The latest XP11  current XP11 update has given me the best FPS performance, since getting into XP around v9.x

I am getting outstanding performance on my quite old system, around 45-52 FPS, in general, and over cities such as Detroit (which at the high World Detail Levels is deadly for FPS) easily maintain 28-38 FPS.

If I drop the World Detail to HIGH, I push to 55 FPS.  This is way FPS overkill for XP11.  You really don't get any performance premiums, over the threshold of 30 FPS.  Laminar has stated this.

Therefore...my question, as I have way more FPS headroom now, than I need for smooth animation, and cockpit systems performance....

With REFLECTIONS set to minimal, I easily now can keep, for the most part a reading of 38 (I use this figure as a solid FPS). With REFLECTIONS set to MAX, I eat 7 FPS, so down to 31, which is still the sweet spot for XP11.

What exactly, does Reflections give you!?!?!?  At MAX, I really don't see any big bang theory going on visually.  So, what does it visually offer, if you have it set to Max, which I can now, if I want.

Right now, I'm REFLECTIONS challenged....!??!?!?   I just don't see much difference between any of the settings from low to high. Am I not looking at elements that would display the MAX setting?

23 views and no comments. I guess nobody has a clue, either, lol!

It's strange, but if I put it to the minimum I have 45 fps and with the rest of the settings 60 fps.

Just now, nikit said:

It's strange, but if I put it to the minimum I have 45 fps and with the rest of the settings 60 fps.

That's interesting.  On the REFLECTION slider, between minimum, and max, is a 7 FPS range for myself.  I still am at 31 with it set to max...but can't see anywhere truly where this slider changes the  visuals.  Are reflections,only about metal surfaces, and not water surface?  I get wave and water reflections even at minimal...but don't see the 'wow' factor when the slider is set to max..so hence my thread question.  

2 minutes ago, nikit said:

It's strange, but if I put it to the minimum I have 45 fps and with the rest of the settings 60 fps.

Yea, I get that too Only one I can not use is minimal...

I believe I read somewhere (dev blog?) that it mostly effects water reflectivity and that those reflections can actually cost you a lot of smoothness when there is a lot of water around and lots of stuff to reflect (autogen, clouds, stars?). Anyway, at the moment Ben doesn't recommend setting reflections to max even with the most powerful system, that's why most people recommend the minimal settings. Did you see any visual improvements? (Edit: already answered)

2 minutes ago, Sesquashtoo said:

That's interesting.  On the REFLECTION slider, between minimum, and max, is a 7 FPS range for myself.  I still am at 31 with it set to max...but can't see anywhere truly where this slider changes the  visuals.  Are reflections,only about metal surfaces, and not water surface?  I get wave and water reflections even at minimal...but don't see the 'wow' factor when the slider is set to max..so hence my thread question.  

 I do not see any difference, no matter what level I put.

26 minutes ago, domae001 said:

I believe I read somewhere (dev blog?) that it mostly effects water reflectivity and that those reflections can actually cost you a lot of smoothness when there is a lot of water around and lots of stuff to reflect (autogen, clouds, stars?). Anyway, at the moment Ben doesn't recommend setting reflections to max even with the most powerful system, that's why most people recommend the minimal settings. Did you see any visual improvements?

Quite frankly, not at all!  That had me scratching my head. I guess then that I'll just keep it at minimal or low...as it does 'invisibly' cost me 7 FPS to run it at the MAX setting.  No visual payout, though..as far as I can (excuse the pun...) see... 

Post Edit: Just did another flight over water with every setting, from min to max.  No true differential between any of them...so, now have it back to min, and leaving it there, I guess.

I've been playing with reflections in scenery objects but I've found the reflection detail makes no difference at all except for a drop in FPS, even when it's switched off :/. 

I presumed this setting was for water and PBR reflections, but it doesn't seem to effect PBR at all.

Minimal: only sky is reflected in the water

Low: sky + aircraft + clouds are reflected

First Medium setting: sky, aircraft, clouds and terrain (e.g. mountains) are reflected

Second Medium setting, high setting, maximum setting: progressively more scenery objects (buildings, trees, power lines) are reflected.

 

The first medium setting should be a good compromise for realism, because you'll have cloud and terrain reflections without the performance burden of having to draw reflected buildings.

23 hours ago, tonywob said:

 I've found the reflection detail makes no difference at all except for a drop in FPS, even when it's switched off :/.

Not quite. Go to MisterX6 KSLC and fly through the downtown building. They use reflections.:

but they won´t work if you turn reflections off. Then it simply calculates the reflections, when the plane is loaded, but it doesn´t updates the buffer. Only if you turn reflections on you see the wanted results, but the higher settings have no significant effect.

On 6/24/2017 at 8:55 AM, Murmur said:

Minimal: only sky is reflected in the water

Low: sky + aircraft + clouds are reflected

First Medium setting: sky, aircraft, clouds and terrain (e.g. mountains) are reflected

Second Medium setting, high setting, maximum setting: progressively more scenery objects (buildings, trees, power lines) are reflected.

 

The first medium setting should be a good compromise for realism, because you'll have cloud and terrain reflections without the performance burden of having to draw reflected buildings.

Thanks, Murmur!

The only difference I found apart from water reflections is that the darker side of the plane absorbs more light ( better PBR I guess  ) making it more visible so I reckon it does more than just water reflections and is also tied to the quality of the PBR that's why the FPS hit. See the comparison pictures. 

Reflections set to low ( the difference is very subtle )

 

Reflections set to minimal

From what I can tell a higher reflections slider refreshes the actual reflection at a higher rate.  Look at your underside of the fuselage on departure - on max reflection setting, the image reflected on your fuselage bottom will be almost real time (but still pretty choppy).  If you set that slider to lowest (like I run), it only updates once in a while.

X-Plane is an enigma to me. I was getting choppy performance in an ortho region I had.

So I used a tweak to turn off extended DSFs. I start getting 50FPS. I decided to go back so I deleted the tweak (it's some lines in the settings file). To my surprise, still getting 50FPS when in the same conditions before XP was locking my frames at 20.

Sometimes, I think XP is limiting FPS when it doesn't need to. I wish I could stop it from doing that. I'll notice that it'll lock at 20 FPS sometimes even when it was 50FPS a few seconds earlier. I know XP uses some kind of real time limiting in certain situations to manage processing power but maybe it's buggy?