I have a Sony SDM-S73 that I've had for about 8 months now. It's a great monitor but the one thing that bothers me is that when I fly at low altitudes of less than 5000ft I get a lot of flickering of the scenery. Never had it with a CRT. This monitor has a fast response time of 20ms and I get no ghosting, just flickering. I don't think there is anything I can do about it, it has always been like this since I bought it. Using a Radeon 9000 pro. Another thing I don't like about LCDs is flying at night. I don't think LCDs cut it for night flying. I'm actually thinking about going back to a CRT, but a LCD is so much superb in every other aspect for reading etc. I spent $450 for this so I'm wondering what I could get for it on EBay. Is this a common problem for LCDs? FS9 is the only program or game I have problems with. What to do?

Hi Guy,Don't give up on your LCD yet. The 'flickering' may just be a driver issue. Try uninstalling, running 'Driver Cleaner' (get the latest version from http://www.drivercleaner.net/), follow the instructions carefully and then reinstall your graphics drivers. Better still, download Omega's latest driver set for your card by following the links at http://www.omegadrivers.net/ and follow his installation procedure.Most LCDs, including mine, don't portray true black well - tends to be a dark grey but this is only really noticeable if you fly with the room lights out. Try leaving some ambient lighting on and also you might think about trying Carmine D'Amore's excellent FS2004 Night Time texture fixes: fs2004nt.zip and the update fs2004nt1.01update.zip. These made all the difference for me.Nothing, and I mean nothing will persuade me to part company with my LCD TFT Flat Panel. They excel in so many other areas.Mike P4 2.4GHz (400FSB), 1Gig PC2100 DDR Crucial, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (Omega 2.5.90), SB Audigy (5.12.0001.0443), Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 17" TFT LCD 20ms Monitor (1280x1024x32), Gigabyte GA-8IRXP MoBo, Ultra-Quiet PSU 400W, WinXP Home (SP2), DirectX 9.0c, AGP Aperture = 128MB

That driver cleaner is dangerous. It gets rid of all the ATI drivers that come native with XP. Thanks anyway, I don't believe it's a driver issue, I've tried 4, possibly the card. I haven't tried a different card.

"That driver cleaner is dangerous. It gets rid of all the ATI drivers that come native with XP."Just to clarify, Driver Cleaner DOES NOT remove the native files in XP. It is a critical tool for anyone who changes drivers, as attested by more than a million and a half downloads.Regards,Greg

I think Drive Cleaner CAN be used to clean default drivers from the Widows .cab folders, but it's an optional process. The only real danger is someone who doesn't know how to use it. And it is the ONLY way to ensure you have fully cleaned the system of old driver remnants, short of a reinstall of Windows.With LCD monitors, they have a native resolution, and a native refresh rate. A lot of drivers don't pick up on the native refresh rate (often 75Hz) and by default install to 60Hz. It might be as simple a fix as selecting the correct refresh rate in the driver or monitor options.Allcott

There are actually different opinions on the best refresh rate for LCD monitors.Mine will run at either 60 or 75 Hz... the general "expert opinion" is that you gain nothing by going above 60 Hz and might as well give the video card a rest by going wih the lower number. This is markedly different from CRTs where 85 Hz or even higher tends to give you a more stable picture with better colors, and 60 Hz flickers visibly.I certainly agree with always running the LCD monitor at it's native resolution, however!

"I think Drive Cleaner CAN be used to clean default drivers from the Widows .cab folders, but it's an optional process."Indeed, and DC (when the CAB Cleaner option is used) makes a backup of the files as well as offering very concise logs for each cleaning session."The only real danger is someone who doesn't know how to use it."As is the case with many software "disasters".Regards,Greg

I've tried everything. Different resolutions, refresh rate, mip levels etc. It only flickers when is spot plane view and usually under 5000ft. Above that it's fine. Maybe it's the card. I have an old TNT2 ultra laying around somewhere. Maybe I'll throw it in and see if I still have the same problem. Do any of you with LCDs get flickering at low altitudes in spot plane view? Like I said before it never did this on my old 19inch CRT. I do notice it's not as bad if I turn Texture quality down to medium, but then it looks like crap.

Hard to say without actually seeing it... the below is what I see and may not be related to the issue you are describing...I agree that scenery "shimmers" a bit more on my LCD monitor than it did on my Diamondtron CRT. In particular, the autogen buildings stand out more and do not blend quite as well. Also, the scenery can seem a bit "nervous" in sharp banks...It just might have something to do with the fact that most if not all LCD monitors take a 32 bit video feed and translate it into a 16M color picture. On some of the panels I can also see some slight color banding.Having said that, however, I would not go back. The overall effect is clearly superior to my eyes, and that goes for night flying as well.