I've been experimenting all afternoon with cloud settings (Low, Medium, High, and Ultra) and how they relate to FPS. Obviously the higher the settings, the greater hit you take on FPS. Duh. But what I discovered quite by accident is that your cloud settings greatly affect FPS even when you have completely clear skies. In my tests, I left from LAX in the Cessna 172. My pre-set weather condition was "Clear Skies" for each flight. With no clouds in the sky, I changed the cloud setting from Ultra to High to Medium to Low. Comparing Low to Ultra, there was an 8 FPS improvement in the performance of the sim even though no clouds were rendered! So if you're like me -- and you fly mostly with clear skies or few clouds -- you might consider setting the cloud detail to "Low" because, for some reason, it does make a big difference in FPS, even if there's not a cloud in sight.

 

Edited September 9, 20205 yr by David Mills

Likely has to do with how the atmosphere is rendered. Since it's all volumetric there is either cloud/precipitation/air occupying a space therefore there shouldn't be an impact on FPS since it's all being 'rendered' anyway, even if it is air.

As apposed to my old friend flat clouds, they typically used textures and so the more clouds rendered the more textures loaded hence significant performance loss is possible on overcast/cloudy conditions.

The result is volumetric clouds typically offer more consistent performance no matter the weather whereas sprite clouds give you great performance when they aren't in the scene but potentially rubbish performance when they are (which is a bit counter-intuitive to their purpose aside from the fact they're flat trying to imitate something 3D).