Clouds Ruin Framerates

[Dan]

Can anyone help me improve my frame rates in cloudy conditions.

I've recently bought a new PC with 4GB RAM a decent CPU and a 256MB x16 ATI HD 2600 XT PCI Card. Running FS9 with this new system has resulted in an astronomical increase in frame rates. My old system with an AGP NVIDIA graphics card couldn't handle complex scenery or too much AI. NZAA used to be seen rarely in double figure FPS and Snowman's NZAP scenery gave 1FPS. The old system (despite being unstable) didn't mid clouds though - usually giving 15-20 FPS or more in intensly cloudy situations.

Imagine my surprise when I loaded FS9 on my new system. Scenery and AI didn't bother this one at all, giving 29.9 FPS (locked to 30) in all situations - except cloud. Flying with lots of visible cloud regularly knocks FPS down to 12-15FPS and heavy IFR conditions can knock it to single figures. This is really disapointing from a brand new system. Changing the visability levels and even replacing the clouds with the resized cloud textures from AVSIM by Bart Dylkiewicz didn't make any difference. I've followed all well known rules about setting anti-aliasing in the driver settings and not the game etc and I've run out of ideas.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar or knows about a possible solution?

Dan

[Alex]

I found the same happened on an old system with an ATI X300 /256Mb. Aside from turning down the cloud complexity (3D levels?), draw, and view distances, there's not really a lot to be done...

Although the smaller textures would probably help somewhat as well.

Alex

[victor_alpha_charlie]

I found using ActiveSky worked really well, I had the same problem.

[AlisterC]

Is there any other scenery in the area? Have you tried the clouds somewhere like the middle of the Sahara desert and still have the same problem?
Might be more to it with other scenery giving you problems, and the clouds just throwing your computer over the edge. (ie you might not notice the scenery causing problems but soon as you try to run clouds as well, the fps take the hit)

[jastheace]

silly question time, what settings do you have your cloud settings at, i had a problem with an ati card once, tkae it you have the latest drivers installed aswell. try reducing you 3d clouds to medium or lovw (can't remeber which and back the draw distance all the way back to 40 miles, see if that makes any difference, then try going up from there, active sky 6.5 will help as you can install dxt cloud textures and adjust the resoloution of the clouds aswell. also just chck that the dxt tick box is ticked in the main graphics window, if it is, try unticking it, sometimes that can cause big issuses with clouds

Jason

[happytraveller]

Something in the back of my mind says that if you have multiple levels of clouds then this will have a big effect on frame rates, so perhaps try just a single level of clouds.

smooth landings.