Cameron

@FlyingBlue1950 You're running an outdated installer and will need to re-download.

Being practical with your settings is essential. My support ticket channel is where we usually get most feedback, and so far it's been pretty smooth breeze there. The forums here (expected, of course) have most of the issues, but represents less than 1% of our user base, and we're finding a common theme of impractical resolution/AA expectations. As developers, I think we tend to understand the guts of this stuff a bit more and therefore run more conservative numbers that are more or less practical for the hardware we have. This can contribute to why we don't see these same issues off the bat. Luckily, I have received a ton of compliments on SMP v5 so far, so I know majority of our customers are enjoying this. Hopefully we can get you happy too. Thanks @Cam!

Yes, that makes more sense. After a re-draw things will speed back up.

I tested this on my machine and could not reproduce. If someone else can try I would appreciate it. @sundog, making sure you see this too!

Any and all is appreciated and helpful!

The performance drop close to clouds is expected. Single digits is not, but a drop in general is.

Thank you for confirming that as well. Were you able to try 5.0.4 yesterday? Are these issues new since then, or were you on 5.0.1 prior to that? We definitely need to do something here, but right now gathering some data points to see which changes we've done may have been most impactful and go from there.

@Lighttrail, Great, thanks!

Thanks for the report. What is your video card and monitor resolution? We're figuring out where to go from here, but would like to get that information from you at least.

Sure, can do!

My apologies. This was a packaging error on my end. I'm shocked you're the first person to report this! I have updated the installer, so please be sure to re-download and install.

Sure! Done. Thanks for the feedback.

Your log won't give any of the information @sundog just asked you for.

Thank you for confirming this, and I'm sorry you're not yet able to run the latest. @sundog will need to take a look at this.

Hi, thanks for this report! Now this is interesting. Are we talking about wind in the sim, or a setting for SkyMaxx? Or, maybe you mean if there is wind that the clouds interact with, the fps tank. So, do you mean setting wind to 0 alleviates this? Do you mean at the top of the cloud, or through the middle? Are you using RWC? Noted! Can you elaborate at bit? Do you mean the look of the procedural textures, or how do you mean? Really appreciate you taking the time to help us make a better product!

@maksimus1650 Do you have any of the older version installers for v5 that you can re-install? Does it still happen then?

@maksimus1650 That looks like a file became corrupted. The easiest way to resolve this is to run the X-Plane installer. It will scan your files and realize something is wrong with that one file, then it will update it back to how it should be. The rest of your X-Plane install will not be affected. Let me know how that works.

Thanks @Jakob Ludwig!

Wait...those are not volumetric overcast clouds. Also, very interesting that 5.0.4 was better. Hmmmm. Need to think about this some more.

Hey @Jakob Ludwig Can you tell me if you selected retail or beta Gizmo? Have you tried beta if not?

Hi @RobH, Thanks for the feedback. Can you clarify when it started tanking in this way? 5.0.5, or prior? My hunch is that we're seeing some major performance hit with the code implemented to occlude mountains being seen through clouds at certain levels. The hit wasn't large on my end, but it's becoming evident this may not be working out. Originally we were reserved to thinking being able to even occlude the mountains was not going to be possible with what Laminar provides us and how volumetric clouds work in the depth buffer. Once we saw more reports of it crop up, we started discussing how to tackle this, that there had to be a way, and discovered there was a potential path forward but it would be a multi-month re-write for a projection method we hadn't thought of. Later that day, @sundog came up with a way to make it work that we were happy with, but that happiness is not working out I think. For the most part, I think your observations on what's causing a performance hit or not are mostly conditional. How ray-casting works, certain scenarios cause different hits, all the way down to how low cloud levels are/distance from your aircraft. Appreciate you taking the time to write!

Hi @Cam, With regards to support tickets, please note the contact page info: I mention this only to answer the lack of reply received. As for your CTD issue, please go ahead and attach your Log.txt file and a screenshot of your X-Plane rendering settings.

It sounds like memory puking, but I'll let @sundog respond.

Be sure to give the new 5.0.5 a go.

5.0.4 introduced a method to work around mountains showing through clouds, like seen here: In order to achieve this, a performance hit is unavoidable, though I am slightly puzzled why some see it harder than we did. It cost me about 3-4 fps.