If you have an ATI 800 or 850 X or XT graphics card...**RUN**..don't walk to download the OMEGA Cat 5.4 driver suite. Make sure you crank up all the 3D options to full bore AND most important, place ATI A.I. (bottom right of mask) to 'HI'.You will be amazed as to the new clarity and 3-dimensionality of your 2004 scenery world. It was stunning. I've never seen driver performance like this to date. Ever! The graphics and ground scenery are crisp and lifelike with no blur-to-horizon at all. Yes folks, right out to the horizon with all my graphics cranked over to the right, they are now as clear as a bell. This is a first! It seems ATI did some major tweaks and cleaning between versions 5.2 to the current 5.4Cheers, and I mean...CHEERS! Yee-haw! :)Mitch R.

Indeed - even with the X700 the 5.4s are markedly better than the 5.2s for fs9regards,MarkXPHomeSP2/FS9.1/3.2HT/1GIG/X700pro256

Awesome, I was waiting for their new drivers. My regular 5.4's aren't really anything special. Thanks!

Where are they available? Do we have to uninstall the old drivers first? Thanks, regards, Bob.

Hi MitchI have a brand new ATI X800XL (see the sequel thread here) and I tried installing the new Omega drivers and they turned out be a disaster, my machine didn't like them at all and I couldn't even get into FS9, said I had invalid video drivers. I followed the instruction of uninstalling all previous ATI files and re-installing my chipset drivers but to no avail.Any suggestions since you seemed to have such success?Nigel

Hi Nigel!Sorry to hear about your less-than-steller attempt. If you ran the auto set-up program, then in your Start/programs/OMEGA link, you should see the video driver clean up program. Give that a go and then shut down and run Windows again. Then run the OMEGA 5.4 set exe again. Once you get one OMEGA suite installed, you can merely overwrite (run the next version set up file) and it will load in correctly over the previous.I hope that this helps. Oh...another thing...make sure that in the 3D panel (after you got the initial install to work) put all options to the highest quality setting with A.I. (bottom right of panel) at ***HIGH***. That is very important to obtain the fantastic output I am now enjoying.http://www.omegadrivers.net/Cheers!Mitch R.

Also to add...AS2004.5's clouds are looking like the real McCoy with this set of drivers. I am on Cloud Nine (yeah, yeah...sorry for that one, lol).:)Mitch R.

I just installed a 800XT this week and am not seeing the improvement over a 9500 Pro that I expected. I am somewhat CPU limited in that I am running a P4 2.6 on a 4X agp board. I am also running the most current Omega drivers. I didn't expect a big increase increase in frame rates, but I did expect an improvement in image quality. Maybe I don't have the settings set up properly. Would you post your card settings, so I can compare?If anyone is interested, you can buy the ATI all-in-wonder X800 XT from zipzoomfly.com for $339.00 after $50 rebate, plus you get free Fed Ex shipping. The rebate offer ends May 9th.

I tried the 5.4's when I got my 9800 Pro. My PC will crash in less than a minute if I try to run them with FS. Very Strange... so far I can only run 4.3's with success. Been testing and tweaking with ATI on the phone for the past two weeks. Still would luv to go back to the 5.4's. Mabe I will try it with my card at 4x.w bummer...

Did you happen to turn fast writes on instead of off during the install?Also people with issues, did you follow the directions to uninstalling your old drivers first?

I personally find the Cat 5.1 (either Omega or ATI) to be the best in the performance department. Everything is very smooth with every possible slider maxed out, max clouds, max traffic, etc.Cat 5.2 and 5.3 caused significant stuttering and just killed my smoothness. Cat 5.4 was an improvement but I still notice some micro stutter and it just does not feel as smooth as 5.1. I believe ATI is supposed to release Cat 5.5 in a few days. I hope those drivers will restore the smoothness of the 5.1 drivers.

Well, I have tried installation of the Omega drivers again and I am having the most terrible problems with them. Why are other people doing so well yet mine will not work?I have followed the instructions and un-installed all ATI programs and drivers. I also use EndItAll to close off all background programs. And I have tried the driver cleaner. When I load the Omega drivers and reboot, the computer notes "new hardware found" and tries to take me through an installation process, which I cancel (twice). I eventually succeeded in getting into FS9 but there I cannot operate in Full Screen mode, it is grayed out and all my screen resolutions in the hardware menu are blank. A message initially tells me that hardware acceleration is disabled or not there.In Windows, when I go into the DirectX display tab, the following are grayed out with the notation of not available:DirectDraw AccelerationDirect3D AccelerationAGP Texture AccelerationThe TestDirect3D is grayed out but Test DirectDraw is activeWhen scrolling, the screen appears to move in delayed folds or waves, rather than a smooth continuous scroll.3D panel does not show any AI feature; Radlink only has three tabs

Nigel,It sounds like you need to reinstall the nVidia AGP chipset drivers for your motherboard. There was a reference to this in the readme that is posted on Omega's site.

The first time around I did re-install my chipset drivers - made no difference. Second time around I didn't, and when I reverted to the CD drivers everything is back to normal and the entries in DirectX are showing up. I went to the driver-heaven forum and there do seem to be some concerns with the X800XL and the Omega drivers, so I am keeping tabs on it.Nigel

Well, at last I managed to get the Omega drivers installed properly. I went to the DriverHeaven forum and apparently there were some problems in the installer not recognizing the X800XL The driver was modified to 2625a and that set me on the right track. However, I think one of my problems was the second double installation that was required when the "found hardware" screen kept popping up (maybe some instructions in the readme on this would have been helpful).Rather than using the wizard, I noted someone on the DriverHeaven forum had used Device Manager to install the drivers, and I think that is a much better way to go, since you can see the two video adapters that you are trying to install drivers to.My verdict? Initially I was quite disappointed, in FS9 the graphics were not good, and then I explored the Radlinker which now had the 3D tab which had not been there before in my initial bad installation. So I changed to 4xAA and 8xanistropic and my graphics are now very good and frame rates seem to be holding to good levels. I have put AI at high. Clouds are really superb, seem to be very 3D and fluffy! I landed at KSLC this morning in the dusk and the glow of the city lights on the clouds was quite spectacular and realistic.General appearance is better (other than the one point below) than with the Catalyst drivers in the card CD, the 5.4 Catalyst for me were not so good as the CD drivers. And the 5.1 drivers crashed my computer. But I don't think my picture is as sharp with the Omega as with the Catalyst drivers, eg icon edges are slightly blurry, is there a tweak I am missing?NigelVancouver