GAMMA_DEFAULTAntialiasing - Mode : Override any application settingAntialiasing - Setting : 8xSQ [Combined: 2x2SS + 2xMS]Antialiasing - Transparency Multismapling : disabledAntialiasing - Transparency Supersampling : off/multisamplingAnisotropic filtering mode : User defined/offAnisotropic filtering Setting : 16xTexture filtering - Anisotropic filter optimization : offTexture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization : offTexture filtering - LOD Bias : 0.000Texture filtering - Negative LOD Bias : ClampTexture filtering - Quality : High qualityTexture filtering - Trilinear optimization : offThe 8xSQ mode gives great image quality with a minimum of shimmer but can cause frame drops if you use many cloud layers. Try reducing the number of cloud layers if the frame drops are severe.8xS mode should handle lots of layers without frame drop with your card, but you'll get more shimmer instead.Good luck!

Swoop, try these settings for your FS9 profile:Antialiasing - Behavior Flags : noneAntialiasing - Gamma correction : offAntialiasing - Line Gamma : OGL_AA_LINE_GAMMA_DEFAULTAntialiasing - Mode : Override any application settingAntialiasing - Setting : 8xSQ [Combined: 2x2SS + 2xMS]Antialiasing - Transparency Multismapling : disabledAntialiasing - Transparency Supersampling : off/multisamplingAnisotropic filtering mode : User defined/offAnisotropic filtering Setting : 16xTexture filtering - Anisotropic filter optimization : offTexture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization : offTexture filtering - LOD Bias : 0.000Texture filtering - Negative LOD Bias : ClampTexture filtering - Quality : High qualityTexture filtering - Trilinear optimization : offThe 8xSQ mode gives great image quality with a minimum of shimmer but can cause frame drops if you use many cloud layers. Try reducing the number of cloud layers if the frame drops are severe.8xS mode should handle lots of layers without frame drop with your card, but you'll get more shimmer instead.Good luck!

Thanks...the settings are pretty good and do make it so that I don't drop down to 5fps when used. The only issue is that the wing's leading edge of many aircraft are jagged and many non-mipmap textures do shimmer. I am aware that it's a trade off but am wondering which of the settings I should use to begin tweaking it up a couple of levels? I mean, I'd like to push the card to a higher limit and discover at which point I'm willing to sacrifice FPS for quality. The key issue here being I don't know which settings to change...which settings to start with and tweak it up slowly and which ones not to touch. That info would save me many, many hours because I have over 1200 sceneries and hundreds or aircraft installed...that number includes AI. In other words, it takes FS9 3 minutes, (or more), simply to load. By the time I get the flight loaded, 5 to 10 minutes can go by quickly and only to test one increment of one nVidia setting. So which are the best settings to start with in order to tweak my nVidia card to an incrementally higher degree? Please advise and thanks for everyone's help :)Mark