Weather without the stutters

[bailout3]

Now that I have a middle of the road fast machine 2.8gh quad ..1 TB HD ati 5570(I think) card. & 8 gb ram. I only use this computer for FSX. I have rudder pedals (&Saitec) ..a ,low end joystick with throttle, & beautiful little new a/c Ants 2002 trainer. I have settings with scenery , including water effects all the way up & everything else about halfway. The result is a really smooth & awesome scenery with PNW.

The one thing that hits my computer speed is FSX weather if I check off the detailed clouds. Is there a decent weather machine that will give me realistic weather , take away the awful haze layer but still give me the frame rates to keep it smooth?. I know there are several options none of which are inexpensive but I don't want to sacrifice what I have now for some cool looking clouds

Any advice?

[alan2]

The two weather engines that keep on reoccuring in conversation is HiFi's ASE ( active sky). and REX engine. Another "weather" engine is CumulusX! which gives you thermals , the glider guys use this and I have used it before for GA flying.

Do you need the water at max resolution ? Maybe one notch down and lower the cloud resolutions . I cant really run max cloud but have tried it and for a personal taste I find I prefer the softer resolutions for cloud . It seems more realistic to me having softer edges to the clouds generally speaking.

It depends who you are talking too as to which engine is the best . Some say Rex , others ASE . On top of that some run the ASE engine whilst using REX textures. REX is the best visually.

[gandy]

Frame locking can help clear the stutters in heavy cloud. Its the cheapest option to try first.

[moonman]

I used REX with my old PC that was running on a mere 2,4 GHz or so and it was all working truly well with REX enabled - far better than the FSX default cloud-/sky-/water-textures and weather.

But as Alan2 and Gandy also mentioned above:

Reducing overall resolutions and locking Your frames will certainly improve Your "FSX-weather-experience" significantly!

I also used (and still use) OpenClouds together with REX - OpenClouds is a small weathertool for FSX that improves cloudlayers and fog in a - as i think very good way. It´s very easy to use and It also never caused any troubles but truly redefined how my sky looked (and looks) within FSX.

So to sum it up: I´d go for REX, use the textures of it, set Your resolutions for cloud and watertextures to a reasonable point, lock Your frames and then turn on a weatherengine that fits best for You - be it the FSX native weatherengine, the REX weaterengine, be it ASE (which as far as i know can also be used with REX textures) or OpenClouds. - at least that´s what i would do

[JanTenner]

Well, I would try to set the water to 2 mid or 2 low. It looks the same but without reflecting landscape or aircraft but you ll notice a way better performance. Then you should have enough ressources to run whatever weather.

[cvearl]

So I am not the only one?

I use 1920x1080 with 4xSSAA (Sometimes 12xAA using Edge Detect) and 16xAF

Scenery Complexity Very Dense and Autogen Dense, Water x2 Low. Everything else maxed.

Frames locked at 30.

I have Detail Clouds enabled in FSX and the cloud slider maxed. I use REX.

Normally in Fair Weather or Cold Fronts theme or roughly equivalent real world my framerates are silky smooth vertigo enducing. Even external side views. I wish I could capture video in line to film so of it. It's remarkable over PNW stuff.

If I am in heavy or complete cloud cover with say a 3,000 foot ceiling or something I get a bit of stuttering. Add landing at Seattle in those conditions I can get more prominenent sutters. I thought I was alone in this issue and have been trying to figure out if it's something in my driver or CFG's. Is this somewhat typical for most of us?

Charles.

[gandy]

There is multiple things that cause stuttering, I will list the top ones i have found for you all.

HD Textures - any above 1024 may cause it.

Rex water effects - From what i know almost all of them may cause it.

Simmconnect - Anything that uses simconnect can cause stuttering. Simconnect stutters can also be shown as micro stutters.

Super Sampling - Using Super Sampling can cause stutters from time even more when the cloud cover is heavy as the gpu can be overloaded very quickly.

Anti Aliasing - Using to high a setting can over whelm your gpu and present it self as stutters.

Multi Core CPU's - this is more about internal cpu bandwidth between each core than raw core speed as the texture loader in fsx can over whelm the bandwidth between each core. This will cause a drop in cpu usage and fps on screen.

SSD's - Believe it not there is a thing called ssd stutter that can happen randomly or when the controller on the ssd drive gets to hot.

If there is more i cant remember them at this time but its all food for thought

[bailout3]

Thanks all for your suggestions...I will try some of them out for sure. One thing I still haven't found out is how to get rid of FSX haze layer...it really does spoil the realism. Is there an answer to that one?

[Simjockey]

Hi bailout,

ASE has the ability to change the sharp/hard haze layer FSX renders - it replaces it with a much more realistic effect.

[Kwiss]

There is an option in HiFi ASE that disables the FSX haze layer and replaces it with it's own fog layer, also I have a High end system but use low resolution clouds as I too do not like the sharpness. It's more realistic to fly through the fluffy clouds although the appearance may not to be some likings.