Thank you all for your comments. I reduced the fps from 35 to 22 and do note a much better quality in the detail of the airports, aircraft, etc., without any stuttering or fluttering. I have a Pentium III 750 MHZ Dell, with 512 SDRAM and 512 cache. My monitor is a 17" Sony Trinitron.Again thank you for your help. Stanner

22" monitor

Guess I'll need to come up with some more...L.Adamson

Hi, Stanner. I would say that for a PIII 750, setting the framerate on 22 is a bit high. In my opinion, it should be around 15. Plus, better to keep all other sliders on default values, except the resolution. All the best.

>Hi, Stanner. I would say that for a PIII 750, setting the >framerate on 22 is a bit high. In my opinion, it should be >around 15. Plus, better to keep all other sliders on default >values, except the resolution. I'm not sure I agree with the above, Naji. I'm running a PIII700 w/only 320mgs RAM. The program gave me a default FR of 25 with many of the options sliders at 75percent or better. I reduced the FR lock to 20 and enjoy very smooth performance at any airport I've or scenery I've been to..... at least so far. I did back down my water settings from Detail/Reflections to just Detail. I also fly almost exclusively with clear weather, but that is a personal preference. I suspect the original poster will just have to do what we all probably did and experiment a little bit. Each person has his/her own tolerance level for performance vs eye candy. -Lindy :-wave

I run a PIII800 Dell (which seems to be the best one for this sim)and set my lock at 20. That's the sweet spot for me. If I increase it to 22, I start to see some very slight sparkling in the tree tops. If I reduce it to 15, I notice no difference. Can't have that. ""just kidding with the 'best one' comment""". (smile) Although, I have seriously questioned the worth of upgrading to the biggest and the best, but it's gonna happen this fall sometime anyway. Gotta get ready for FS2004.

Hehe... then I wonder, Lindy, what you're gonna say of me when you know the setting on my machine :-);I have a P4 2.4Ghz, GF4 Ti4600 and I am locking the frames on 24!! Often I raise it to 30, but around airports like German Airports and Austrian Airports, the rate comes down to 16 with all sliders full (except the mesh which is at 85%), AA full, res 1280*960*32, plenty of clouds, in virtual cockpit. I could put the setting on 30 and fly happily, except that I dislike having the framerate swing between 30 and 15.Clouds do impact heavily the framerate. I guess that's why you're having good frames on a P3 700, because you like blue skies. Personally, I could never fly in a blue sky :); even if FSMeteo doesn't come up with clouds, I load a flight with a heavy weather. Of course, if I were to fly in a real plane, then it is gonna be the opposite thing for sure :-lol :-lol All the best.

I notice little or no framerate hit with the clouds I'm using and I never fly without the clouds. I run at 50% density and usually 2/8 to 4/8. This pic is 2/8. (These are from CFS2; they're 16bit)http://www.x-plane.org/users/mgdbottled/Clouds.jpg http://www.x-plane.org/users/mgdbottled/Learjet5.jpg

"I have a P4 2.4Ghz, GF4 Ti4600 and I am locking the frames on 24!! Often I raise it to 30, but around airports like German Airports and Austrian Airports, the rate comes down to 16..."This doesn't sound right for German Airports. With a CPU like that you should not be seeing framerates as low as 16. I have a 1.8Ghz Athlon and I rarely go below 20 fps when at German Airports.Stamatis

After playing a lot with the FPS slider and the settings I found the perfect setting for my computer is:Unlimited. No FPS lock.I get 30 FPS all the time, and my system is a P4 1,5, so it's not a 2 GHz Monster and my Video Card is a GF2.Well, works for me