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Clouds (Read 14391 times)

boeing247 Senior Member Offline Pilots: Looking down on people since 1903 Posts: 1506 Location: Southern CA Joined: Feb 23^rd, 2011 Gender:	Clouds Jul 20^th, 2011 at 10:07pm	Print Post
	I get reasonable frame rates most of the time, but whenever there are many clouds in view, my frame rates drop considerably (as much as 10 fps). I have the density on medium and draw distance on minimum, but I still get a sever impact on the fps. Is there anything in particular I can do (preferably short of changing the settings to "simple clouds" instead of "detailed clouds") the get better fps when flying near clouds? Thanks boeing247

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CoolP Senior Member Offline Posts: 2568 Joined: Jan 17^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #1 - Jul 21^st, 2011 at 4:07am	Print Post
	Those FSX clouds sadly are fps hogs when using any kind of super-sampling AA. That's by design and even the strongest cards struggle there, more or less. You can test this when altering the AA mode and then starting FSX with a cloudy setup. The impact should be less severe then. As a downside, the image quality then goes down a bit too, but this depends on personal preferences of course. When using an ATI card, the shader 3.0 mod can help you with cloud performance. Just google it, this should lead the way to some Avsim resource where you can download it.


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boeing247 Senior Member Offline Pilots: Looking down on people since 1903 Posts: 1506 Location: Southern CA Joined: Feb 23^rd, 2011 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #2 - Jul 21^st, 2011 at 4:48am	Print Post
	I can't find the shader 3.0 mod on avsim, and non of the other links on other sites I've tried have worked. Where is the best place to download it?

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CoolP Senior Member Offline Posts: 2568 Joined: Jan 17^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #3 - Jul 21^st, 2011 at 5:37am	Print Post
	Here's the thread, but you have to use the links in Bojote's signature to get the current shader version. The one in the first post doesn't work anymore. http://forum.avsim.net/topic/283701-bojotes-shader-30-mod-for-fsx/


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boeing247 Senior Member Offline Pilots: Looking down on people since 1903 Posts: 1506 Location: Southern CA Joined: Feb 23^rd, 2011 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #4 - Jul 21^st, 2011 at 3:30pm	Print Post
	Thanks! I'll test out FSX with the shader soon--it sounds like it should work.

	-Bram Osterhout&&&&&&&&Dell XPS 8300 \| Windows 7 64 Bit \| AMD Radeon HD 6770 \| Intel i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz \| 1000GB Hard Drive
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boeing247 Senior Member Offline Pilots: Looking down on people since 1903 Posts: 1506 Location: Southern CA Joined: Feb 23^rd, 2011 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #5 - Jul 23^rd, 2011 at 8:28pm	Print Post
	The shader did not help. In fact, it made things worse. My water textures are stagnant (no animation), the reflection is ridiculously bright, and when I zoom out on top-down view, the world appears a a large, bright-blue circle (though that last one is listed as a known problem). Have you used this, and if so, have you seen a performance increase?

	-Bram Osterhout&&&&&&&&Dell XPS 8300 \| Windows 7 64 Bit \| AMD Radeon HD 6770 \| Intel i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz \| 1000GB Hard Drive
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CoolP Senior Member Offline Posts: 2568 Joined: Jan 17^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #6 - Jul 23^rd, 2011 at 8:55pm	Print Post
	That shader 3.0 thingy only helps ATI cards in the clouds, the Nvidia guys won't see any fps improvements. The 'zoom out haze' is a known downside there, but all water related things can be tuned when sticking to the included readme. You are just seeing Bojote's preset there, which can be altered. But I would recommend reverting back if the optics didn't improve for you. As said, the FSX clouds come with the general downside of causing a large fps impact when using any type of super-sampling anti-aliasing. So I would, for testing, recommend to go to a normal AA mode and see if that help the fps. It should, be design. Use the driver menu or tools like Nvidia Inspector there and avoid any SS (which stands for super sampling) in the mode descriptions. Also, any transparency AA (which uses super sampling) will put more load on the card, so maybe leave it off for testing. You can later apply some more AA until reaching a point where the image quality doesn't improve much more while the fps stay friendly. This will always be a tradeoff situation in FSX. The modes you can use (with clouds) depend on your card. The smaller ones struggle some more while you gain some headroom on the top models. But even a GTX580 can easily be spoiled with the combination of SSAA and dense clouds, don't get that wrong. The way that FSX draws clouds is the culprit there.


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boeing247 Senior Member Offline Pilots: Looking down on people since 1903 Posts: 1506 Location: Southern CA Joined: Feb 23^rd, 2011 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #7 - Jul 23^rd, 2011 at 8:59pm	Print Post
	Actually, I have an ATI card, a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6450. I have the AA settings as "Use application settings," which I figured would be lowest.

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CoolP Senior Member Offline Posts: 2568 Joined: Jan 17^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #8 - Jul 23^rd, 2011 at 9:03pm	Print Post
	With that card, you are into two troubled waters (for FSX) at the same time. ATIs may give you less fps than the Nvidia things and you are also using a low bandwith/low GPU model. If you have already switched the shaders (which should help that card), stayed low on the AA side (app. controlled is low, you are right) and also have the cloud density and draw distance in FSX turned down, there won't be much to improve then. � If you still struggle, maybe put a nowadays cheap GTX460 1GB on your wishlist. This will also improve other games as it's a relatively capable performance card. Cards like HD6870 are also good, if you want to stay at the AMD/ATI side.


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boeing247 Senior Member Offline Pilots: Looking down on people since 1903 Posts: 1506 Location: Southern CA Joined: Feb 23^rd, 2011 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #9 - Jul 23^rd, 2011 at 9:05pm	Print Post
	I have turned down density and draw distance, but my fps in cloudy areas is still less than desirable. Any thoughts as to why the shader mod might not be helping?

	-Bram Osterhout&&&&&&&&Dell XPS 8300 \| Windows 7 64 Bit \| AMD Radeon HD 6770 \| Intel i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz \| 1000GB Hard Drive
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CoolP Senior Member Offline Posts: 2568 Joined: Jan 17^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #10 - Jul 23^rd, 2011 at 9:08pm	Print Post
	To enable the shaders, one entry in the fsx.cfg is needed and you also have to force a rebuild then. Those two steps are vital, others may be too. From the readme. You can either use the installer or do all the steps listed here. Quote: DETAILED INSTALLER ACTIONS ========================== The auto-installer will perform the following actions AUTOMATICALLY: AUTOMATIC INSTALLATION 1) Copy a temporary folder with the new Shaders to your FSX root directory with the name: ShadersHLSL_SM3_BOJOTE 2) Copy a temporary WaterConstants.Xml file to your FSX root directory with the name: waterconstants_sm3_bojote.xml 3) Copy this readme file to your FSX root directory 'Shader3 Mod for FSX' subdirectory with the name: readme.txt 4) Automatic rename of your original ShadersHLSL folder to ShadersHLSL_ORIGINAL 5) Automatic rename of your original WaterConstants.Xml file to WaterConstants.Xml.BAK 6) Automatic rename of the temporary folder ShadersHLSL_SM3_BOJOTE to ShadersHLSL 7) Automatic rename of the temporary waterconstants_sm3_bojote.xml file to WaterConstants.Xml 8) A 'Shader3 Mod for FSX' subdirectory is created under your FSX Root with 'optional' goodies, readme files and misc information. 9) DX9 & DX10 cached shaders are automatically DELETED. This folders are located here: � %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\FSX\Shaders and %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\FSX\Shaders10 this is a completely SAFE operation. 10) Once all the above steps are complete, the following changes will be performed on your fsx.cfg file: [GRAPHICS] => ALLOW_SHADER_30=1 [GRAPHICS] => SHADER_CACHE_PRIMED_10 is REMOVED [GRAPHICS] => SHADER_CACHE_PRIMED is REMOVED [GRAPHICS] => SHADER_CACHE_VERSION is REMOVED [MAIN] => PerfBucket is REMOVED [MAIN] => ProcSpeed is REMOVED ALL the removed values (except SHADER_CACHE_VERSION) will be written again by FSX to your fsx.cfg in the next restart so this changes are 'minor' and completely reverted by doing an uninstall. AUTOMATIC REMOVAL 1) Automatic Delete of current ShadersHLSL 2) Automatic Delete of curent WaterConstants.Xml 3) Automaic rename of backup (original) ShadersHLSL_ORIGINAL folder to ShadersHLSL 4) Automatic rename of backup (original) WaterConstants.Xml.BAK to WaterConstants.Xml 5) The changes made by the installer to your fsx.cfg ARE reverted. The ALLOW_SHADER_30 line will be removed. 6) Complete removal of the 'Shader3 Mod for FSX' folder that we created on your FSX root directory THE REASON WE PROVIDE THIS DETAILED LOG IS FOR YOU TO KNOW 'EXACTLY' WHAT THE INSTALLER IS DOING. The installer is NOT necessary to install


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CoolP Senior Member Offline Posts: 2568 Joined: Jan 17^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #11 - Jul 23^rd, 2011 at 9:13pm	Print Post
	I'd recommend using a draw distance at the very lowest setting and a medium cloud density with your card. Please don't get that wrong, but your card is a low-end model by all means. It may have enough VRAM for FSX, but the rest is more of a 'too low' than 'enough'.


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boeing247 Senior Member Offline Pilots: Looking down on people since 1903 Posts: 1506 Location: Southern CA Joined: Feb 23^rd, 2011 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #12 - Jul 23^rd, 2011 at 9:14pm	Print Post
	Okay, I didn't force a rebuild. How do you do that? (Sorry for all the questions, I just want to be sure I'm doing everything correctly so I don't screw anything up )

	-Bram Osterhout&&&&&&&&Dell XPS 8300 \| Windows 7 64 Bit \| AMD Radeon HD 6770 \| Intel i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz \| 1000GB Hard Drive
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CoolP Senior Member Offline Posts: 2568 Joined: Jan 17^th, 2010 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #13 - Jul 23^rd, 2011 at 9:15pm	Print Post
	When going manually, follow the blue marked step while FSX is not running. On the next start, he will recompile his shaders then. You will see a progress bar there, to be sure it happens. As the description above is a bit cryptic, just use C:\Users\YOUR USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\FSX and look for all Shaders folders there. Delete or move them and then start FSX. The installer should already have taken care of that, so maybe you actually did get new shaders, but it did not help much on your card. I hope I'm wrong though.


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boeing247 Senior Member Offline Pilots: Looking down on people since 1903 Posts: 1506 Location: Southern CA Joined: Feb 23^rd, 2011 Gender:	Re: Clouds Reply #14 - Jul 23^rd, 2011 at 9:29pm	Print Post
	Nope. The shaders were removed. The reappeared when I uninstalled the mod and opened FSX.

	-Bram Osterhout&&&&&&&&Dell XPS 8300 \| Windows 7 64 Bit \| AMD Radeon HD 6770 \| Intel i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz \| 1000GB Hard Drive
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