I have an ATI HD3870 but with FS9 all distant textures and Autogen shimmer a lot, it's very unpleasant, night textures shimmer worse! and I don't understand why.I've tried all settings, from min to max on ATI CCC, also tried the old d3d9.dll on fs9 folder trick but it doesn

Hi... Yep it'l do that! I've just recently bought and installed a radeon HD 3850 512MB replacing my Nvidia 8500GT because of shimmer! It's no better! I can only vouch for Vista but I've tried every setting known to man & every driver and can't get rid!!!I've re-installed my Nvidia because I kept crashing on ATI. I honestly believe it's a Vista problem but you say you get it in XP too! Sorry I can't help with a cure but I've posted loads on this forum in relation to shimmer in vista and not had 1 single reply. It appears no one has the answer! Sorry mate :(

Shimmering is usually a sign of insufficient AF. Have you tried running an external program like ATI Tray Tools? It can force AA and AF levels directly and will sometimes make a big difference.Regards,Jim Karn

Thanks to both, but no luck. :(Also FSX is showing shimmering, but only with autogen.I hope this could solve with a driver update, and I think it will because the support for HD3870 cards from ATI started with the 7.10 CAT's.So, maybe is a question of time...(how much?, no one knows...)By the way, sorry for my "strange" english.Saludos desde Mexico!

ATI Tray Tools has limited functionality in Vista but in XP it is far more powerful than CCC.The shimmering you're seeing is the Alpha textures. If you are still using XP and ATI Tray Tools you can do some things to deal with the shimmering.First, you must enable the New AA and AF Methods within ATI Tray Tools. Once Tray Tools is open click on Tweaks> Advanced Tweaks. In the box that pops up scroll thru the "Current Database" till you can bring up the "New AA and AF Methods" page. Make sure the first two entries on this page are disabled (the boxes should be white).Now head on over the Tray Tools D3D page and set as follows: http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/183793.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/183792.jpgAn important (and often forgotten) element in the shimmering is the vertical sync. Set the target frame rate in the sim to a value divided by 2 or 3 of the vertical sync (i.e. if your VS is 60 then set the target frame rate in the sim to 30 or 20. My VS is set to 75 and my target frame rate to 25... 75/3=25).Finally, set the MS mode for Adaptive Anti-Aliasing as you wish. This is very much a "subjective" setting... what may look fine to one simmer may not be acceptable to another. As well, I'm using an 850XT PE, so the newer cards should certainly be able to pull a higher level of AA.

Hi Greg, thanks for the tip!I have Vista 32bit Installed, but installed XP on another HD to try your tip, I've followed every step you described but no luck, the shimmering remains :(

We have beaten that horse to the death on one thread. A guy has/had an ATI card, I had back then 1950XTX, and I actually went from that card to Nvidia 8800GT with nHancer, which produced MUCH better results, and very little or no shimmering at all. I *NEVER* managed to get a decent non-shimmering quality in FS9 or FSX. I see you came from Nvidia, but did you try nHancer? I would return the card, and replace it for 8800GT on your place...

Hi Word Not Allowed, I prefer ATI because its better IQ.After reading good reviews about the 8800 line decided to buy one (8800GTS(320MB))But just two weeks ago changed the 8800GTS for this HD3870 because all these "tweaking" with nvidia drivers and nhancer made me think I bought a poor quality product, and the 8800 is VERY VERY HOT, even with ArcticSilver5 applied on the GPU, another tweak was neccesary for this with Rivatuner to spin up the fan, just to much tweaks to make it work!After all the tweaks and adjustment, the 8800GTS showed worse shimmering than the 3870. FSPassengers also showed a big drop in FPS when the minipanel is enabled :( , that's not happening with the 3870 :)Again, I assume this could be a matter of drivers, and hope it could be fixed in future versions of CAT's or chipset drivers, because I think I made all the posible adjustments and tweaks with zero improvement.Thanks to all for your help, is there anybody with the same video card running (almost) fine?

GTS isn't GT, and you also didn't mention what brand. I got the (very good quality?) EVGA 8800GT, which proved everything but problematic. Only set couple of recommended settings in nHancer and that was it.Considering cooling, first month I was running on stock air, with very poor case cooling, which was working normally. A month later a waterblock for GT came out, and then I connected it to my watercooling. Even better thermal results, as expected. I am yet to have a crash because of the heat or GPU in general...

Mine was an EVGA too.

Well, to be honest I'm kinda glad I didn't see this thread before ordering my Sapphire ATI 3870 earlier this week - it arrived Thursday and I had it in that night (despite, or helped by, being numbed and drugged by a 2-1/2 hour root canal before coming home).....I'm completely happy with it and have only seen shimmering when the card is set to "Optimal" or "Performance" settings in CCC...those tend to disable AA and AF so what I saw, was expected. Currently the card is set to "High Quality" under the Standard Settings of CCC (easy way to go) and image quality is terrific. No shimmer....I'm on XP however.Tray Tools is always better but I had an older version and wasn't sure if it yet supported the 3870. Coincidentally enough this was an upgrade from an ATI 1650 PRO 512. My specs are: Intel E6750 2.66 Ghz (no O/C), Gigabyte P35C-DSR3 Motherboard, 2Gig Crucial Ballistix RAM, stock cooling, 550W Antec P/S, Windows XP, FSX with Acceleration pack.Screenshot.....no shimmering, and of course the first thing I did was bump up a bunch of settings (even enabled light bloom( so this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, but I was getting about 14-19 FPS in this test flight with my 1650....resized from 1280x1024 to 800x600 the quality just doesn't show here....http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v148/Sto...ATI_3870_04.jpg

Here's what I ended up with performance-wise from my ATI 3870 install....maybe I don't know what to look at to notice shimmering but I'm getting excellent performance and beautiful image quality....screenshots are int he last post down toward the bottom....(linking here just to save a bunch of typing)...http://com-central.net/index.php?name=Foru...c&p=63126#63126