it seems fs2004 is controlling the AA in the sim because the AA settings are greyed out in the video settings in the card. should i let fs2004 handle it or should i try setting the AA in the card and uncheck AA in the sim? thanks, william

Hi william,It may not always be the case, but I believe that in the vast majority of cases it has been found that it is better to uncheck it in the sim and set the AA in the card(in the display settings). Doing so has the AA code in the card's driver do the Anti-Aliasing which is almost always found to give better performance. There's probably a few games and applications out there where you have to have to leave the AA set to 'Application Preference' in the display settings, but FS2004 is not one of them.Regards,Jim

ok jim, thanks very much. i'll check it out today. william

William,I have to make a correction to my earlier post.Let me start by saying that when I set up my FS2004 I went with what just about everyone was saying when it came to better performance, which is to set AA in your display settings. Virtually everyone claimed to get better performance this way. And I wouldn't doubt it because of 'the voice of the majority'. Nevertheless I should let you know that I have never tried using the AA built into FS2004. And I always just thought that using the AA that built into the driver for a video card would result in better performance. But as they say, you learn something new everday. And if I can believe what the latest version(just got it yesterday) of my favorite magazine, Maximum PC, has to say about this then I assumed incorrectly.Question to the Doctor from a reader:"If a game supports anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering, is it better to enable them via the videocard control panel or within the game itself?"The Doctor's response:"It's always better to use the settings within the game. Sometimes game developers employ performance-enhancing tricks that give you the benefits of anti-aliasing and/or anisotropic filtering without the same performance hit you'd experience if your card's settings were changed. Developers do this by applying effects to just select parts of a scene. If you enable AA or AF in the hardware's control panel, the video card's driver will use a more brute force approach and apply the costly effects to every pixel."But when I read that it, using the game's built-in settings reminds of of video driver optimization cheats. I tend to think I'd rather use the driver's "brute force" thereby making sure I'm getting full quality. That's just me, some may prefer better performance at the expense of a slight drop in quality. Also, I hear that using FS2004's built-in AA gives you 2x AA(or the equivalent of it anyway). I definitely want 4x AA! To get 4x AA it would seem necessary to set it in the display properties control panel. Now you have to keep in mind that while 4x AA is going to look better the result will be slightly less performance. Or it could be a lot less, depending on the video card you have. I also have to wonder if the Doctor has ever tried out FS2004. ;) I say that because I tend to believe what the vast majority of people on here have said about getting better performance in FS2004 by setting AA in the display properties control panel even though I have never tried using the in-game AA. Perhaps I should probably try it out though and see for myself. In the end, the best thing you can do is try both ways out yourself and see what results you get and decide what you like best.If you want to read about video cards, the controversy of driver optimizations and "how far can they go before it's considered a cheat?" ect., then head over to this post by TerryT and follow the link to Tom's Hardware...http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...71&mesg_id=1571Remember, the best thing you can do is try both ways out for yourself and see what results you get and decide what you like best. And, that using a game's built-in setting might not give you as high of a setting as you can get by using the settings built into the driver(I want my AA at 4x!).Hope that helps,Jim

In game FS 2004 AA sucks. Very poor quality aa that simply don

What Par says. Think the Doctor had drunk too much medication. :)Allcott