Hello, can’t seem to get an answer in discord.
Do clouds affect the framerate for FS2020?
In my experience, cloud details were the #1 most impactful GPU load item in MSFS2020. In general, I am still mostly CPU limited, however. The cloud setting limit my performance only in lightly loaded situations with lower TOD’s and simpler planes.
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Different from @BigCow74 experience, but an another interesting insight:
Interesting comment from Seb, and I’m not sure what he actually is trying to say by implying clouds impact the system 1%-2%. I think he’s probably referencing something else about the cloud engine, I don’t know.
My experiences are in flight, depending on the type of clouds being rendered, I would have my 3090 screaming pretty loudly while being GPU limited. If I dropped clouds and only clouds to HIGH instead of ULTRA, things would settle down instantly and I’d go back to main thread limited. (HIGH didn’t look very good, either, but that’s a different topic for the other 10,000 forum posts where everyone yelled at everyone else about how awful everything was 
)
In my tweaking, no other graphic setting had that GPU impact, so I would generally never touch any of those.
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yes, clouds does effect a lot, if you have a low end pc then keep it at low and medium if you have a decent pc but your overall specs and graphics settings will affect the fps you get but yes its one of the most fps eating setting
I agree with this. I have clouds on Ultra with 4K res. When flying in partly cloudy conditions, I immediately experience a very significant FPS drop when getting close to and then into clouds. And FPS restores immediately when I fly out of/ away from clouds into clear air. This drop is from like 60FPS in clear air to below 40 FPS when getting close to clouds. 100% consistent and repeatable.
There is a type like a cloud-haze sometimes when you cross them in ultra, that is terrible in fps, maybe is a unoptimised-bug/problem with that clouds.