The clouds cause bad frame rate drop. This is poor code execution and not my PC. This is using the beta patch too.

Try without alpha/beta patch, runs fairly smooth for me.
The so called patch is just for tracking down CTD and stuff so don't use it more than necessary.
Still sad that's all they could come up with after half a year, but that another subject.

The clouds are definitely a major problem with the sim, especially since they plan to have dynamic weather systems sometime in the future. That future must be very long time from now. I know they had one guy dedicated to building the dynamic weather system, I wonder if he's still around.

Yeah...I imagine it will be quite some time since they are struggling with a static weather system. I'm not confident the programmers on hand can handle it.

Shhhhhh the new graphic "rewrite" is going to solve the cloud, hit affect, smoke and particle problems and allow all sorts of new features, dynamic weather, AA, AF ......oh.....wait.....

The sim is crap in this sim.

If the finished patch does fix the CTD's and particle issues, while increasing frame rates, then it could very well allow the addition of more demanding features. I have no stability issues, my frames are higher, but I now have a much bigger frame hit when flying thru clouds. This is just a beta patch so I'll reserve judgment for the final patch issued on Steam. Like I said before if this patch fails, so does the development.

The game performs better with the patch so don't want to revert back to stock, I'm just saying the clouds are badly done in this game.

That's how I feel too, if this patch fails to solve all performance issues in the game there is no way in hell I am buying any add-ons for it.

At this point?
I'd rather send my money to Greece than 1C.