Radeon 9800 pro blurred panel HELP!

[Guest Ali]

Hello people,I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb card and all my panels seem a lot more blurry now than they did with my old geforce 4.In both fs2002 and fs2004 the panel bitmaps especially and some gauges are proving to be blurry and sometimes unreadable.I am running 1152 x sumthing resolution :(.Anti aliasing 6x and anisoptric filtering off.Also running the Omega 3.9 drivers. Can anyone help?Regards,Alexander Martin.

[Ray Proudfoot]

Alexander,I've built a new PC in the last few days and installed a Hercules 9800 Pro 128Mb. Even with the supplied Catalyst 3.8 drivers I had no problems at all with the displayed image. For the record I'm running FS9 in Windowed mode at 1280*960 on a 19" CRT. AA is set to 2X (default) and AF to x8.When I upgraded to the Omega Catalyst 4.1 drivers the frame rates leapt by 30% and I have to say that the image quality is everything it was with the Ti4600.I suggest you visit the Omega site and download the latest drivers. Stay in windowed mode and you shouldn't have any problems at all.www.omegacorner.com/Cheers,

[Guest Ali]

Hello,I have tried every set of drivers with no cure. Anything above the 3.9s causes display errors within flightsim.I get black screen when I window from the desktop into flightsim in full screen, menu bar doesn't work properly and gauges don't display properly either.I tried windowed mode but no change.Regards,Alexander Martin.

[Ray Proudfoot]

Alexander,How strange. Did you deinstall the nVidia drivers completely before installing the Radeon? I cannot see any other reason for the problems you describe. FWIW, I installed to a newly built system.FS9 was designed to run in Windowed mode. That might explain why you're getting some strange problems when running in full-screen mode.Anyway, try removing all references to the nVidia drivers - there's a driver to do this on www.Guru3D.com I believe.Cheers,

[Guest Ali]

Hello,Thanks will do that now. I am not sure, I even created a new fs2002 and FS9.cfg for the new card.Regards,Alexander Martin.

[Ray Proudfoot]

Alexander,Creating new cfg files will not solve the problem. Search for the Detonator Destroyer and run that. There's a link to it on the front page on guru3d.Cheers,

[Guest Ali]

Detonator destroyer found some files but I didn't remove them all as two files were nforce 2 drivers for my mainboard.Maybe I will try a higher resolution like 1280, and try that un both windows and FS.Regards,Alexander Martin.

[Ray Proudfoot]

Alexander,I suggest that until you've resolved this problem you stay in Windowed mode - not full-screen mode. I have no problems whatsoever in Windowed mode.You don't say which of the panels is blurred. Is it the virtual or normal 2D panel? Have you checked the panel settings under Options / Settings / Display, Aircraft tab I think. Make sure it's set to High.Cheers,

[Guest TerryT]

Ray, You stated that FS2004 is designed to run in the Windows mode? If I understand you, this is what it should look like when in Windows?Then when I go to the "Full" screen this is what I should see?In my case the Windows mode distorts the panel and cannot be resized on my 19" monitor. Also the panel is blurred and almost unreadable. Yes the frames per second are nearly 20 more per second but is this good trade-off?These images were taken from an ATI 9800 Pro with the Cat 4.2s. Finally, who would want to see those menu bars at the top of the screen all the time in the Windowed mode?Terry

[Guest Ali]

It is 2d panel view in full screen.Regards,Alexander Martin.

[Ray Proudfoot]

Terry,The FS9 menu can be hidden by right-clicking the main screen and choosing Hide Menu. The Taskbar can be hidden by right-clicking, choosing Properties and choosing Auto-hide the Taskbar. That leaves the title bar which cannot be removed but the size of the text can be adjusted in Windows and its colour can be changed to make it less obrusive.Look at it another way. Would you be happy with a 20fps increase just for keeping the title bar?What resolution are you running on the 19" monitor. You should be using a 4:3 aspect such as 1280*960 - not 1280*1024 which will distort things albeit slightly.I suspect that once you set the correct resolution the panel will not be blurred.Cheers,

[Ray Proudfoot]

Alexander,Is it blurred in windowed mode? What resolution are you running in windowed mode and full-screen mode? More information is helpful in trying to resolve your problem.Cheers,

[Guest Ali]

Hi,I am running the 1152 x something resolution in 32 bit in full screen mode. I cannot stand or live with windowed mode I'm afraid.Regards,Alexander Martin.

[Guest TerryT]

Ray,Thanks for the suggestions.I already run the resolution at 1280 x 960 x 32. I do not use auto gen as it is not very realistic. I set the weather to 40NM on the clouds, vis to 150NM, and clouds usually to 50%. I only have a 2.8 HT P-4 on a Gigabyte 800 MHz FSB MB. 1 gig of DDR 400 memory and the 9800 Pro. I can see a uliminited frame per second of 70 plus but still can get small faint jerks in the video and of course that awful shimering of the terrain, radio towers, runway signs, etc. Running the ATI 4.2s and nothing overclocked or no add-ons.Terry

[Ray Proudfoot]

Alexander,1152*864. Try higher if you can. I asked if the problem is the same in windowed mode as full-screen. I'm not asking you to stay in windowed mode - just try it and report back. Also, you really should be using AF. Increase it to 8X and reduce (temporarily) AA to 2X. Does anything improve / get worse / stay the same?There is no logical reason why panels should not be as sharp with the 9800 as with a GeForce4. I have both and have no problems with screen sharpness.Cheers,