Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler - FPS plunge with clouds

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | PC Support | FPS plunge with clouds

DVA6276
Captain, MD-88
OLP

Joined on August 15 2008
Double Century Club
Online Double Century Club
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary
B737 100 Club

Boca Raton, FL

233 legs, 768.8 hours
215 legs, 733.2 hours online
223 legs, 749.2 hours ACARS
4 legs, 7.9 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 27 2011 13:08 ET by David Zambrano

Hey everyone, I recently built a new machine. (I'll give the specs) FSX runs like a dream at 130FPS stable and lowest 80FPS. But I can only get these frames when the skies are clear. Now, when clouds are visible, I find the FPS plummeting to 5-10 FPS while having the camera towards the clouds of course. Anyone know how to fix this? I'd like to fly with at least some weather... Also squawk-box downloads weather but the downloaded weather never seems to appear? (clouds,temp,wind speed/direction)

I7 2600K@ 3.40GHZ

16GB ripjaws 1600

Double ATI Radeon 6900 in crossfire

WD 500GB SATA

software- REX 2.0 for FSX

David Zambrano

Captain, MD-88

DVA3196
Senior Captain, MD-11
OLP, COMM

Joined on June 03 2006
Online Double Century Club
50 State Club
Six Century Club

"pitchpowertrim.com"
Anderson, MO

619 legs, 1,093.4 hours
292 legs, 503.1 hours online
580 legs, 1,026.5 hours ACARS
89 legs, 191.0 hours event
236 legs dispatched, 110.1 hours

Posted onPost created on September 27 2011 13:38 ET by Michael Brown

Decrease the cloud draw distance and decrease how many layers are rendered. SB weather never worked for me either...not sure what I/we are doing wrong here.

Try this link too: http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html

Michael Brown (DVA3196)

DVA2025
Senior Captain, MD-11

Joined on November 27 2004
50 State Club
Quatercentenary Club

USA

453 legs, 1,458.2 hours
44 legs, 128.1 hours online
407 legs, 1,364.8 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on September 27 2011 14:12 ET by Noah Bryant

How much memory between the two Radeons?

Posted onPost created on September 27 2011 15:59 ET by David Zambrano

Thanks Mike, but I forgot to mention that I've used that website already.

There's 2GB Memory per card.

David Zambrano

Captain, MD-88

DVA8452
Captain, A320
OLP

Joined on March 28 2010
50 State Club
Event Half Century Club
Online Fifteen Century
Bi-Millennium Club
B757 100 Club
Three Million Mile Club
Toulouse Millennium Club
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary

"Cabin crew, please take your seats for takeoff."
Novi, MI

2,970 legs, 9,136.9 hours
1,629 legs, 4,166.2 hours online
2,893 legs, 8,878.5 hours ACARS
65 legs, 189.4 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 27 2011 17:21 ET by Justin Lawrence

Not to hijack the thread, but I have the same problem. I am using REX. I can get 50FPS with clear skies, but then when clouds are near, it drops to 10 or below. I am using FS2004.
FS2004
i7 920@2.67 GHz - Dual Quad Core (8 threads)
12GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 4650

Justin Lawrence

Captain, A320

DVA4176
Senior Captain, L-1011-100
OLP

Joined on March 11 2007
B757 100 Club
50 State Club
Black Pearl Club
White Knuckles Club
Events Triple Century Club
Online Forty Century Club
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary
Burbank Bi-Millennium Club
Four Million Mile Club
Seven Millennium Club

"In the cold Kentucky rain"
Horn Lake, MS USA

7,109 legs, 11,531.1 hours
4,673 legs, 6,709.8 hours online
5,630 legs, 8,974.5 hours ACARS
371 legs, 587.0 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 27 2011 23:08 ET by Scott D Williams

In FS9 select "simple" for the cloud setting also.

Scott D Williams

Senior Captain, L-1011-100

Posted onPost created on September 27 2011 23:34 ET by Noah Bryant

Well huge FPS loss with clouds is nothing new, but are you aware of the issues with using high memory video cards in FSX? Theres quite a bit on AVSIM about it but basically you're shooting yourself in the foot trying to run FSX with a 2GB (or two, lol) video card. I'm not an expert on it but there's a lot of info at avsim about it.

For grins you may try disabling one of the cards just to see if there is any difference, who knows. You can also try an external FPS limiter, I had success with that. I have a very similar system to yours except I only have one 2GB video card, 8GB ram and I run FSX off a separate SSD. My heavy clouds (REX) FPS in the NGX are about 10-15 or so near an airport 15-20 at the most in the air. In moderate to no clouds in any other situation I am 25-60.

I dont think many people get SB weather to work right so you might want to look for another option there.

Posted onPost created on September 28 2011 08:00 ET by David Zambrano

Thanks for the replies. I can try disabling one of them, also, were can I get an external FPS limiter?

David Zambrano

Captain, MD-88

DVA8752
Captain, B767-300

Joined on January 01 2010
50 State Club
Triple Century Club

Sedalia, CO

338 legs, 1,236.8 hours
31 legs, 181.3 hours online
37 legs, 232.7 hours ACARS
2 legs, 8.4 hours event

Posted onPost created on September 28 2011 13:05 ET by Brandon Howell

David Zambrano wrote:

Thanks for the replies. I can try disabling one of them, also, were can I get an external FPS limiter?

http://www.venetubo.com/fsx.html

Brandon Howell (DVA8752)

DVA7016
Senior Captain, B767-300

Joined on February 14 2009
B757 100 Club
Everett 250 Club
Triple Century Club
DVA Five-Year Anniversary

"I5 2500K - 560GTX - 8GB Ripjaw"
Essex GB

385 legs, 1,090.6 hours
384 legs, 1,089.6 hours ACARS
1,821 legs, 4,442.9 hours total

Posted onPost created on September 28 2011 17:35 ET by Alan Barber

IIRC Radeons have a problem with rendering FSX clouds, having switched from one to an Nvidia card recently I would be inclined to agree. What you could try is to turn down both your method and level of Anti Aliasing using the AMD control panel and also reduce the cloud texture size, which if you have REX is pretty easy. Optimizing for DXT if you have REX is also an idea, but you would have to enable support for DXT textures which you can do by using ATI Tray tools. HTH

Alan Barber

Senior Captain, B767-300

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