Hi Mike,Well thank you! I appreciate your feedback. Incidently, John Ci in another thread under hardware regarding the flashing of the hard disk light has expressed just about the same conclusions. Maybe in the next release, MS might take into account that many have a lot of memory on their systems and provide some optimization tailored for that. All in all, while this is an annoying characteristic, particularly in a visual landing pattern, I don't consider it a major flaw.Larry S.

For what it's worth, maybe I can add my own humble comments?I've ordered a new PC recently - delivery this week they say - solely for FS9 (and 10, even!). Based on talks I have had with Microsoft support engineers, who say that adding more than 512MB of RAM is pointless for FS9 (not sure I totally agreed with this!) I compromised with 1024MB DDR RAM (as my current system) rather than 2GBS, but chose an AMD 64 FX55 CPU and NVidia 6800GT graphics, which I think should run FS as well as anything is going to. 2 x 7200 rpm Maxtor drives.As I already have a pretty good PC for other use, I am not going to set up my new PC to connect to the internet - so no resource hogging anti-virus software needed. (Nothing whatsoever, O/S apart, will be added to the PC that didn't come through my first, fully Norton-equipped PC, so I don't think I will be at any risk). I will install a minimum of 'non FS9' software, and run FSAutoStart, then probably set things up permamently with that more minimal configuration of services etc., as I will only be using the PC for FS. As on my current PC, I will set up FS9 with the programme installed into C: on drive 0 (first hard disc, that is), but choose an installation folder for all the files in the first partition on drive 1 (second disc). If you use Disk Monitor (diskmon.exe - freeware) you can see that this way both drives work to run FS9 and I am sure I get slightly better performance this way.A lot of the loading problems do seem to come (as has been mentioned here, I know) from 32-bit textures and changing these, as explained earlier, does help a lot with loading times. I also seem to sense that, when the PC is trying to load these 'heavy' aircarft textures, it kind of gives up with scenery textures in the meantime: it's always when flipping directly from cockpit view to spot view - and I agree that scrolling forwards rather than backwards through the views gives better results - that scenery suddenly goes out of focus. It takes ages to refocus again, once the full aircraft textures have loaded.I wonder why those who make the textures choose 32 bit in the first place? Even those with the most powerful PCs seem to have problems with them. Do people recommend going through all aircarft add-ons (quite a task by this stage!!) and converting 32 bit textures? What about PMDG? (Can't remember off-hand if they use 32 bit BMPs. Probably, given loading times for PMDG planes).Finally, my main problem with FS9 (9.1) is the way the performance degrades over time. Landing at a busy airport (with UT installed, traffic at 95%) can be a pretty depressing experience, with frame rates dipping to under 5 fps. Taking off from similarly crowded airports is never like that, it's the 3, 4, 5-hour flight in the interim that seems to drain the RAM away. Microsoft denied the problem existed when I spoke to them, but there are enough comments about on FS forums to show otherwise. I start of, at take-off, with some 400MB of free RAM (plus big page file). It can be down to a miserable, jerky 25MB after a long flight - where has it all gone? Saving the flight and restarting FS of course solves the problem immediately!! Will the XP 64-bit O/S address this?Enough, already!Martin :-)

Hi Martin, You said, "Saving the flight and restarting FS of course solves the problem immediately!!"Have you tried the Refresh Scenery (or is it called Scenery Refresh) command? It is listed in the keyboard asasignments under Options > Assignments menu but there is no default keystroke assigned to it. I assigned it to Ctrl + Shift + s and use that key chord before I turn final. There is, of course, a pause as the scenery reloads but the FR goes back up where it belongs before I land. (At least, I feel that it does.) Try it, you might be surprised. R-

I saw that mentioned some months back in fact, in a post about memory leaks - but then I couldn't find the shortcut, or there was some other problem with it that I don't quite recall at this stage. Now you have reminded me of it, I'll look again and have another go. Certainly faster than restarting the sim... Thanks!!Martin

Larry, Mike, Martin, Ron - Have been away for a few days.Larry - Your explanantion is basically what I have been thinking, although, as you already know, I certainly do not have any background or training that would scientifically lead me to that conclusion.I certainly thought that this new, 'Fly only' Dell 'Extreme Edition' with all the ram and fast hard drive etc would have easily overcome that texture loading lag which I also experienced to about the same degree on this computer, which is anemic by comparison! Outside of a number of add-on planes I have not loaded any scenery, AI traffic or mesh or such. It seems from your explanation it is really a limitation imposed by the game itself. What is strange to me, however, is that Greg and Jaap, major contributors to this thread, have stated that they experience no lag whatsoever with add-on 32 bit planes??? Oh, and further I have moved the game back and forth from the fast drive to the slower drive with little difference in fps and no improvement in texture loading.Your participation is much appreciated---thanks.Bruce

I tend to agree with Larry's assessment. My understanding (this is hearsay though) is that proper management of the z-buffer (at least for ground 3d objects) is important for scene building. Also, there seem to be some stencil-buffer issues, though this may have been driver related. In some cases there are recommendations to set "rendertotexture", which I assume means potential slow down. There also are documented instances of CTD when using DXT3 for certain textures -- that has tended to create a 32-bit texture bias.scott s..

Ron, Found the 'Refresh Scenery' option: on my current PC it freezes things up for ever - certainly no faster than saving the flight and restarting FS altogether, but I'll give it a try when my new PC is up and running - should be a lot faster.Martin :-)