As already discussed here:
http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,16309.msg116401.html#msg116401There's no Dynamic light hit at FSDT airport that can be attributed to the airport itself. See the video, which shows GSX vehicles at KCLT, and both are using Dynamic lights with no fps hit.
Another post here, confirming Dynamic Lights works smoothly with no performance issues:
http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,15785.msg113428.html#msg113428And here, with test results that shows there are no evidence (at least on OUR sceneries), that compiling with the V4 SDK would give any performance benefits, especially in relationship with dynamic lighting:
http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,16007.msg114745.html#msg114745And my graphic card ( 980 GTX ), which was used to do both the video and the frame rate tests, is way less powerful then yours.
Of course, as with all proper test (assuming we ARE trying to assess the performance impact of the AIRPORT) related to an airport, they are obviously made with a default airplane so, I'm quite sure that, if you used a default airplane, you will be able to replicate these results.
The issue is, since the P3DV4 graphic engine uses forward rendering (instead of deferred rendering used by other game engines), dynamic lights takes a much bigger hit, which drop significantly after a certain number of lights is used.
Other airports from every other developer out there, cannot do anything to fix this, but thanks to our software, we can optimize them much better. At KCLT, for example, we only display 6-7 dynamic lights at the same time, so we keep the fps impact at minimum, while other airports using just the normal SDK don't have this kind of control so, the airport is as optimized as it can be, especially for dynamic lights.
But of course, if the dynamic lights of your airplane have already put the graphic engine to its limit, you can expect going to an airport which uses dynamic lights too will result in a performance hit, without this being the airport "fault". That's why you should always test with a default airplane first, before saying the problem it's the scenery.
Same at all the other FSDT airports, when DL are switched off in settings the FPS jumps to 30-32
Of all our airports, the ONLY one that use Dynamic Lights, it's KCLT! No other FSDT airport has a single Dynamic Light in it. However, according to LM, regardless if the scenery uses DL or not, when the airplane landing lights is being projected around, its fps impact will depend on the complexity of the scenery, even if the scenery didn't had any dynamic lights to begin with so, if you are seeing a performance loss on an FSDT scenery other than KCLT, there just nothing we can to about it: we simply cannot turn off what's is not there in the first place, and the fps hit was caused entirely by the airplane lights.
We can only hope that future updates of the sim will optimize DL more, so the overall number of lights used by the airplane + scenery won't hit the fps so much and won't be affected so much by the scenery complexity.
