Skins and performance question

[Rich46yo]

Ive recently gone a little skins mad in that Ive come to love putting on different skins on the aircraft I fly. So yesterday I basically finished downloading "all" the AH skins in the download page. At which time I noticed a warning on game performance, which said, in so many words", the more skins you download the slower the game becomes.

I guess it takes more computing power for your game to assign skins to every airplane you see and the more you download the more you'll "see". Is this true? And has anyone downloaded them all and noticed performance Lags? Thanks.

[Mace2004]

I'm sure someone will come along and provide more technical specifics regarding skins but the short answer is yes, your computer has to store and process each of the different skins and the more skins you have the more processing power this can take.  A typical sign that you have a problem occurs when a plane with a new skin enters your area and the skin has to be loaded.  This can cause a stutter or short pause if your system is not powerful enough plus, of course, that skin is now loaded in RAM which decreases the space available for other textures.

[BnZs]

Yes, there is a definite relationship between skins and performance. In my experience, a cool skin makes your plane perform at least 15% better.

[Krusty]

They take more memory... If you preload all textures and skins, it may slow you down. However, chances are you're not running at full 1024 texture size in-game, right?

If you're running at lower texture sizes it uses a fraction of the memory per skin, so the impact isn't as noticable at 512 as it would be at 1024.

[Ruler2]

If it causes a problem for you, go into the graphic settings and click the "defaut skins on other planes" of whatever, then it will only load your skin.

[mtnman]

I don't have time to find it right now, but Skuzzy stepped in and explained how/why downloading all of the skins could be problematic.  It's in a thread here somewhere; one where someone recommends downloading them all...

In the Custom sounds and skins section?

I'm running with the full 1024 texture sizes without any in-game problems.  I allow the game to see the other skins, but I don't allow them all to download.

[Rich46yo]

Thanks for the replies. Yes im running 1024 and I'll keep an eye on my computer performance. Will the extra workload be reflected by lower FRs? Or by some other indicator?

[Motherland]

I've been running with all of the skins loaded since I got my sub in Jan 2007. My rigs always been pretty subpar and at the time I was running with a card that had like 128mb video memory and a gig of ram, very dirty system and probably a pretty fragmented drive. At the time I ran with 512x512 textures but I think I switched to hires around mid '07. I've never had any issue because I've had all of the skins loaded. I would preload textures but not skins (not enough ram).
Now I've got a 512MB card and 2 gigs ram (still same system otherwise though) and I'm still not having any trouble, I've always (always) had auto download on.

Now, what causes issues with all the skins downloaded, from what I understand, is the act of loading skins into your RAM as they come on screen. Because it takes time for the Hard Drive to get the skins and load them into your RAM it would cause stutters on some players computers when a plane with a previously unloaded skin needs to be rendered. I know that, to circumvent this, Skuzzy recommended that you have only the skins you want, so there was few enough to preload them all, and do that (pre-2.14 when there were more video options). I'm not sure if there's still an option to preload skins but I've never used it. And with my run-of-the-mill '06 250GB hard drive and mis-matched RAM (2 512 sticks and 1 1 gig stick) I've never had an issue with stutters due to skins loading. Not saying you won't, but I wouldn't be too worried about it. If nothing else you should definitely at least try it.

[Rich46yo]

Ya, I did and really didnt notice any performance issue. Thanks for replying.

[morfiend]

 Another option is to check disable others skins!

 All "other" planes will show default skin on you screen,but you can select any skin on your plane.

  This will pretty much put an end to those stutters caused by skin rendering.

   

[Rich46yo]

Yeah Ive been trying both ways. So far so good with letting them render.

I really like a lot of the skins in the game. Sometimes I'll up a plane and fly around just to look at the skin. Thanks to all the skinners.