Hello thereI have been using AS 2004.5 For ages now and i have not really messed about with many graphics setting but with ASVe I now want the best setup i can get.This product like the last one is without a doubt a must for anybody who reqs nice looking skies and active weather...I 100% love it..Great work all the guys involved!My setup is Amd Athlon XP3200+ 1Ghz of DDR 333 and Ati 256mb 9600 Graphics card.It runs the default seting flawlessly but i have since downloaded the 512x512 and turned on my DXT and MIP texture modes .This has slowed my system down some what...But look absolutely great!What do you recommened is a good setup because i wouldnt say i have a slow machine...What would have killed mt FPS?1. DXT texture modes 2. MIP texture modes 3. Or the loading up of the 512x512 cluds...?Please can anyone give me some info in "lay mans "terms as to what DXT and MIP texture modes actually are? (i am no computer boffin sorry!)And will there be any REAL/SIGNIFICANT differance between 512x512 and 256x256.?I appologize in advance if these are questions that have already been covered.This is the best add-on i have bought for FS9.Kind Regards Paul Teasdale.

Hi Paul,Thanks for the comments!!MIP Maps are a texture quality and most uses find that Enabled is best.DXT is a texture class where fine detail is lost in a trade off for better performance.You are kind of right between 256 and 512 clouds. For either, use MIPS On and DXT Off. Reducing your cloud draw distance in FS04 can help big time. Also limiting your cloud layers to 3 in ASVE can help.You can try both sets of clouds and see which you like best. I think I covered everything you asked about! Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Sales and Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_dev_team.jpg http://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_proud_supporter.jpg

Jim many thanks for your swift reply and for making such a great product even better with this kind of backup.I will try the setting you described and thanks for the info about mips and dxt.Once again kind Regards Paul Teasdale UK.

Hi Jim and Paul,Jim, those explanations were a bit short. :-) I realize that you get these questions all the time, and also do not have a lot of time to type out lengthy explanations. While I'm no expert, I've been doing some digging with imagetools and thought I'd offer my comments on this. Hope you don't mind, and hope I don't get this completly wrong.MIP maps are a method of giving the graphics engine different sized textures, all contained within the same file, to display at different distances. For example, if a texture is 512x512, and contains 7 MIP maps, the file will have the same texture at 512x512, 256x256, 128x128, 64x64, 32x32, 16x16 and 8x8. As the eyepoint moves away from the texture, the graphics engine uses lower and lower resolutions. This means that at the furthest distances, the graphics engine does not have to use a texture that is 512x512 pixels in a space that is only 8x8 pixels on the screen. This saves memory and the processing required to scale the texture. MIP Maps should improve performance.DXT appears to be a compression method, similar to JPG. This saves disk space, but may hurt performance, depending on how good your disk subsystem is. It also does reduce texture quality slightly. I believe the determining factor here is how slow your disk subsystem is. If it is slow, DXT may help, in that there is less data to load off the disk. However, that data then needs to be uncompressed. I don't have a definitave answer for this, it's something that needs be experimented with. This is definatly a case of YMMV*.Using 256x256 textures compared to 512x512 textures will definatly improve performance, at the cost of slightly less graphics quality (the same applies to the other lower sized textures.) MIP mapping them will help. Again, it is a balancing act. Use the size that gives you acceptable quality with acceptable performance. The only way to figure that out is to try each size. Fortunatly, that is easy enough to do with the ASVE Active Environment interface.Best regards,...jim* Your Milage May Vary. :-)