performance worse with 4.4

[windycloud 30]

somewhat an odd post compared to the overwhelming praise for 4.4.  However i'm getting FPS as low as below 20 (locked or unlimited) sitting on the runway at stock KSEA with UTLive (30%) & Orbx Pacific Northwest in PMDG737.  With identical addons and settings in 4.3 I get solid 30, locked at 30. 

In playing with settings to troubleshoot, I noticed that my FPS is greatly affected by scenery settings.

F22 sitting at KSEA with scenery, autogen, building set to minimum - 100+ FPS

Scenery minimum, autogen, building set to normal - 70 FPS

Scenery, autogen, building set to normal - 40 FPS

4.4 full & clean install after uninstalling and cleaning up 4.3 and all addons. 

4790K @ 4.4GHz, 16G ram @ 2133, 1080

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance.

[Sartanius 399]

I know this isn't an answer, but which runway are you on?  Facing north is very heavy on FPS due to the Seattle area, whereas facing south is much less burdensome.  No doubt both your situations are the same, but wanted to mention this just in case.  Also, you didn't mention any weather apps.  I assume you didn't use one for testing, but in the event you did, this may have also contributed to the problem.

[windycloud 30]

North facing indeed. And for this particular test I just used the built in fair weather.  I ended up removing orbx regionals and got back some FPS. It’s a shame and I didn’t need to do that in 4.3.

Edited December 6, 2018 by windycloud

[Sartanius 399]

Jason - I really do think its something other than Orbx.  As you know, v4.4 does a better job now holding distant textures in VRAM to help overcome the black texture popping that would happen after looking away from a 3rd party airport or scenery, and then looking back.  Here's a post by Rob Ainscough talking about these settings (you'll have to scroll about 2/3 down the page to find the post I'm referring to).  I'm not saying this is the issue, but it is worth a look.