FS2004: Compilation of Popular Tweaks

[Guest Jimbofly]

Whoops!I should clarify that when referring to the fps improvement in San Fransisco and hardly noticing any difference, I was referring to the scenery. The scenery looks almost identical but the performance is greatly improved, and you certainly notice a difference in fps!James

[Guest]

Q) HOW DO I USE MULTI MONITORS IN FULLSCREEN MODEA) Tired of reshuffling extra panles around on multiple monitors - I was, until I discovered this work around:1. Load up FS9 & your favourite aircraft2. Start a flight & go to a Windowed main panel.3. Open up your extra panel windows, move them to your other monitor(s) and resize making sure you leave an allowance for the Windows frames which will disapear in full screen mode.4. Save the flight!!!!! MOST IMPORTANT5. Switch to 3d mode and check the position of your extra windows.5A: Go back into Windowed mode (this appears to lock the full screen mode panel window positions into place. Then for the second time undock your extra panels and move and resize them into your extra monitor. THEN SAVE FLIGHT. This locks the windowed extra panels in place.6. If you need to adjust, go back to Windows mode and CTL-C out of FS9 - DO NOT RESAVE THE FLIGHT.7. Restart FS9 and the flight you saved (you should be in Windowed mode with your extra panels showing as you left them on your other monitor(s)).8. Re-adjust your extra panels and then SAVE AGAIN, then recheck in Full screen.REPEAT steps 6-8 until satisfied with positioning of extra panels.9. When happy, kick off FS9 with your saved flight and go to full screen mode with your extra panels where you left them. Have a good flight BUT DO NOT GO BACK TO WINDOWED MODE AND DO NOT SAVE THE FLIGHT AGAIN.10. At the end of every flight slip back into windowed mode and CTL-C out of FS9. Yes, the extra panels will resurface on the main panel window, this is no problem provided you don't save again.11. Repeat the whole process with other aircraft.I have noticed on one occassion that, on starting a flight in windowed mode, as you must to get this to work, the extra panels weren't showing. But, after pressing SHIFT + panel number they showed up on the second monitor as I had left them.Caution: Remember that before leaving FS9 you must go into Windowed mode.Now I didn't say it was simple but it can be done!Yellowjack

[Chris Willis 8]

Q) How to find and enable/disable the Multitexture in Fs2004?A) It's the terrain details slider in fs2004 Display.Terrain details Slider to None = No MultitextureTerrain details Slider to Land Only = Multitexture EnabledThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

[Guest Nathan Palmer]

Q) How do you get the force feedback feel in CoF like we had in FS2002?A) In CoF there is just not much force like there was in FS2002. In order to get it back do this...Open up the 172 aircraft folder and make a copy of your aircraft.cfgThen go and paste this info in the place of your forcefeedback infogear_bump_nose_magnitude=6000 ; 0 - 10000gear_bump_nose_direction=18000 ; 0 - 35999 degreesgear_bump_nose_duration=2500000 ; in microsecondsgear_bump_left_magnitude=6000 ; 0 - 10000gear_bump_left_direction=35500 ; 0 - 35999 degreesgear_bump_left_duration=2500000 ; in microsecondsgear_bump_right_magnitude=6000 ; 0 - 10000gear_bump_right_direction=00500 ; 0 - 35999 degreesgear_bump_right_duration=2500000 ; in microsecondsground_bumps_magnitude1=3800 ; 0 - 10000ground_bumps_angle1=8900 ; 0 - 35999 degreesground_bumps_intercept1=5.0ground_bumps_slope1=0.48ground_bumps_magnitude2=3250 ; 0 - 10000ground_bumps_angle2=9100 ; 0 - 35999 degreesground_bumps_intercept2=5.0ground_bumps_slope2=0.48crash_magnitude1=10000 ; 0 - 10000crash_direction1=01000 ; 0 - 35999 degreescrash_magnitude2=10000 ; 0 - 10000crash_direction2=9000 ; 0 - 35999 degreescrash_period2=75000 ; in microsecondscrash_duration2=2500000 ; in microsecondsSince the 172 does not have retractable landing gear other planes might have extra forces like landing gear up bumps. Change only these settings and leave the others alone will work giving you the feel of force we had in FS2002.Nathan Palmer

[Chris Willis 8]

Real world weather seems to be giving some strange weather in FS2004. Heres why and how to fix it (straight from Microsoft website) : Flight Simulator: Real-World Weather Is Not Accurate in the Game Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004

[Guest JoeESSA]

Q)How do I get rid of sound cracking, popping, distorted ATC and at the same time get rid of visual stutters and a nice performance boost to boot?A)This fix, that worked extremely well for me, may not be attractive because it involves spending some money. I.e. currently $250 to $300 depending on where you shop. The find may not be novel, so apologies in advance if this is old news...This may nevertheless be interesting for those of you considering a HW upgrade with the caveat that this may only be appropriate for mid to high-end systems.I believe that the sound problems (i.e. crackling, popping, distorted and/or unreadable ATC as well as visual stuttering) are indirectly/directly related to graphics card limitations in relation to the chosen display settings.My original system:P4 2.4GHz @ 2.96GHzASUS P4C800 Deluxe2x512MB PC3500 DDR MemoryWindowXPDirectX9.0bSounblaster Live!Visiontek GF3 Ti500 (det. 30.82). Fix - Change to ATI Radeon 9800 non-PRO video card. With emphasis on non-PRO. See second Q&A later.What made me consider this option? I noticed that by reducing display resolution, or not using FSAA, or reducing level of anisotropic filtering or a combination of these helped to reduce the sound artifacts and visual stuttering to a certain extent. I played around with DirectX sound acceleration levels, but this had no effect and in fact made things worse (a lot worse). I downloaded the latest drivers for my SoundBlaster Live!, but no difference at all.So, all that said and done I was in the process of resigning myself to poorer visual quality than I was used to in FS2002 in order to keep the stutters and sound artifacts to a "minimum" when I read a post reporting good performance with an ATI Radion 9800 NP. So I thought what the hell, I'll give it a go. I could always take the card back if there was no difference. Well, this brand spanking new 9800 non-pro, acquired for $249, is most definately not going back! This is really the first time I have ever experienced a quantum leap in FS20xx by upgrading to a new video card. I'm running 1600x1200x32 resolution, 4x FSAA and 8x anisotropic filtering. Yes, no sound artifacts and no visual stuttering whatsoever. Frames are locked at 25fps and I get that most of the time, but they do drop off momentarily to 14fps or so occasionally, but nevertheless very smooth given my settings.I am damn impressed by the improvement this upgrade has made. Point being that I believe that the sound issues and visual stuttering many are experiencing is related to insufficient graphics horsepower for the display settings that they are attempting to use. Why that should impact sound I cannot explain, unless it has something to do with when CPU utilization pegs or something?Q)How do I make a ATI Radeon 9800 NP into a PRO version and save $100 to $150.A)The 9800 and the 9800 PRO are physically the same cards. The difference? The 9800 is clocked at VPU/MEM = 325/290 as opposed to 380/340 on the PRO version. FIX? Download Rage3D Tweak v3.9 utility and overclock your 9800 NP to 380/340. In my case the 9800 NP handled this overclock easily and effectively became a 9800 PRO.Alternatively, and at your own risk, follow the instructions at this site for flashing the BIOS of your 9800 NP and turning it into a genuine 9800 PRO with additional clocking margin.http://discuss.futuremark.com/forum/showfl...=0&fpart=1&vc=1I may do this at some point in time, but don't really see the need since the 9800NP that I have overclocked without any problems.Regards,Joe

[Bob Scott 7,745]

Folks;For those of you running MS Flight Sim on Win XP and an Intel Hyperthreading CPU, here's a truly amazing performance booster:After starting FS, go into task manager (CTRL_ALT_DEL)Select Processes tabRight click on FS9.exe, select "Set Affinity"Disable one of the two check boxes so that FS9 only runs on one virtual CPU (I use CPU 0).Do the same on any other running utilities (i.e. FDC, RC) and select the other virtual processor.I see better than a doubling in frame rates. This, of course, assumes that hyperthreading is supported and enabled on your motherboard and BIOS settings.An even better (permanent) way of constraining FS9 to run on a single virtual CPU on an HT CPU is using the Microsoft IMAGECFG utility (an older NT/2000 utility that works fine in XP -- do a google search). Command syntax (in a Command window):IMAGECFG -a 0x1 fs9.exeThis writes a processor affinity mask into the executable. 0x1 specifies virtual CPU 0, 0x2 specifies vCPU 1, and 0x3 uses both 0 & 1 (default). FS will always run on the specified virtual CPU(s) from that point on.I have done the same to the other utilities I run on the machine while FS is running, only restricting them to the opposite vCPU.Thanks to Sean McLeod for pointing out this setting to me.RegardsBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Washington, D.C

[Bert Pieke 7,591]

Q: How can I get to see the aircraft textures at maximum detail, as I remember them from FS2002?A: In Options/Settings/Display/Hardware, set global max texture size to "Massive"

[Guest JoeESSA]

Q) How do I really know that my R9800 NP can be clocked to the same speed as a R9800 PRO?A) A little bit more reasearch on this subject revealed that many R9800 based cards have not only lower clock speeds, but are being built with slower DDR memory than the PRO, hence the fact that they are cheaper. Apparently though many R9800 cards are being released to the market with fast memory which will allow a very easy and within spec overclock to R9800 PRO speeds. One possible reason for this is that this is due to whatever ATI and other vendors have available on the production line at a given time and are prepared to dig into compatible, but higher specified inventory if the other is temporarily out of stock or whatever. The deal is that any Samsung memory type that is 3.3ns or less will apparently deliver the goods. 2.8ns Samsung memory will get you to R9800 PRO speeds and still be in spec and have good o/c margin beyond that.How do you know what you have? Well have a look at the flat, square chips on the card and write down the product code. In my case it is Samsung K4D26323RA-GC2A. Look up the product code on the manufacturer's web site. In my case it came up with maximum specified operating frequency of 350MHz, i.e. 2.8ns.I heard that a number of R9800 NP cards are being delivered with 3.0ns or 3.3ns Infineon memory that will be out of spec at 340MHz. I.e. out of spec at PRO memory clock speeds. This doesn't necessarily infer that it won't operate with good stability at PRO speeds, but will be out of spec.Anyway, happy simming!!Joe

[JimmiG 244]

Q) Autogen causes a big loss of performance in FS2004. How can I fix this?A) This is caused by some kind of bug in FS2004. Autogen keeps accumulating even when the objects are not visible. There is a workaround that does not impact visual quality of the scenery much.Originally posted by Kurt in another thread here at AVSim:"FS2004 has additional types of Autogen. You have the regular Autogen that is mostly assigned by the .agn files like FS2002. In addition you have Autogen that is assigned in the terrain.cfg file, bridges, high-tension towers, highway signs, etc. and these can be disabled individually in the terrain.cfg. They can also be completely disabled by changing this line in your FS9.cfg under the GRAPHICS SECTION.TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=0 0=off/1=onAnother type of Autogen is assigned by the default.xml file in the Autogen folder. This is where the fast food buildings and other types of new Autogen objects are added. The default.xml file can be edited to get rid of certain types of objects, you can also disable this type of Autogen on a texture by texture basis with the annotator tool included in the FS2K2 Autogen SDK. You can also disable all of these types of additional objects by renaming the default.xml todefault.xml.BAK."I have found that disabling both (by renaming the default.xml file AND setting the opton in the cfg file to 0) will prevent autogen from accumulating and improve performance significantly.Enabling only one of the options will not slow the sim much and autogen data will still not accumulate. However, having both these enabled will cause massive slowdowns, especially when nearing airports or when slewing.I recommend you to set TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS to 1, but rename the default.xml file to something else. The bridges, high-tension towers and highway signs add a lot more to the scenery, visually, than the fast food buildings do.I hope Microsoft releases a patch to fix this!

[Guest artl]

Q) I cannot do a complete install of FS2004, even though I have the disk space, because the Install always hangs or aborts while decompressing the scenery. A) If your install gets as far as decompressing the scenery, then it may be possible to create a "complete" install manually. Then, when you substitute the "no-cd" version of FS9.exe, you will be able to shelve your disk4.The following procedure comes from my personal experience. I have tried to be as comprehensive and accurate as possible, but ... the usual warnings about proceeding at your own risk. 1. Do a normal "compact" install. If that succeeds, then proceed as follows.2. Study the CAB files in the Scenery folder on disk 4. If you have XP, you can right click on each cab file and Explore. Note especially that the Explorer window will show the PATH heading of each file in the CAB, and that the files in the CAB come from two sub-folders: "scenery" and "texture".3. Now study the structure of the Scenery folder and subfolders in the FS2004 home directory.You will note that the Scenery folder contains a list of subfolders whose names are identical to the names of the "regional" CAB files, and that each of those subfolder contain the further sub-folders "scenery" and "texture". The files from the Disk-4 CAB file have been put into the appropriate sub-folder as determined by their PATH in the CAB.4. Also note that the main Scenery folder in the FS2004 home directory has a "cities" sub-folder. Each of the sub-folders under "cities" has a name identical to the names of the CAB files in the Disk4 Scenery directory, whose names represent a city as opposed to a region.4a. If you have already started up FS2004 at least once, there will be DAT files within the Scenery subfolders.DELETE EVERY ONE OF THESE DAT FILES NOW.5. In the FS2004 "Scenery" folder, make sure that all subfolders have been created for all of the regions, plus all of the cities (under the "cities" subfolder), to account for all the CAB files on disk4. If any have not been created, CREATE THEM NOW, also create a "scenery" and a "texture" subfolder in each.6. From each CAB on disk4, extract all the files and copy them to the appropriate same-name folder in the FS2004 "Scenery" directory. Dont forget to copy all the files with a "scenery" PATH to the appropriate "scenery" subfolder, and those with a "texture" PATH to the appropriate "texture" subfolder. Don't forget that the city CABS go into the subfolders under "cities". If you have XP, this is relatively painless, because you can use the Windows explorer to sort the files in the CAB by PATH, then carefully select of "texture" files separately from the "scenery" files.7. Now:find the scenery.cfg file for each user. It is right there next to fs9.cfg in the Documents and SettingsMicrosoftfs9 directory. Recall that this is a hidden folder, so make sure you select the "show hidden files" checkbox on the windows explorer "Tools | Folder Options | View" tab.8. Study the structure of the scenery.cfg file. Note that there is also a scenery.cfg in the "Complete" sub-folder on disk 4, plus another scenery.cfg in the "Compact" sub-folder on disk 4. Study all 3 scenery.cfg files.9. Note that the operational scenery.cfg used the "compact" version from disk 4, but added some path information under each section, marking each section as "Local" or "Remote". 10. Into the operational scenery.cfg, MERGE IN THE MISSING SECTIONS from the "complete" version on Disk 4.11. Study the stucture of those sections which have a "Local=" path specification.12. NOW, IN EVERY SECTION, REMOVE EACH "Remote=" path specification if there is one, and add in the appropriate "Local=" path specification, using what you have learned in step 11 as a guide.13. Stick the no-cd version of FS9.exe into the install-directory, file your disk 4, and "FLY NOW!"FS2004 will start off by "creating the scenery index" and "scenery database"... (It is re-creating those DAT files at this point). When it gets done, you are on your way.Art.

[Chris Willis 8]

How can I place new *.FLT Situation Flight and *.WX weather files in fs2004flight Place all your *. FLT and *.WX files in a new folder name and copy all your *.FLT AND *.WX in fs2004flight new folder nameFs2004Flight_____________New name folder_____________________________*.FLT *.WX filesThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

[Bob Scott 7,745]

Post-Script:This problem was later traced to PFC.dll version 1.60 In PFC.DLL release 1.61 and subsequent Pete Dowson has fixed the problem (serial comm process was grabbing exclusive control of a thread).Those folks without PFC serial devices (or possibly some other DLL that may exhibit anti-social thread-sharing behavior) would not be expected to experience any improvement from this tweak.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Washington, D.C.

[Guest GiZBUG]

Your pictures are broken links. Can you reupload them so we can see you settings inside FS9?Thanks

[BK 1]

>Folks;>>For those of you running MS Flight Sim on Win XP and an>Intel Hyperthreading CPU, here's a truly amazing performance>booster:>>>>Regards>>Bob Scott>ATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300>Washington, D.C>> >How do you know you have a "Intel Hyperthreading CPU"? Is any P4 answers this criteria. Is it going to work on any P4 board?Thanks