what would you say is the worst fps killer?

[pmanhart 176]

It depends on the flight situation, but in my experience, I've ranked them below:

 

If you're in a dense urban environment:

1. AI Traffic

2. Road Traffic

3. Shadows, mostly building shadows (also comes into play with #1 and #2 if SimObject shadows are enabled!)

 

Rural environment:

1. Vegetation shadows

2. Own plane (PMDG, Flight1 G1000 equipped plane, etc.)

 

Ever since upgrading to a modern system, the scenery and autogen sliders don't do much for me.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

The worst is autogen buildings which like AI traffic, crushes the CPU. At least with AI traffic, one can use the Traffic Optimizer utility and that pretty much reduces that source of consternation. Basically, 3rd party big international airports are the worst area to fly into as they are not only are resource hogs in their own right, but then the adjacent city buildings and AI traffic compound the problem.

[Boomer 1,619]

Chris, do you use UT2 for model matching?

No, but I should. Haven't gotten around to it cause it's a hassle.

[hqmurphy 7]

For me, clouds are a huge FPS killer. The switch I made from SoftClouds to ASCA made a nice difference, but I'm still eating a decent amount of FPS when there is heavy cloud cover.

 

Reducing layers of clouds has helped a bit as well. But, I still have yet to find a way to enjoy decent cloud visuals while keeping performance.

 

(P.S. Any tips would be much appreciated)

[klamal 282]

For me, clouds are a huge FPS killer. The switch I made from SoftClouds to ASCA made a nice difference, but I'm still eating a decent amount of FPS when there is heavy cloud cover.

 

Reducing layers of clouds has helped a bit as well. But, I still have yet to find a way to enjoy decent cloud visuals while keeping performance.

 

(P.S. Any tips would be much appreciated)

Same for me.  The sim is very smooth as long as I'm not in or looking at certain types of cloud cover.  I think mainly overcast but I haven't quite nailed it down yet as to if this is the only scenario.

[downscc 1,327]

 

 

(P.S. Any tips would be much appreciated)

 

This courtesy of our moderator Vic, who suggested a lower frame rate lock.  At 30 the overcast/undercast would decrease the rate to the teens but at 24 there is no change at all, any clouds.  I tried 20 but 24 happens to work best for me.

[Guest]

It'll depend on your PC and if you are CPU or GPU constricted.  But in my experience AI traffic (MyTraffic6) is very high on the list of FPS drop.  Next would be DR at Ultra and Water at Ultra (this is on the GPU side).

 

 

If you want frames you need to play another game.

 

I'll disagree here, if you want frames then be VERY careful with what add-ons you install and how you configure those add-ons.  

 

Cheers, Rob.

[DylanM 1,069]

Same for me.  The sim is very smooth as long as I'm not in or looking at certain types of cloud cover.  I think mainly overcast but I haven't quite nailed it down yet as to if this is the only scenario.

 

I'm assuming you're using SGSS? You could try different forms of AA including DSR or DSR+MFAA which don't cause a performance hit in overcast conditions.

[klamal 282]

I'm assuming you're using SGSS? You could try different forms of AA including DSR or DSR+MFAA which don't cause a performance hit in overcast conditions.

I can't remember now what I'm at.  Tried different things but will admit, I'm not an expert on what all this means for the graphics stuff.  I'm running at 4k now.  So, I don't think I'd want to do DSR, right?  But, maybe still then I don't need SGSS if I am in fact doing that now?

[flyinpilot212121 724]

Using some of the tips above, I was able to get 10 extra frames from tinkering.

I turned my AI traffic down to 20%, but surely there must be a way to add traffic from a third party with low textures, I was using default traffic, I'm ok turning it down but it would be nice to find some low texture traffic to ad life to the sim?

[Guest]

Did some more testing tonight with v3.4 ... for my setup turning OFF Terrain Shadows, SimObject shadows, and setting Shadow quality to medium reduced long frames considerably.

 

My test area was Turbulent L35 with Orbx SoCal installed.

 

Cheers, Rob

[kakusso 12]

Dynamic reflections is another frame-rate killer, I keep it just above the minimum.

With UT2 it is possible to turn AI completely off and still have all the AI scheduled for a specific area in 201X. Not sure that it helps frame rate, but it would be nice if anyone could confirm since some say that it runs outside P3D.

The Majestic also seems to run outside P3D only injecting the results of its calculations to it making it very smooth for FPS. It would be nice if all the planes would do the same LM should set a policy in that sense.

 

Edit: The biggest frame-rate killer are by far extremely dense cities.

[Twenty6 693]

With UT2 it is possible to turn AI completely off and still have all the AI scheduled for a specific area in 201X. Not sure that it helps frame rate, but it would be nice if anyone could confirm since some say that it runs outside P3D.

 

What is 201X?

 

UT2 does run outside of the flight simulator (FSX or P3D) and injects traffic differently than FSX/P3D, MyTraffic 6 and other traffic programs. UT2 does not use a BGL file to inject traffic so the traffic sliders inside the simulator have no effect on UT2.

[nealmac 260]

It's very hard to name just 1, isn't it? I came into this thread with the sole intention of stating that for me it was AI traffic. And then when I read some of the replies I kept changing my mind lol.

 

AI traffic

Road traffic (probably the most surprising one, even on a very low setting)

Busy airspace (such as around London)

Heavy Clouds (particularly with thunderstorms)

 

All big killers for me.

 

The biggest one is probably not having a good enough CPU. Actually, my biggest problem is that my CPU keeps overheating and throttling back. If it ran at full power I wouldn't have such problems.

[Manny 1,293]

Clouds FPS kill could be managed if you have P3D 3.3.5 or higher and a reasonably good Video card.