Weather settings & FPS

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Jarmo K
Posts: 305
Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2007 8:19 pm
Location: Finland

Weather settings & FPS

Post by Jarmo K » Sat May 16, 2020 7:46 am

So here's my offline test results about weather settings & influence on FPS.
Finally had time to reduce attachment size.

Did some testing with AA2 & default Slovenia landscape.

My rig is not the newest, but definitely enough for Condor (intel i5-7400, RAM16, Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070 8GB) and normally fly online races all settings maximum except trees & canopy reflections and getting everything between 80 - 350 FPS in online races.

Main finding is that inversion height is the key factor for smooth flying experience, even more than thermal activity and surprisingly clearly more than cloud size (which used to be main FPS dropper in past times). If you want to have low cloud base e.g. 1000m in your task, I recommend to use bigger clouds (inversion higher), Big scenery like AA2 & Cascade Range will be "deadly" for most players with these values: thermal activity high, flatlands high, inversion 800m and cloudbase 1000m. With these values my offline FPS goes from normal 350 to 80, so no hard to guess what happens if joining online race.

I can "kill" my 350-450 offline FPS with following settings, even with default Slovenia landscape:
- thermal activity high, flats activity high, cloud base 4600m and inversion 800m = 70 FPS
- + additional test max thermal helper distance and helpers on = 19 FPS


Pictures 1-4 are from ArcAlpin2 and picture 5 from default Slovenia landscape.

Br,
Jarmo
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Jarmo K
Posts: 305
Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2007 8:19 pm
Location: Finland

Re: Weather settings & FPS

Post by Jarmo K » Sat May 16, 2020 7:49 am

Last 2 pictures
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Spirals
Posts: 150
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2011 2:14 pm

Re: Weather settings & FPS

Post by Spirals » Sat May 16, 2020 4:54 pm

Hi Jarmo

An interesting exercise but your post has kicked off a real dose of FPS envy.

I use what I have always known to be a sub-optimal PC for Condor 2 and it seems that lower cloudbases and/or larger clouds often cause the greatest problems with the FPS.

In some cases especially towards the top of a climb I have been heard to comment on TS that I'm leaving the thermal because the climb rate exceeds the frame rate!

Clearly I really must re-investigate getting a more capable PC at least then I'll see the beautiful sceneries to their best effect and be able to use thermals to cloud base when needed.

Keep safe
Steve
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tiberius
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Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 10:39 pm
Location: UK

Re: Weather settings & FPS

Post by tiberius » Sat May 16, 2020 5:56 pm

One thing I’ve noticed with respect to reduced frame rate and heavy clouds is that the ‘Transparency Antialiasing‘ setting in the nvidia settings manager has a huge influence. After much experimenting I’ve found there’s no discernible visual difference in Condor 2 between multisample and supersample x2 through x8 so I run with multisample now and no longer have any noticeable frame rate drops due to clouds.
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lordauriel
Posts: 58
Joined: Thu Jan 30, 2014 10:12 am

Re: Weather settings & FPS

Post by lordauriel » Sun May 17, 2020 11:30 am

yes my PC is not too shabby and I experience the same - I would never notice in 2d, but in VR I suffer from this same effect.
Interesting finding, the AA transparency settings, i'll do some experimenting with that. i'll try "OFF"

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EDB
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Location: The Netherlands, Europe Continent, Earth Planet, Milky Way Galaxy, Virgo Super Cluster

Re: Weather settings & FPS

Post by EDB » Sun May 17, 2020 2:19 pm

Don't you have highres images? These are hardly readable.

Google Drive perhaps?

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congo
Posts: 291
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 10:21 am
Location: Queensland, Australia

Re: Weather settings & FPS

Post by congo » Mon May 18, 2020 5:07 am

This is nothing new, thermal density (partially controlled by the inversion height) has always been responsible for FPS rates.

The question is.... why?

I always suspected in was cpu related, not so much gpu, but is it down to whatever is caculating the thermals,
and maybe not so much what is drawing them? (with thermal helpers off that is - obviously the helpers are drawing them.)
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