Let's just say that my experience with MS2004 weather is 'shaky' at best.Using a combination of Chris Willis replacement cloud textures (the most frame rate friendly ones) and real weather (ms default) and FSUIPC's layer limits, I can achieve "flyable" conditions at best.I have a 2.0 ghz Athlon processor, 684 Megs of Ram with an Nvidia 5200FX video card (not the best I know), and I tend to like my autogen and scenery complexity more towards the extreme end of density. And in all but the most crowded areas, I can usually get an "acceptable" flight, as long as I don't look out the side too much or do too much "out of cockpit" scanning of the aircraft in flight.What I am wondering is that Active Sky, especially the new version looks really fine, and I'm wondering in a brutally honest opinion, what is the frame rate hits one can expect. I know that all this "graphic goodness" must come at a cost, but I am wondering if someone can tell me what those costs are, and just how much I am going to have to sacrifice in terms of scenery complexity, autogen density, and types of clouds available. (I currently fly with visual distance set to 60 miles, Clouds at 100% 3d, and a 40 mile cloud visibility range with the cloud density set at it's lowest)Any idea of what to expect?Thanks in advance.

I used to like having autogen at very high levels.but now i set it to dense.also i turn off aircraft shadows(don't miss them at all.that way activesky doesn't really hit my computer that hard.you can limit the cloud layers also .the new update really makes a massive difference(just looks so real)in cloud options i set that to ultra high.i would have a look in the hints and tips section here,some very good advice to be found there.one of my top three addons... best wishes steveathlon 64 3500+gigabyte 9800 pro 128mb1gb ddr 400sata 120gb hard driveabit a8v m/boardaudigy 2 soundcard

I 2nd what Steve said. I turn Auto Gen down, turn off effects like shadows, which don't impress me that much, and have Active Sky with the latest update which is fantastic. Will it slow frame rates down a bit when you are in a dense cloud area, yes. Is the Active Sky worth it, you bet!!! Make sure if you get Active Sky that you turn down the number of cloud layers to 3 or so.

Hi, Active sky is tweakable for performance and feature you want to enable, You can block the cloud layer from 1 to unlimited (FSUIPC's was the layer height limits), many forget this feature, by blocking a clouds layers you can save $ for a new video cards. Basicly you can adjust your real weather performance according to your system capability. You can use hifpsv2.zip as well. You will find this product have great supports and constant update on issue and improvement, it is a stable product and have constant update for Msfs and future version.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/95461.jpgThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs