Clouds in FS9...

[Fnerg]

I was wondering and maybe one of you fine chaps can tell me, the clouds in FS9, can I convert them to DXT3 or DXT1 for better framerates? Currently I have the default 32bit clouds and they are a huge drain on my system.

I'm looking at other sets available on the net, some are more shaded, more blue, less detailed, more white...what are your favorite replacement cloud textures for FS9. I think I'll try a few out.

[kurt190]

Yes - I use ActiveSky and Active Graphics and that gives you the option of DXT or 32bit. It also gives you the option of reducing the actual size - 512, 256 etc

kurt

[FengZ]

clouds are very "expensive" to render due to overdraw. Even if you change them to DXT3, the system drain will still be there (but it can help just slightly). Clouds reply on alphas to draw, so when two or more alphas overlay each other (which clouds must do), you get a case of overdraw. When there are a ton of cloud layers, even the most powerful system can be bogged down.

basically, imagine looking through a open window. You see exactly what's outside w/out focusing. Now close the window and look through the glass. Now your brain must determine which to see first, the glass or the scene behind the glass. The more glass you add, the more your brain has to calculate. Alphas does the same thing, and it must tell the CPU/GPU to actually draw the background first, then the foreground, and rinse/repeat for each alpha layer...this is very CPU intensive.

it's better to reduce the cloud layers (you can with active sky for example) to gain FPS.

-feng

[Cazzie]

I use Active Sky 6.5 and its graphics also. One reason I am not about to get rid of FS0 is because with the new tower I built in July, I get tremendous fps under all weather conditions, sliders on everything I want full right. I use AS 32-bit 512 clouds.

Due to the funny weather we have had today (snow under a perfectly blue sky here in Danville), I decided to test AS's engine and fly from Danville Regional (KDAN) to Roanoke Regional (KROA). Let me tell you, if AS ever proved its value in my purchase, it was today. I saw the front and snow line as soon as I got to altitude and ran into the snow just past Smith Mountain Lake. I had to land in it in Roanoke, but visibility was really not white out, so the snow was light.

Caz

[skyhawka4m]

I have been using AS for a while now and I have been wondering if I'm missing something lately. What setting does my FS9 have to be in the weather setting in the sim to have AS work fully. It seems to change the sky color but does not change the clouds to the desired setting for my theme's.

[JSkorna]

Hi skyhawk...,

With AS running weather in FS is automatically set to User Defined and this is correct.

Now, based on your wording I will take a stab at #2. I looks like you are loading an ASG theme and you expect to see that type of weather in FS. This is really not correct. There is no weather data attached to the ASG themes, only textures. See, those are just groups of textures that we thought looked good together so we had to give them a name and so we did. However, the weather data still comes from AS itself, so don't think what you see in ASG Preview is what you are going to exactly see in FS with AS running.

Hope this helps!

Thanks!!