In case you missed it- we’ve previously published the best things you can do to maximize SilverLining‘s performance. Those tips can make a big difference! As we continue to work with customers obsessed with their frame-rates, we’ve uncovered a couple of new tips as well:

Update to the latest SilverLining. SilverLining 4.035 changed the way cumulus cloud layers are initialized. It used to be that new clouds would get “compiled” only when they entered the scene for the first time. In SilverLining 4.035, all of a cloud layer’s clouds get compiled when the layer is seeded instead. This reduces pauses as new clouds yaw into view for their initial appearance. You can grab the latest evaluation version of SilverLining here, or if you have an up-to-date support & maintenance plan with us, the source code SDK is available through here.

Some customers, however, value fast cloud layer seeding times over runtime performance. If you want to put things back to the way they were, the new setting pre-init-clouds in the Resources/SilverLining.config file may be used for this.

Optimize how cumulus clouds are fogged. It turns out a lot of CPU time was spent computing the proper fog color for each individual cumulus cloud, such that it matches the color of the sky behind it. If you can live without this precision, try changing the disable-per-cloud-fog setting in Resources/SilverLining.config to “yes” – it can make a big difference – up to 20% in our tests! If you do need perfect cloud fog colors (for example, edge-blended displays may legitimately need this,) SilverLining 4.035 allows you to spread these calculations out over time. The new cumulus-spread-out-fog and cumulus-fog-refresh-frequency settings may be used to enable spreading out the fog calculations, and how many frames the calculations are spread over. Be warned, however, that this can result in noticeable discontinuous cloud color changes with fast-moving viewpoints. Be sure to watch for that while testing.