does anyone know if user defined weather is alittle more framerate friendly than downloaded real world weather? if i'm not mistaken it seems to be. if i simulate the real weather in user defined weather it seems to fly smoother than if i download the weather. comparing downloaded conditions to user defined similar conditions. your opinions please. this will help in making my decision in my other post. thanks alot. william

William,In general you are correct - use defined weather is more FPS-friendly, but that depends entirely on several factors:1.) When you simulate real-world weather using user defined weather, how many stations' weather are you defining surrounding your current location? Every one within several hundred miles? Do you also define global weather?2.) At each station that you define weather for, how complete is your definition of the weather (eg. how many cloud layers? temp layers? wind layers?)My guess is that by defining your own weather, while you might gain FPS, you will be lacking in depth and detail compared to what you get by downloading real-weather. Downloaded weather from Jeppesson delivers a global weather data with several cloud, wind and temperature layers at every local station in FS9's database. It's up to you how detailed you want your weather to be!Best,sgPS - in my experience, replacing the cumulus texture for 3d clouds with a resized version (several are available) improves performance sufficiently that I can use ActiveSky2004 for real weather and restrict my cloud layers to 8...

i would probably just use a few weather station and general weather settings. i could live with that if i have to. i'd rather download real world weather but i take to big a frame hit to enjoy it. i'm working on resolving the matter though. thanks for your help sg. william

FYI the real factor is the number of cloud layers and associated coverages. With real world weather you are likely to get several layers of rather full coverage. You can replicate this with user-defined weather--it's just tedious! So there's no difference with the rendering off real world vs. user-defined weather--just what you're apt to get.That said, you can help performance by reducing the cloud density or cloud draw distance via the Weather Settings dialog or, worst case, reverting to simple clouds.

thanks very much. i reduced my screen resolution and it seems to have helped. i already have the 3D clouds set pretty low. so far so good. hope i don't need to go the simple cloud route. thanks again for your help. william

Just one last comment - you might have better luck with 3D clouds set to 100% (no 2D's) and then reducing the cloud draw distance to get better performance. Is that what you meant?