Hi guys,I'm using FSX on a quite good computer. A week ago I bought a new screen, a Viewsonic 22" widescreen. I'm using FSX at resolution 1680x1050x32. During flights at daytime everything looks great. But when I'm flying nighttime everything's shimmering/flickering and the flight sim just looks terrible. The ground textures in FSX looks "alive". I think it's got to do with my graphics card, GeForce 7900 GS 256 MB. Now I'm about to buy the best graphics card money can buy and I want something that will really help me get the framerates to increase in FSX. Any thoughts? What card would you advice me to get? Price is not an issue.ThanksTomas

Before you make such a purchase, are you ABSOLUTELY SURE that you have AA and AF turned on in FSX, whether it be in game or set in the graphics card control panel? It sounds like AA at the very least is not working. If you are not sure what to look for, post a screen shot and we'll tell you soon enough.Gary

Hi Gary,I've downloaded the newest drivers for my GeForce 7900 GS and I've tried everything in my graphic card settings and in FSX. At the moment I have the following settings for my graphic card:Antialiasing: 8xSAnisotropic: 16xImage settings: High qualityColor profile: Not availableVertical sync: OffForce Mipmaps: BilinearConformat texture clamp: OnExtension limit: OffHardware acceleration: Single-display modeGamma correct antialiasing: OnTransparency antialiasing: MultisamplingTriple buffering: OnNegative LOD bias: AllowThreaded optimization: OnOpenGL error reporting: OnAnd in FSX I have Bilinear settings on and unchecked Anisotropic. I have attached a picture of what it looks like at night.

I'm not convinced throwing large sums of money at the sim will solve the flicker and flashing. It's clearly a driver issue and fooling around in the settings seems to produce vastly differing results on the exact same hardware.Try downloading nhancer. It installs easily and change some settings with it. Then, if it doesn't look any better, go back into the nVidia CP and make another change. It will probably look a lot different.The drivers need work on both the nVidia and AMD/ATI side. Time and patience are our only friends :-roll Regards,Jim KarnNOTHING is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

I've been looking at GeForce 8800 GTX 768 MB. Does anyone have that card and if so, what are your experiences?ThanksTomas

Hi Jim Karn,Thanks for your reply but nope. No changes. I've tried nhancer but with no luck. When I'm flying in daytime the textures look great. It seams all my dark textures are really poor and shimmer/flicker.

Your best best is currently an 8800 series from nVidia. Personally, I think that the 8800GTX or Ultra on a single monitor system is overkill.My recommendation: A 8800 GTS (320MB/640MB) for resolutions up to 1280x1024, a 8800 GTX or Ultra for anything else.Pat

That runway and surrounding ground certainly look blotchy, but I think it is much more a driver issue that your graphics card's abilities. Have you tried letting FSX control AA and AF ie. setting ansiotropic and AA enabled in game? Also does it do this in windowed mode (ALT-ENTER to toggle)?Gary

Hi Gary,I know, the ground textures and the runway sure look blotchy. But I've tried EVERYTHING! I've been tweaking for a week know. Running FSX in windowed mode, letting FSX control AA and AF, everything. And don't you think it's wierd when this only happens with dark and black textures? Also, the screen I was using before was a 19" LG with maximum resolution of 1280x1024x32 and everything looked great in FSX. Now I have just swapped screens. I've bought a brand new Viewsonic 22" widescreen with max res of 1680x1050x32 and those problems happened. I also yesterday downloaded new drivers from nVidia.com for my graphics card. Still no luck... Could it be a screen problem? I mean, that the screen can't handle those dark and black colors? And when there's a sunset in FSX the sky look a bit "blocky" with lines showing between the different colors and shades.

Hi Pat,Thanks for your reply. I've looked into GeForce 8800 GTX 768 MB and it seams to be awesome. I absolutely want to run my 22" screen and FSX in more than 1280x1024 resolution so should I go for the GTX if I decide to buy a new graphics card?Thanks

Before spending all the money, lets ask the obvious. IN your original thread you provided GPU settings that included High Quality image filtering. Use of that renders most of the other settings redundant. Your flickering is caused either by graphic artifacts from the optimisations from the card menu, or by the sheer overburden you have placed on the card with the various selections - no 7900 is going to handle 8x2 AA and 16xAF very well on FS, and the FS rendering engine is probably changing the buffered resolution too close to the viewer which you perceive as flickering, when what it really is are textures stepping-up to their max res at a distance from the user that is visible. Can you go back to the FS menu and give us those settings.Allcott

This may be apples and oranges. However, I run a 7900G on three 19" monitors with the TH2Go and have none of the above problems.

Tomas has told us all that he has been tweaking for a week now and tried everything possible.He also mentioned that price is not an issue.Just let him buy the card and let him find out for himself.Maybe he will tell us if spending that much money solved the problem.Tomas, I would buy the card that has been mentioned if I didn't have to care for my kid, mortgage, bills... Go for it and keep us updated.

If it worked fine with your previous, or another, monitor then your graphics card is not the problem. I don't know what else to suggest sorry.Gary

Tomas,I've got a similar rig (click my user name) with a BFG 8800GTX, running XP Pro. I also have similar issues with FSX. I doubt the card is the real difference but it *will* run at higher resolutions. My main screen is a Dell 24" 2407WFP wide screen which I run @ its native res of 1920x1200x32. I can also use the second DVI output to drive the 37" NEC HDTV, though configuring that is a serious pita, between the Nvidia CP, XP and NEC settings.My $0.02 is that for the moment, even with the FSX service pack, FS9 is still more enjoyable. I've got that tweaked to my satisfaction, FSX just doesn't come close...yet.jb[a href=http://exmixer.com/]Windows utility links/FS 2004[/a]