Default clouds killing FPS? Active Sky XP

[Alpha Floor 237]

Gentlemen,

I usually get somewhere around 45-60+ FPS on my machine. 60+ during cruise: i9 9900k OC 5.1 GHz, RTX 2080 Super, DDR4 32GB 3200MHz.

However, whenever there is a thick cloud layer around as provided by Active Sky XP the frame rate seems to suffer disproportionately. Here is an image when I was cruising at around 30-35 FPS surrounded by cloud.

I understand clouds are difficult to render but these are the default XP-11.41 clouds, I did not touch them or applied any weird shader or anything. Also note it's my CPU that's bottlenecking here, not the GPU. any idea as to why?

I am not using the Active Sky cloud textures. Do these perform any better or worse than the default ones?

 

Thanks for your help in advance,

Jaime

[jelder 14]

Check your anti aliasing  settings.  I find that anything over 2x SSAA will kill frame rates with heavy clouds.  I have a similar setup as you do (9900K OC to 5.1 and a 1080ti).

Jim

[Alpha Floor 237]

11 minutes ago, jelder said:

Check your anti aliasing  settings.  I find that anything over 2x SSAA will kill frame rates with heavy clouds.  I have a similar setup as you do (9900K OC to 5.1 and a 1080ti).

Jim

Hi Jim, thanks for comment.

I have AA set to 4x SSAA + FFAA. But if you see the numbers on the top left of the image, it’s the CPU that’s bottlenecking, not the GPU. Why would lowering AA here help?

[Alpha Floor 237]

Doing more testing around clouds and not really understanding the inconsistent behaviour. This time I placed the aircraft at FL350 with a Cumulus Overcast set between FL200 and FL310, aircraft surrounded by clouds. The impact on FPS wasn't as bad as yesterday, having a smooth 45-55 FPS.

I played with the AA slider and didn't notice any decrease/increase in FPS with any setting other than the right-most 8xSSAA+FXAA.

[alexcolka 183]

16 hours ago, Alpha Floor said:

Hi Jim, thanks for comment.

I have AA set to 4x SSAA + FFAA. But if you see the numbers on the top left of the image, it’s the CPU that’s bottlenecking, not the GPU. Why would lowering AA here help?

Hi Jaime,

I'm puzzled by your comment regarding that the CPU is bottlenecking, could you please help me understand that logic referring your screenshots?

I see in your second image that cpu time is 0.0314 and your gpu time is 0.0184, so, the lower number is the one bottlenecking?

Thanks,

[Alpha Floor 237]

4 minutes ago, alexcolka said:

I see in your second image that cpu time is 0.0314 and your gpu time is 0.0184, so, the lower number is the one bottlenecking?

On the contrary, it's the higher number that shows the bottleneck!

That number represents the time to draw one frame, the longer it takes, the worse. It's an inverse relation to FPS.

[Bjoern 1,156]

You can cut the cloud texture resolution by half. This usually helps a bit.

Edited June 4, 2020 by Bjoern

[alexcolka 183]

1 hour ago, Alpha Floor said:

On the contrary, it's the higher number that shows the bottleneck!

That number represents the time to draw one frame, the longer it takes, the worse. It's an inverse relation to FPS.

Got it, thanks

[Alpha Floor 237]

1 hour ago, Bjoern said:

You can cut the cloud texture resolution by half. This usually helps a bit.

I will have a look, thank you.

On the other hand, would you expect to have to resort to this with an i9 9900k CPU and a RTX 2080 Super GPU? Shouldn't a system like this be able to handle the default XP-11 without tweaking its files?

[CarlosF 1,239]

Hello Jaime,

Active Sky does have the option to use lower cloud resolution, you may want to try that.

You did not specify if openGL or Vulkan.

 

[Alpha Floor 237]

1 hour ago, CarlosF said:

Hello Jaime,

Active Sky does have the option to use lower cloud resolution, you may want to try that.

You did not specify if openGL or Vulkan.

 

Hello,

I am using 11.41, so OpenGL.

Do you mean the low resolution Active Sky cloud replacement is “lower” resolution than the default clouds?

[CarlosF 1,239]

12 minutes ago, Alpha Floor said:

Hello,

I am using 11.41, so OpenGL.

Do you mean the low resolution Active Sky cloud replacement is “lower” resolution than the default clouds?

This is from Active Sky's web site

• ASXP also features an optional high-performance photo-realistic cloud texture replacement with a simple texture installation wizard

That is the option I'm referring too.

 I also fly with ActiveSky and don't have any performance issues at all and my pc specs at lower than yours.

also from ASXP

Q: Are cloud texture replacements included?
A: Yes, an optional cloud texture replacement, evolved from the newest ASCA content and designed specifically for X-Plane 11.26/11.30+ is included.  Two different variants are available, high performance, which is softer and lower resolution, and high detail, which is higher resolution, with harder edges.  ASXP also works great with any other textures and other visual enhancements.

Edited June 4, 2020 by CarlosF

[Bulva 98]

Use these clouds --- Vivid Sky v1.1 :

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/48315-vivid-sky/

They are very good and save FPS
Recommended with plugin X-Visibility

Add-ons also work with Vulkan
 

 

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

13 hours ago, Bulva said:

Use these clouds --- Vivid Sky v1.1 :

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/48315-vivid-sky/

They are very good and save FPS
Recommended with plugin X-Visibility

Add-ons also work with Vulkan
 

 

These actually will save you a lot of FPS 

[Bjoern 1,156]

On 6/4/2020 at 8:28 PM, Alpha Floor said:

On the other hand, would you expect to have to resort to this with an i9 9900k CPU and a RTX 2080 Super GPU? Shouldn't a system like this be able to handle the default XP-11 without tweaking its files?

Because OpenGL is kind of slow.