Smoooooooooooth P4......Smooothh!!!!.......Umba-baby!

[JSACKS 0]

Well, more testing on fps and fluidity and guess what works best of all? The one thing that MUST be turned OFF to raise fps and give you a smooooth time?FSAA!Turn that sucker off!I just took off from KLAX (a dense default airport in FS2002) at dusk in a PSS CX 744 with EXTREMELY DENSE scenery and autogen settings in the FS2002 dialogue boxes (with Gerry's autogen trees that are much more dense than the default FS trees!), 100nm visibility, 50% cloud textures, 60% ATC, all display boxes checked and marked everywhere, and 85% terrain mesh settings; and it was smoooooooooooother than anything so far.No doubt, terrain mesh texture is also a fps killer, but FSAA boots the boot in and crushes any hope of complete fluidity in dense areas. FSAA 4x is just a joke; it punishes the PC dreadfully.without any FSAA, I sailed up over the Pacific, away from LAX, and I climbed through 3/8 clouds like a dream. The sensation of smooooth motion was intense and thrilling from inside the cockpit and spot view was amazingly smooth and fluid as well.There are some small jaggies here and there in spot view but interestingly, the more you zoom in, the less they are ! I would challenge most simmers to tell me if the FSAA is ON or OFF on this P4.I tried setting terrain mesh texture back to 100% and immediately I lost 2-4 fps which is remarkable and demonstrates how much PC juice is diverted for this function (thank you "mgdbottled"!).In any event, all you P4 folks who have monster processors and monster RDRAM, turn off your FSAA or Quincunx. It is not really worth it. Have a jaggie and enjoy 5 to 8 fps more without FSAA !My res by the way is 1280x1024x32 bit so if any of you are running 1600x1200x32, you may not even be using FSAA to start with.This is a discovery for me. I thought I couldn't live without FSAA. This may be "it" for optimizing frames--oh, yeah, cap set to 26 which is just right.JS

[Guest Edam]

Another happy simmer. Just from my own experience, if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it. You're happy with it now, leave it alone! You may be tempted to use newer drivers, etc. in the future. If you are using XP, use system restore if you have it enabled. In that case, you can go back to what you had if the new drivers don't work.Other than that, "don't worry, be happy."

[Guest]

JS - Why are you still punishing yourself with the Tweaks? The reason for buying a 2.5Ghz box is so that you can turn everything ON, not turn stuff OFF. Just set all the sliders to the right, check all the boxes, set the FSAA to 4sX, throw in some level 8 aniso filtering, turn off the framerate counter, and enjoy it. Sheeez :-) . Trip

[Guest Edam]

Save your fs2002.cfg file first. You may not be happy with the results of that advice despite the machine.

[LAdamson 240]

I must be like JS. I really need the fps to get into the 30's to be happy unless it's real high altitudes. I just notice a lot of difference between 35 fps and those in the lower 20's.L.Adamson

[Guest]

Works for me. All mileage is, of course, variable :-) .TripNorthwood 2.2a at 2.72Ghz Abit TH7II-R512MB Samsung 40ns PC800Gainward 64MB GF4 Ti4200 300/57030.82's DX8.1 WinXP ProInwin case / Enermax 431W PSU3DMark2001SE = 13089http://service.madonion.com/compare?2k1=4330740

[Guest JonP01]

With regard to FSAA, I no longer use it either. Back in my Voodoo 5500 days, I used 2 x FSAA and things really looked good (at least for what was available at the time) at 2x FSAA at 800 x 600 in 16 bit colour. When I got my Geforce 4, I experimented a lot with high resolution, various settings of FSAA and anisotropic filtering. I found the Geforce 4 frame rates to be much more effected by FSAA than with the Voodoo. OTOH, I found the Geforce 4 could be pushed right to the resolution limits of my monitor with FSAA, and give vastly superior performance to the old Voodoo at high resolution. So in the end I decided that I prefered to have a very high resolution image without FSAA (still maintaining good performance).I still don't truly like the way FSAA looks on any card I've seen except the Voodoo 5500 (mind you I have not seen the Parhelia first hand). No matter how much I adjust other settings such as LOD and anisotropic filtering, I still don't like the inherent (but small) loss of detail and clarity that comes with enabling FSAA (even 2 x FSAA). And in FS2002, I really only miss FSAA when I am at low altitude where the terrain is not flat. Once I am up around 7,000 ft AGL, FS2002 looks much better to me with FSAA disabled. To my eyes, from these altitudes, the terrain textures always look much better without FSAA enabled.That is why I am really hoping a card will come out soon that not only has zero performance loss in FS2002 with FSAA enabled, but generates superb images without definition loss with FSAA enabled. I guess I want a card that performs FSAA like the old Voodoo 5500 but has several times the power of a Geforce Ti 4600. When such a card comes, I'm even prepared to spend the money on a Windows XP upgrade just so I can run the card (that is saying a lot for me let me tell you!!).btw, I noticed the 30.82 drivers seem to produce less aliasing effects than the 29.42 drivers, at least on my hardware / software setup. Somehow the image seems a little less harsh and smoother, but I don't believe this was simply achieved by Nvidia adjusting LOD settings. As a result, after long comparisons, I now use the 30.82 rather than 29.42 drivers.

[JSACKS 0]

Trip:I had a feeling SOMEBODY would respond thus! And I can well understand--I would respond thus myself to me !Why?Well, I just want to get things smoothed out fully. So many display options as well as add-on scenery simply degrade and/or kill frames. The new Malpensa is a good example--stunning but a frame killer. I can still taxi and fly around MXP well but fps fall to 12 to 19 on the ground and at very low altitudes about the field, and that is a tad low for me. It is too close to stuttering. When autogen loads anything dense like Gerry's trees, it causes a drop in fps of 5 for a moment. So 15 fps can suddenly drop to 10 fps and there is a micro stutter !I have been dismayed at the amount of PC juice FSAA needs and I feel it is not worth it. I've had to trade off with FSAA for a long time now and I will now try to live without it and think I can.For me, in sum, pulling sliders full right and turning FSAA on to 4x is not the answer. I wish it were; I'd expected it to be so! But it isn't, even with my monster PC. FS2002 is a great sim but it can knacker any PC, I now see this clearly.Thanks to you and others for replies!JS

[Guest]

JS - I know that. Don't take any of of what I said seriously. I have my tounge in my cheek. I just wanted to press your button a little about getting into the same trap we all fall into - no matter how fast the system we still can't stop with the tweaking. I still fiddle with mine all the time. And I must confess though, I don't run with all the sliders to the right - I turn off the water stuff because I just can't stand the way it looks. I have a friend with a water-cooled monster running at 3.5Ghz and he still plays with the settings in FS2002. And even that system won't do it all smoothly all the time. I keep turning on and turning off the FSAA, just can't seem to make up my mind. One day I think it looks better with it on and the next day with it off. But I guess that's what keep us going with MSFS. If we ever became satisfied with the whole thing we'd probably start trying to tweak ProPilot.Trip

[JSACKS 0]

Trip:I am now tweaking a .bgl file for ILS settings. It never ends. The things we do for FS.......!JS

[FlyinMisfit 0]

hi JonP01,i agree 100% with you on the anti-aliasing of the voodoo5. i like nvidia's g-force cards. but their "software driven" AA IMHO is a joke. it's a FR killer and the results are nowhere near the V5. it's been nearly 3 yrs. since nvidia acquired 3dfx's technology. and i for one think it's high time they put 3dfx's "hardware AA" technology to good use in their cards. ok, i think i feel better now. btw, enjoy your new system JS. happy flyin fm

[Guest]

JS,I'm thinking of upgrading to a 2.5ghz soon. I want to make sure that my next upgrade allows me to fly fs2002 smooth in detailed airports like KIAD simflyers. Can you tell me what kind of AI you have, meaning are you using lots of airline flight plans via traffic tools? I just want to see if you are getting smooth performance at a detailed airport with lots of AI on the ground.Thanks

[Guest]

I'm running FS2k2 at 4xAA & 16xAF at 16x12x32 locked at 20fps. Because at 20, it draws the terrain all the way to the horizon. Fsuipc visibility is set graduated 0 to 90 with clouds and I think I got it set at 90 on the slider. All sliders maxed; except ATC on default, mesh at 90% and I turned the water reflections off cause I don't like em'. Didn't notice any frame rate difference either way. Everything else maxed with extended terrain set in cfg at =5;=8;=3 per Paul's recommendation. I get pee'd when I see a bare spot out on the horizon. No blurrs. Not even at mach 1+ on the deck. The textures stay right there. Slight twinkle in tree tops at mid day. (working on that one) Occasional texture seen changing from low res to high res. Very smooth. Completely stable. Here's a couple shots with Calif land class by fox and autogenius:LAX zoomed with out: (Note, that with the zoom at distinct line between high res and low res terrain appears)http://www.x-plane.org/users/mgdbottled/Talon9700_LAX.jpg San Bernadino at mach 1+ :http://www.x-plane.org/users/mgdbottled/Talon9700_640.jpg Heres CFS2 at 1280x1024x32 4xAA & 16x AF and looks like it's running on a Voodoo 5500. CFS2 really impressed me.http://www.x-plane.org/users/mgdbottled/Corsair9700_CFS2.jpg

[Jay R 0]

ALIENWARE RULEZ!!!My bro just bought the AURORA DDR, with the AMD Athlon 2100+. That thing is........FAST!!! I dunno how alienware does it, but their machines are absolutley the fastest I have seen. I even looked at Falcon NW. I hope to buy a system from them if I decide to be lazy and not build another machine!!!Later,http://www.forefrontgrp.com/jayssig.jpg"There is an art . . . to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss!"

[Guest BMarcoux]

As far as the FSSA issue, I have my LOD set at -.8 and it seems if I turn off fssa I get the shimmering effect. Anyone else seeing this?