All,So, after years of using FS (back to the Mac version) I finally went for some add-on scenery, Ultimate Terrain - USA and BirdsEyeView USA-Canada Volume 1 Summer. For my ~$47US for the pair I'm underwhelmed to say the least, so I assume I don't have something configured correctly. The box I'm running FS9.1/UT/BEV on is decent (specs below). If anyone could point me towards a good config in FS and the add-ons to get the best out of them I'd really appreciate it. For UT and BEV I used their default configs, then made adjustments to UT per comments on the BEV forum as regards enhanced lighting and roads, iIrc.What's my problem? I fly low and slow, VFR usually, though I use IFR approaches when the mood strikes. My flying area is either the greater NYC area (TEB, LGA, JFK, PHL, N12 etc.) or LAX. Day/dusk/night flying has roads/lights on bridges in the water, way too many shimmers, and the enhancements, as far as I can see, aren't *signifigantly* better than extremely dense auto-gen in FS. Also, the UT/BEV combo depict roads and the shoreline near LAX just wrong. (I lived 1 block north of LAX for 4 years; great views from the balcony, especially during stormy weather when landings are on the 6's/7's, one day I'll post video on my site). I spent a few hours with UT removing things and ended up removing almost everything to get some sort of realism in my flying areas. Do I need to adjust things in the scenery config area in FS by moving scenery 'up' the list, get the payware 38.2 mesh or??? As a sidenote, for grins I installed XP and FS on the SATA drive...quicker to boot and load apps, zero difference I could see in FS when flying. The FS box:Dimension 8300 XPPro/SP2 all updates, DirectX 9.0c/Feb. 2006 update3.2 GHz P4/800FSB HT (enabled) i875P 4x256 PC3200 400MHz DDR-SDRAM (Crucial aka Micron)ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 128MB40GB Seagate ST340014A 2MB 7200 UDMA-5-Boot/FS80GB Western Digital WD800JB 8MB 7200 UDMA-5160GB Seagate ST3160827AS 8MB 7200 SATA/150 UDMA-5Hitachi CD-RW internalPlextor 716UF external USB2.0/FW burner (HS USB2.0 connected)Viewcast Osprey 210 A/V capture card 3.1.2 drvrs.IBM G78 17"/Princeton E705 17"; ancient, but hey, they work :-) Single mon. config for my tests.I run FS with all un-needed services disabled manually from Task Manager; for testing I kill 'em from msconfig.ATI 9800Pro/128 settings:CCC 6.1Display Options: 3D Refresh Rate Override: 85Hz3D:AA: 6x / Temporal AA yes (makes a bit of difference)AF: 16xCatalyst AI: StandardMipmap Detail Level: PerformanceWait for vertical refresh: Always on...this has always worked best for me.API Specific: Enable geometry instancing, Support DXTI still use the DXoverride hack. ATT just doesn't seem to work for me IQ-wise after several tries . DXoverride still works with the latest DX9.0c update so I still use it. Also tried the latest Omega drivers, no difference in IQ for me so...and yes, I used the ATI uninstall tool before installing.FS settings:Scenery:Terrain mesh complexity: 100Terrain texture size: HighTerrain default: Land & waterWater effects: LowDawn/dusk texture blending: yesExtended terrain textures: yesSpecial effects detail: HighScenery complexity: Extremely denseAutogen density: Extremely denseAdd-on dynamic scenery: yes Extremely dense (might describe me too ;-))Ground scenery casts shadows: noSun glare: yesLens flare: noAircraft:MinimalVirtual cockpit gauage quality: LowReflections: noAircraft casts shadows: noLanding lights: yesWeather:Sight distance: 80mi/128/kmCloud draw distance: 30mi/48/km3-D cloud percentage: 20Simple clouds: yesHardware:Target frame rate: 22 --I get the 22 in my flying areas consistentlyRes: 1152x864x32Render to texture: yesTransform and lighting: yesAnti-aliasing: noFiltering: BilinearMIP mapping quality: 4Hardware-rendered lights: 6Global max texture size: MassiveUnless I'm flying the *amazing* (and free in the lib here) Realair C172SP for FS2004, I fly with realism settings on dumb ;-) Edit: Yes, I set the season to summer for BEV, July 4, even tried making the year 2003,04,05,06 to be sure it wasn't some hardcoded date thing. Forgot to note my 'Air traffic density' settings...Airline/100%/Cycle rate: 1 secTia for any thoughts on this,jb

My two-cents jb...I'm no scenery expert but do have UT and Bev (as well as USA Roads) installed and these scenery addons work great for me. I do know that the "experts" published how the scenery library/scenery.cfg should be set up in the UT forum. UT should be near the bottom of the scenery library and BEV anywhere above that. You must also make certain UT is layered below the various Aerial Photo layers (there's one for Los Angeles). You also might want to make sure BEV is actually installed. I have seen many posts where simmers saw no difference from the default and learned they didn't install it correctly. My FS settings are almost identical to yours but I turned down autogen to 50% and have my vc gauge setting to high. Those two settings shouldn't make a difference in the display of the scenery. I would also suggest you post any future questions regarding this scenery over in the FS General forum. This is a sub-forum and deals mainly with hardware only. You'll get a lot more responses in the general forum. I hope you have also visited the UT forum as there are several suggestions made which may make your flight sim experience more enjoyable. Hope this helps some.Jim

Jim,>>Hope this helps some.<