What's the most fps friendly weather engine?

[LB777 100]

The title says it all, I'm realising that heavy weather can make me lose almost half of my fps so I was wondering if there could be performance differences between all of the weather engines available for P3D?

 

I'm currently using Opus simply because I don't have ActiveSky Next and I'm waiting for Weather Direct from REX.

 

 

[cthiggin2 3]

Depending on the "weather", I think all of the add-on weather programs can be very heavy on fps.......

"Been there, done that"..........

[RWFeldman 159]

Depending on the "weather", I think all of the add-on weather programs can be very heavy on fps.......

"Been there, done that"..........

Not sure that is the weather engine itself or rather the amount of clouds they generate. Which is more than default.

[untoweechja 35]

Others with more specific knowledge in this area can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think more weather yields more of a performance hit regardless of which weather engine you're using.  

 

If you use the default FSX weather themes (no OPUS) and set to "Major Thunderstorm" or "Snowy Weather" I'm sure you'll see a comparable drop to your frame rate.

 

I would guess any performance differences between the weather engines themselves is nominal (assuming they're running at similar detail settings, of course).

[cthiggin2 3]

Yes, untoweechja, you are correct......the more clouds, snow, rain, ALL impact fps's.................the default weather in FSX or P3D, maxed out will use a lot of resources, however, with a good quality

Weather Engine, regardless of maker, key word GOOD, will impact MORE with same weather scenario.......due to the fact they have more resolution, are more accurate, and can imput more realistic weather, based on actual weather data engines..........but wow, is it really pretty - YES...

 

FWIW - with my new pc build, and yes, it's pretty darn good, I still cannot max all my sliders out without "tanking" the fps and getting stutters.......it's the nature of our current sims - primarily FSX and P3D, which is still using very old and slow code that can bring the best of oc'd cpus and oc'd hi-en gpu's to their knees....just the way it is.......Code Code Code.

[LHookins 3,102]

My experience with various versions of Active Sky are that there is one cloud situation that causes some pretty severe frame rate hits.  Mostly I just keep focused in the cockpit as much as possible when that happens.  It usually doesn't last very long.

 

I doubt any weather program has enough effect on the frame rate to measure.  However, many have reported the same problems with certain cloud situations.  My advice:  don't sweat it.  If it becomes a severe problem, reduce the number of cloud layers.  I use 5.

 

Hook

[corkyo4 2]

I would have thought this has more to do with the scenery textures. For example rex 4 provides fantastic scenery textures for clouds etc. The weather addon would import the weather and call on the textures so I suppose it would depend on how heavy those textures were in terms of file size. I know in rex 4 you can stipulate different resolution for textures.

 

Just a thought.

 

Tom