shadows off-dubbled my framerate!

[David198502]

hey guys!maybe for most of you its common knowledge already.but for me it was very surprising.
since the very first day, i played with shadows on,because in the manual its stated,that turning shadows off,just leads to a minor increase in performance.
today i played with my video settings again,because i wanted to be able to fly a self made mission over london with ~30planes.before that,it was impossible for me because i got about 18fps over london sightseeing mission with the previous settings,so i decided to tweak them.
the more i turned my settings down,the more fps i got.but to really be able to have smooth fights over london,i had to turn almost everything on the lowest.....result=it looked like crap and far worse than il2 1946.
i became frustrated and turned everything back to high,except resolution, and decided not to "visit" london anymore.
but then i turned only the shadows off and left everything to high.
i was amazed how smooth it felt suddenly.so i tried my mission again.the result was that now i can play that mission with about 30planes with an average fps of 35.with the same settings and shadows on i get 11-15fps average.
didnt think that shadows have such an big effect on performance.maybe this feature is possible to optimize?!

systemspecs:
-Mainboard S1156 INTEL DH55TC,Micro-ATX,bulk
-Prozessor INTEL Core i5-650,3,2GHz,LGA1156,Dual-Core,Boxed
-2x 2GB DDR3 RAM,1333MHz,CL9,KINGSTON ValueRAM
-PCI-E 2.1 SAPPHIRE Radeon HD5570,Lite Retail,Low Profile
-Windows 7Home Premium 64Bit

[CH_RoadDogg]

Shadows/Grass/Mirror/Higher Resolution are all FPS hogs.

[White Owl]

It all depends on your particular system. Shadows absolutely kill my framerate, and even when I tried playing with them on they looked terrible... flickering, shimmering, fuzzy edged shadows everywhere. On the other hand, I didn't see much FPS drop at all with the mirror, grass, and trees on. Catalyst AI was a problem; turned that off and gained 15 FPS.

[David198502]

i had that flickering too.but i have to admit that it looked better with shadows on.but now im able to play over big cities.its soo much smoother now,that every motion from either my view inside the cockpit,or from other planes look totally different.also the tracers are now much better visible and with a longer range.it just looks more convincing when its about combat.its much easier to aim as well.i just wonder why i believed the manual and let the shadows on all the time.i tweaked around with my settings for days,but never considered to turn the shadows off.trees and grass have only a minor impact on my performance.and i have to confess that i like the grass feature.

[Helrza]

try turning ur land shading down to low as well david, see the difference it makes again :)

[ATAG_Doc]

Shadows/Grass/Mirror/Higher Resolution are all FPS hogs.

+16 yep hogs