P3D V3.4
Aerosoft Heathrow - Stand 517
Aerosoft Airbus A321
FTX Global
Rex 4 Texture Direct 
Chaseplane
FTX Trees

Starting Settings: 
Graphics:
http://puu.sh/wAyFZ/84c3d72be3.jpg
Scenery:
http://puu.sh/wAyGs/0fd6447320.jpg
Weather:
http://puu.sh/wAyGY/4ef5b00efd.jpg
Lighting:
http://puu.sh/wAyHn/f941c3717a.jpg
Traffic:
http://puu.sh/wAyHT/f1a3c72407.jpg

Sitting at Heathrow in the BA A321, in Cold and Dark, I am recieiving 33-34 frames, making the plane very flyable. Outside, I recieve anywhere from 34 to 50 frames, depending where I am looking.

First I turned my Texture Resolution to "Ultra - 4096x4096" This change didn't impact my frames at all, it actually boosted it from time to time. I'm recieivng 34-36 frames in the cockpit, and still a 34-50 outside.

Next, I turned on FXAA. This DID bog down my sim a bit. I got a low of 29 frames to around 35 in the cockpit.

Since my system isn't the best I'm going with medium to lower end settings (other than texture resolution) so I decided to change MSAA to 4 samples. My FPS was now boosted from 31-35 frames in the cockpit, only getting 27 when looking back at the airport.

Now finishing up the Graphics page, I put Texture Filtering to "Anisotripic 4x". My frames didn't change much, from 30 up to 37, and 27 when looking back at the center of Heathrow airport. 

So with just medium settings, my Graphics page looked like this:
http://puu.sh/wAyZd/68dc3da590.jpg

It was flyable, and was a solid 30+ FPS in almost every view, but flying with flat scenery is pretty awful, so we will go in and change that.

First, I turned Autogen Vegatation Density up to "Very Dense". I have FTX Trees and I love seeing them all throughout my sim. But, unfortunatly they are EXTREMELY FPS heavy. I went from 34 frames down to 25 in the cockpit, just because of trees. I decided to lower it down to "Sparse" and see what the results were instead. Even with the lowest setting, I still lost 5 frames, making 29 in the cockpit.

I now wanted a little more in my scenery. I like flying into some default airports, and I wanted to see some more stuff around them, so I turned Scenery Complexity to Normal. This change took 2 frames out, making my FPS in the cockpit now 27.

Now that we have some scenery and vegatation, lets look at our actual world textures. I put my LOD (Level of Detail) Radius to Medium. My frames actually increased again, ranging from 27 to 29.

I put my Tessellation Factor to High, and now my frames range from 26 to 29.

If you own any FSDT products, you know the minimum Mesh Resolution is 19m, so thats what I put, and my frames range from 27 to 30.

I also decided to put my Texture Resolution on 15cm, and the result was frames ranging from 26 to 29. 

Then I added Land Detail Textures. Now my frames dipped to 25, but ranged from 26 to 29.

So all in all, my little experiment showed that Autogen Vegatation Density and Scenery Complexity took the most frames, at least for me.

According to my experience, you omitted one of the worst fps hitters, i.e. all kind of traffic: AI traffic (UTL or whichever), car traffic even as low as 10 %, airport ground traffic.

On the other hand, I can't imagine an airport like Heathrow without planes taxiing, taking off etc., thus I have to cope with the fps hit using at least moderate traffic settings.

Kind regards, Michael

You might also want to look at his:

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6315&t=124753&p=158168&hilit=Use+High+Resolution+Terrain+Textures#p158168

23 hours ago, pmb said:

According to my experience, you omitted one of the worst fps hitters, i.e. all kind of traffic: AI traffic (UTL or whichever), car traffic even as low as 10 %, airport ground traffic.

 

Your right, I don't mess with traffic so I didn't include it, but it is definitely a hard hitter on FPS.

Even lower end GPUs, anisotropic filtering at 16x is pretty much a freebie these days. No need to set it any lower than 16x

51 minutes ago, GHarrall said:

Even lower end GPUs, anisotropic filtering at 16x is pretty much a freebie these days. No need to set it any lower than 16x

I'll look at it, I didn't bother sliding it up since this little experiment.

On 05/07/2017 at 8:27 AM, virtualflying said:

I have FTX Trees and I love seeing them all throughout my sim. But, unfortunatly they are EXTREMELY FPS heavy

Strange, most reports are of FTX Trees being more frame rate friendly than default trees.

gb.

"I went from 34 frames down to 25 in the cockpit, just because of trees." - Gold.

Autogen in general is a heavy hitter on fps. Ftx trees are less fps heavy than default  trees but you will still see a hit going from nothing.

1 hour ago, Colonel X said:

"I went from 34 frames down to 25 in the cockpit, just because of trees." - Gold.

My new motto!

 

I decided to update my anisotropic filtering to 16x, since Glenn said almost any GPU can handle it. I never knew that was a setting that could be maxed out, but I updated it and I still get the same frames. Thanks Glenn for the heads up!