Hi guys,

I am new to X-plane X and 11. Unfortunately I am very disappointed with the performance I get in these sims.

The biggest culprit are the clouds. As soon I load them the Sim drops 10's of FPS down making it unplayable. The drop comes instantly.

I thought a weather addon might be the solution as I read many positive comments about it. I bought Skymaxx Pro V4 because I do not like X-enviro 2D blankets. But found afterwards that Skymaxx Pro V4 was nothing good at all. It adds according to me nothing at all!!

 

I am a FSX veteran and I adore ActiveSkyNext very much. Such clouds I expect after all these years in X-plane as well!! Such superb weather! But there is simply nothing to find.

I have to live with it I know.

 

But what is the issue on the performance????

My Specs:

CPU: i7 6700K @ 4.6ghz

GPU: MSI 1080GTX 8GB GDDR5

RAM: Corsair Dominator 32GB DDR4 3000mhz

HDD: 1.5TB WD Green Caviar 7200RPM (installed XPX and XPXI on this)

SSD: 480GB (FSX is on this)

 

An extra note: I have w2xp sceneries installed. But these do not impact the performance as such. Before cloud generation I get 30-40 fps, there after I get around 14-20 fps. Ridiculous (as the clouds are crappier than FSX ASN icw. REX texture direct). This is insane.

 

As soon as clouds are rendered into the sim the performance drops like a brick in X-plane! Please explain it to me!

I thought this sim might be the future, but I am slowly turning away from it again.

 

Helpful tips are welcome. I am willing to give the sim a chance. Perhaps I am missing something with those damn clouds???

xenivro has very little fps hit and I have a 980ti.

I don't get why you are against xEnviro 2d clouds when REX is built around them, and so is the cloud system in Flight Sim series since always.

Default clouds killing fps are a thing indeed, that's why few keep them :( 
When you say Skymaxx pro adds nothing, what do you mean specifically?

You could try lowering the draw distance of the clouds to see if fps improve as a start

Definitely not normal. I have a 1070 and even with default clouds I get nice smooth performance. In XP10 we were able to change the density and I had it at the lower end, but not sure this can be changed in XP11 (but they know clouds are an issue and have some fixes to go in, so it will get fixed)

Also, have you tried this 

This is the only thing I can think of at the moment

 

34 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Definitely not normal. I have a 1070 and even with default clouds I get nice smooth performance. In XP10 we were able to change the density and I had it at the lower end, but not sure this can be changed in XP11 (but they know clouds are an issue and have some fixes to go in, so it will get fixed)

Also, have you tried this 

This is the only thing I can think of at the moment

 

I turned of threaded optimization. But I have to see if this is the Holy Grail for the cloud rendering issue. I am sceptic.

I find it hard to believe the sim would be "unplayable" on that system. It runs quite nicely on my 4770K @ 4.5 GHz and GTX 970 4 GB.
Also, what do you mean Skymaxx adds "nothing at all"? If you saw no difference, maybe it wasn't installed correctly? I have this add-on, and I think it makes the clouds look much better (brighter and more "puffy"), and it also improves performance.

Definitely not normal operations.    xEnviro does have a bug itself in that it does too many fill calls with the current cloud set.   It's why I had to download the low rez temporary fix until they fix the problem on their end but they are waiting for the XP11 RTM.   I don't have any experience with SkyMaxx PRO but be mindful of your AA settings in the sim.    If you want a ton of clouds you cannot run with 8x everything in your AA settings.  You have to tone it down.    The same thing happened in FSX/P3D with cloud rendering.   To much anti-aliasing and you murder your system.

There's a better cloud set for XP11. Look on the Xplane forum. In combination with Xenviro shouldn't be a single performance problem with your system. But if you like going back to micromanaging in P3D/FSX just so you don't get VASs you're welcome to do so. For the amount of time you put into playing around with P3D/FSX settings you should proportionately exercise less in XP11 because of its 64 bit processes and the lack of memory problems.

 

i7-4790, ZOTAC 1080Extreme, 8GB, 16 GB RAM.

your system should run both versions just fine on highest AA settings. 

few tips: 

- Turn Threaded optimization off in nVidia control panel!

- when setting up weather, keep visibility realistic. 100 miles sounds nice, but will kill any system. Anything between 20 and 40 is more realistic, and with the haze effect in XP11 it looks very nice. I can not comment on SMP settings as I do not own it, but when setup wrong, I read that it can bring down performance on any system.

- shadows on scenery is heavy on resources, try reducing (or in x-plane 11, disable) this.

Most important: have fun, and don't add too much to the sim at the same time, X-Plane is completely different to setup and maintain then FSX and P3D.

5 minutes ago, jh71 said:

- shadows on scenery is heavy on resources, try reducing (or in x-plane 11, disable) this.

Oh yeah it does!  Like.. big time major.   It looks great but makes pretty much every flight on my system a slide show.  With them off 30+ FPS always.    

20-40 miles seems a little shallow.  The human eye can see about 75 miles at Cruise altitude irl.   That's about where mine is set.   I shall have to look into this better clouds!

45 minutes ago, Kuragiman said:

20-40 miles seems a little shallow.  The human eye can see about 75 miles at Cruise altitude irl.   That's about where mine is set.   I shall have to look into this better clouds!

I fly VFR, at those altitudes, this 25 miles is most of the time sufficient. But I believe once going over a certain height (I don't know how it is calculated) the visibility will go up, and the number of objects will decrease with height due to the LOD, so higher visibility will have less impact on cruise altitude. The smart thing to do for Laminar would be to play with those 2, and probably that is what they do.  (Again, not sure, as generally I don't fly airliners).

I have 14 fps in XPX. I don't know what to do? I have turned off threaded optimization in Nvidia config. manager. I check my PC resources and they are not fully used.

Does anyone have a clue why this is? One of the culprits could be HDR? But HDR makes XPX so nice. It has to be ON!

3 hours ago, jh71 said:

your system should run both versions just fine on highest AA settings. 

few tips: 

- Turn Threaded optimization off in nVidia control panel!

- when setting up weather, keep visibility realistic. 100 miles sounds nice, but will kill any system. Anything between 20 and 40 is more realistic, and with the haze effect in XP11 it looks very nice. I can not comment on SMP settings as I do not own it, but when setup wrong, I read that it can bring down performance on any system.

- shadows on scenery is heavy on resources, try reducing (or in x-plane 11, disable) this.

Most important: have fun, and don't add too much to the sim at the same time, X-Plane is completely different to setup and maintain then FSX and P3D.

I installed 32GB RAM and have a MSI Geforce 1080 GTX 8GB GDDR5 card just for XPX, XI and entire simming. I have an overclocked 6700K, and I do not see all the resources consumed?

So the real question is what the heck makes it always go slow!

 

Ridiculous I tested it!!!

When TURNING OFF Skymaxx Pro V4 plugin I gain 30 FPS!!

 

14 to 44 FPS!! So what on earth is this problem with the plugin! I have everything maxed out! But these clouds ruin everything..

What were your settings on Skymaxx?

27 minutes ago, GoranM said:

What were your settings on Skymaxx?

I think it is not too much asked to have it Real as it gets right? But the FPS hit of Skymaxx Pro V4 is just insane. It makes 20 to 30 fps change in sim.

Might want to turn down "Cloud Area Covered".  A plug in like Skymaxx, which has adjustable levels of cloud, WILL affect performance depending on your sliders.