Perhaps another video card would help?? I have a 9800 pro right now!

I have been playing around with this one for quite a while now. Here is my theory on how things work, and how to choose optimal settings.I set my FS draw distance to pretty far out- it's at 90 or 100nm I think. This is because at high altitudes and on clear days, sometimes you really can see that far. I go into more detail below but suffice it to say anything seen at 100 miles is quite hazy and just blue shapes, which is probably pretty close to how it is in real life.Next, I set my cloud draw distance to 60 or 70 miles. Only because I have a powerful computer and can run the sim smoothly at these settings. YMMV. Anyways what I have found was that even if you set your draw distance to something high, and put your cloud draw distance to something high, and set your max vis in AS to 59 miles (or I think I had mine at 50), you still can see further than the clouds. It's not very obvious at high graphic settings like mine but it is there if you look.I came to realize what was happening though... it was the sky textures. The sky texture defines what color the haze is, and also what color the sky is at the edge of the horizon. If these two do not match (I think the default ones don't match) exactly, then you will be able to see the "edge" of the draw distance because it will be slightly off in color to the sky at the horizon. The closer they are the less obvious the effect but it is there.Now for the good news. So far in ASV I have been playing around with the sky textures and for the most part they are much better in this regard. Finally there are days when I lose the horizon completely and the terrain just smudges away into blue sky, with clouds fading into and out of view with no "edge" seen. Perfect!So here is what I recommend for settings: put your draw distance at something high like 100nm. In my experience changing terrain draw distance between 60 and 150nm has resulted in little, if any, performance difference. This was with both my older slower computer and my new fast one.Then set cloud draw distance as high as you can make it go based on your PC specs. Like I said I think mine is at 60 or 70nm.Then set max vis to 10mi less than the cloud draw distance. Mine is at 59. Remember that 59 is the max, and that sometimes the actual rendered visibility in FS will be less.This should be a good starting point for you. Obviously there are tradeoffs to this... less powerful computer = less cloud draw distance = constant fogginess... so you will most likely need to tweak the settings and make some compromises.Hope this helps!Ruahrc

What are your system specs? I agree with everything you say thanks for that!

System specs are as follows:AMD 64 3200+1GB PC3200 DDR SDRAMnVidia GeForce 6600GT 128MB (Soon I will bump up to an X800XL 256MB or equivalent)I just built an FS-only (Use an Apple Powerbook for everything else) computer in late April. It has performed completely to my expectations thus far. Very happy with it! Was a HUGE upgrade from my AMD TBird 1.3GHz w/9600Pro graphics card!Ruahrc

Ruahrc,Thanks for your info. I tried the following settings:- Sight Distance : 100nm- Cloud Draw Distance: 60nm- Max vis. (ASV) : 50nmAnd here's the result at FL340. However, I have to say that this may be just accidental as lately I've been messing around with the PCI Latency Tool from guru3d.Do you think, this could be a result of setting distances or a more general graphic card problem? (I'm also attaching a picture of the PCI Latency Tool in case anyone can see something very stupid in it ;) )http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/120468.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/120469.jpgKostis

I would try setting both ATI latencys to "64" via the PCI Latency Tool.This is where I have mine set and it seems to work out very well.Keep in mind that the high default latencys are solely to get every last FPS possible to score the very highest in benchmarks for marketing purposes! However, the result is that the high latencys can be detrimental to actual "gameplay" particulary in demanding apps such as FS-9.