SGSS friendly clouds?

[ComSimPilot 623]

Hi all,

To run my P3D without shimmering, I am using Nvidia Inspector the 'Enhance' mode of 4xSGSS along with 2xMSAA in P3D. The combination gives me very good frames, however there are occasions where some specific cloud types will drop the performance a lot, maxing out my GPU utilization. 

I feel that my system can run this setting in all other occasions. I am using ASP4 and ASCA for clouds.

To my understanding, there seems to be a specific type of cloud textures that forces the SGSS algorithm to use so many GPU resources and so I was wondering if anyone is aware of a cloudset that does not include this texture type. I suppose and hope that then I (and we) will not have this performance issue..

Even if it does not exist, I think its a good investigation from experts on this field, to find out why only in some cloud types the SGSS has this effect and then try to eliminate them.

[CaptainStraw 52]

What cloud resolution are you running? And are they 32bit or DXT?

Higher resolutions and 32bit is a lot more taxing on GPU than lower resolutions and DXT, even with lower AA settings.

[ComSimPilot 623]

Just now, jacf182 said:

What cloud resolution are you running? And are they 32bit or DXT?

Higher resolutions and 32bit is a lot more taxing on GPU than lower resolutions and DXT, even with lower AA settings.

Good question. I run DXT at a resolution of 512x512

[CaptainStraw 52]

Well that's the best possible performance configuration, though some people also recommend changing the number of Cloud Layers in ASP4 from 5 to 4 or even 3, though I don't know how much it will help. Maximum visibility could also hurt, having to draw and apply AA to distant clouds. 80miles seems to be a realistic and balanced setting.

I'm waiting to hear someone else's experience. I haven't really tried nVidia's AA and have stuck with 8xMSAA, I will try your settings and see how it performs.

[Virtpilot 151]

Yep, the person or instance who makes fps friendly clouds, deserves a Nobel prize of flight simulation. This thing has been going on since at least.... well FS98. Must be the most difficult thing to accomplish.

[ckyliu 1,749]

TBH on most days you're lucky if you can see much more than 40 miles before haze kicks in. If you set visibility to 40 or 60 miles and clouds to similar, that may gain you some improvement.

[DylanM 1,069]

3 hours ago, Virtpilot said:

Yep, the person or instance who makes fps friendly clouds, deserves a Nobel prize of flight simulation. This thing has been going on since at least.... well FS98. Must be the most difficult thing to accomplish.

You may have to think differently as far as AA. A higher resolution, or super-resolution (DSR) greatly reduces the need for applying SGSS, and has almost no performance hit in dense overcast. And with MSAA+MFAA (layered with DSR), shimmering should be controlled as well.