Greetings guys! Here i am once more with newb/begineers basic annoying
questions. I was trying to get an idea, what does impact more FPS when
creating a scenery or to avoid. Listed below. I will not asked object
placement as each object of course, depends on how it was created and lots of
factors. 
Trying to see what to avoid or not. My main queries are for: 1-
Polygons
- Used for Vegetation addition
- Building Exclusion, like normal buildings, but also blobby trees, highway details, discovered having a Building removal on some highways, does removes the earthquake effect on the road, i guess trying to photogrammetery the road cracks, roads concrete barrier between both directions etc…
2- Apron
- Used for Texturing, adding grass, asphalt, concrete surfaces, decals, etc…etc… How much stacking layers will affect, like one layer for basic asphalt, one on top for crask, one on top for oil stains type of example.
3- Vector Placement
- Used more intensively for fences, concrete barriers etc… v.s. individual placement of each objects.
4- Terraforming small areas or even larger areas.
Your main question about FPS hit is very important. You will be adding one
or two main types of objects: 1. Asobo or Microsoft objects that are already
built into the sim: The FPS hit of these you cannot control to my knowledge.
Use them until you see a hit, then stop. 2. Your own creations in Blender or
3DSMax: Here is where many amateurs fall down. You MUST have a minimum of
three LODs for, say, a hangar. For an airplane, you may need quite a few more.
If you make a hangar, for example, you want to have heavy detail when the
observer is up close - like taxiing up to a terminal. There, the polygon count
can go sky high since the sim only has to reproduce your masterpiece and the
aircraft you are arriving in. Now, when you taxi away maybe 30 meters, you do
not need to see the high-poly doorknob on the FBO’s office door. That’s the
next LOD. For that, you can eliminate Normal Maps and replace the hangar with
a simpler box (with fewer faces) and a texture that’s been baked and painted
on (with Texture Paint in Blender, e.g.) When you are at the runway, that
hangar should be a shell with only 6 or 7 faces and some low-res texture
image. It’ll still look good. I will say that I have dumped many airports I
paid for when I found that I could see their numbers and sizes using the Debug
| Show LODs feature when I was 40 miles away! What to set the Minimum Size for
for each LOD is a fine art and outside the scope of this short piece. For the
polygon foliage setting, your most important setting is to zero density to
keep gratuitous trees from growing up through your nice, new hangar. The
secondary use of the Vegetation setting is to actually add vegetation. Again,
a big topic. Oh, by the way, use a lot of polygons; you can’t load a single
polygon up too much - some things stop working. Aprons only work within an
airport area project. You are correct about using them with various materials.
The most important point here is that you can’ do anything about the FPS
except try them and compare. The main setting you will need is the Priority
setting to make them “happen” in the right order and not hide each other.
Again, a big topic. Terraforming is an even larger topic, but for a newbie you
should probably stick with level. Adjust the falloff as needed, but you can’t
do anything about the FPS. Most likely, the terraforming has only to be done
once by the sim as you approach, so after that it’s not a major hit on FPS.
I know little about Vector Placement, but I don’t like it in general. The
main things to pay attention to are those related to your own models: Use LODs
all the time, and bake all textures. Hope this helps.