NVIDIA Control Panel Settings

[Mark_A 31]

After moving to Vista64 from XP I'm getting shimmer in FSX that I didn't get before.I've tried all combinations and recommedations I can find but nothing makes any difference to the shimmer. I initally loaded 174.74 nvidia drivers that I was using with XP and also nhancer. I then loaded 175.19 nvidia drivers followed by two later beta versions, no difference. Some comments were made that nhancer is no longer required, so I did a full rebuild without nhancer and loaded 175.19, no difference.I'm now just using the nvidia control panel. Can someone copy their control panel settings that are working well for them. My card is an 8800GT.These are my current settings:Anisotropic filtering: 16xAntialiasing - Mode: Overide any application settingAntialiasing - Setting: 8xQAntialiasing - Multisampling (seeing slighty better results than supersampling)Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration - Single displayTexture filtering - Negative LOD bias - ClampTexture filtering - Quality - High qualityThreaded optimization - OnTriple buffering - OnVertical sync - Force onGlobal settings mirroredThanksMark

[Guest JIMJAM]

Been there done that now fighting with ATI and lack of full aa/af.With xp, using Nhancer I was able to reduce tree shimmers by adding pos bias, just a tad.A occassional side effect was blurred atc,menu text.Also I run a 32 inch HDTV a 1920x1080 I think it is.It has various preset profiles but using my custom user profile, by tinkering with and lowering the sharpness I can blur out the shimmers so at least they do not jump out at you.Good luck and if not, add it to the "thats just how it is" FSX file.

[Kosta 122]

I can only tell you that I also recently attempted installing Vista64, and was also confronted with various problems. One of the also being more shimmering and less AA on the same Nhancer setting.I am now confronted with a decision: better memory management (see my other post on XP Vista64 difference) or better compatibility.

[sargeski 16]

>After moving to Vista64 from XP I'm getting shimmer in FSX>that I didn't get before.>>I've tried all combinations and recommedations I can find but>nothing makes any difference to the shimmer. I initally loaded>174.74 nvidia drivers that I was using with XP and also>nhancer. I then loaded 175.19 nvidia drivers followed by two>later beta versions, no difference. >>Some comments were made that nhancer is no longer required, so>I did a full rebuild without nhancer and loaded 175.19, no>difference.>>I'm now just using the nvidia control panel. Can someone copy>their control panel settings that are working well for them.>My card is an 8800GT.>>These are my current settings:>>>Antialiasing - Multisampling (seeing slighty better results>than supersampling)>Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration - Single display>Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias - Clamp>Texture filtering - Quality - High quality>Threaded optimization - On>Triple buffering - On>Vertical sync - Force on>>Global settings mirrored>>Thanks>MarkMark,I now use only the NVIDIA control panel for graphic settings. Nhancer is a thing of the past. However my settings very slighty form yours. Here are the variations:Within FSX enable Ansiotropic Filtering and Antialiasing.Within the NVIDIA control panel:Anisotropic filtering: Application ControlledAntialiasing - Mode: Enhance the applicationAntialiasing - Setting: 8xQThe rest of the settings are the same except I do not beleive I am using multisampling or supersampling.I get the best image quality with the above settings. I also did quite a bit of bench marking to see if letting FSX handle the antialiasing made any difference to performance and on my system I found no difference in performance. What I have found is that by letting FSX handle the antialiasing and ansiotropic filtering I get the best image quality from FSX and no performance degradation on my system. Not letting FSX handle the settings results in alot more shimmer within FSX. I am also currently using the 177.92 beta drivers from NVIDIA.

[Guest UlfB]

Mark,I second sargeski on his advice. Try it!Ulf BCore2Duo X6800 3.3GHz4GB RAM Corsair XMS2-8500C5BFG 8800GTX, Creative SB X-FiFSX Acc/SP2, Vista 32

[irocx 292]

And I'll third it because that's the same combination of settings I've found so far to offer any acceptable IQ after recently going to V64 - still not the IQ of ATI but.......BTW I'm using the 177.92 drivers. Regards, Kendall#1: E8500 @ 3.95 - HyperTX2 Gigabyte P35-DS3L 4GB Ballistix Tracers PC6400 EVGA 8800GT - XG's 174.74 Seagate 250GB 7200.11 CH Yoke/Pedals/Saitek Throttle Dual Monitor: Dell 2405/1905 #2: Dell 8400 3.2 H.T. 3GB PC4200 - X800XT Diamond Xtreme/Logitech X-530's

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Sargeski,"What I have found is that by letting FSX handle the antialiasing and ansiotropic filtering I get the best image quality from FSX and no performance degradation on my system. Not letting FSX handle the settings results in alot more shimmer within FSX."Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of this business of allowing FSX to handle the antialiasing and anisotropic/trilinear filtering is not as many folk assume. FSX does not do the antialiasing or anisotropic filtering (the processing overhead would be just too great), but instead 'tells' the driver what good settings are to be used (as determined by the developers) and the driver takes over. This, I believe, is why it's not a good idea to check antialiasing in FSX and also in the driver control interface as the instructions are likely to conflict. Better to set these settings in the driver interface to 'Application Controlled' if you prefer to go down this road.Regards,Mike

[sargeski 16]

>Hi Sargeski,>>"What I have found is that by letting FSX handle the>antialiasing and ansiotropic filtering I get the best image>quality from FSX and no performance degradation on my system.>Not letting FSX handle the settings results in alot more>shimmer within FSX.">>Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of this>business of allowing FSX to handle the antialiasing and>anisotropic/trilinear filtering is not as many folk assume.>FSX does not do the antialiasing or anisotropic filtering (the>processing overhead would be just too great), but instead>'tells' the driver what good settings are to be used (as>determined by the developers) and the driver takes over. This,>I believe, is why it's not a good idea to check antialiasing>in FSX and also in the driver control interface as the>instructions are likely to conflict. Better to set these>settings in the driver interface to 'Application Controlled'>if you prefer to go down this road.>>Regards,>>MikeMike,I have read time and time again that letting fsx handle antialiasing and ansiotropic filtering drastically degrades performance within FSX (I'm not experiencing any performance degradation). My educated guess would tell me that the developers of FSX knew exactly what settings they wanted to apply and how they wanted to apply them for antialiasing and ansiotropic filtering and that they also depending on a particular system would in fact cause a performance decrease in certain instances (thats why there are the options to enable or disable them).What I can say is that on my system with my settings I get NO appreciable performance degradation in fact I really can't detect any difference in performace between having the options enabled in FSX or disabling the options and letting the video card do all the work itself. What I can also tell you, is that the best image quality in FSX on my system comes from enabling antialiasing and ansiotropic filtering within FSX and using the above settings.I am not the only one who has found this to be the best combination for visuals and I cannot say if these settings are Vista64 specific. All I know is the settings work, and they work very very well. There are alot of people out there that would tell one running FSX to disable antialiasing and ansitropic filtering within FSX and do it directly from the video card driver (I used to be one such person). I know doing this on my system at present, results in dreadful shimmering.

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Sargeski,Until today I didn't know what setting was being used when AA was turned on in FSX. I've just installed the FTX AU BLUE Tasmanian demo and read in their pdf file that this value is in fact AA = 8x! Can anyone confirm this? Personally I use either 6x or preferably 4x set in the driver without apparent performance penalty and the box unchecked in FSX. Also, I set the filtering to trilinear in FSX and anisotropic = 16x in the driver using ATI Tray Tools along with Mipmap detail = high quality . This combination provides a superb image for me, but then I have an ATI Radeon card. Perhaps there lies the difference between our respective experiences.Regards,Mike

[Mace 1,918]

My settings are as sargeski's. All my specs are in the sig including V64 OS. I too can report no performance change between allowing FSX to do AA and AF vs. letting the driver do it, and I did scientific testing of this because I was really interested in knowing how it reacted on this new rig.And I include the boldface on my system disclaimer here as well. ;)RhettFS box: E8500 (@ 3.80 ghz), AC Freezer 7 Pro, ASUS P5E3 Premium, BFG 8800GTX 756 (nVidia 169 WHQL), 4gb DDR3 1600 Patriot Cas7 7-7-7-20 (2T), PC Power 750, WD 150gb 10000rpm Raptor, Seagate 500gb, Silverstone TJ09 case, Vista Ultimate 64ASX Client: AMD 3700+ (@ 2.6 ghz), 7800GT

[Guest Nick_N]

Lets clear up the AA and AF settings in FSXWhen setting FSX to use AA (checked) it sets a DX flag which enables AA in hardware, not software, however the FSX selected AA does not do as complete of an AA job as pure card. As I recall it skips triangles in that operationWhen using DX10 mode the only way to get any AA is to use the FSX checkbox setting.. DX9 mode is different.I prefer not to use the FSX DX AA flag function and instead continue to use Combined 8xS in DX9 for an overall better image quality.. not just the level of AA. It tends to shif the contrast of the image as well.Anisotropic in FSX is the highest quality of AF however it does come with a cost and the scene itself can/will drive that perf change. I use trilinear and will continue to do so since the IQ difference is very hard to see and there is no perf cost. That setting is up to the user but the card or Nhancer still needs to be set to 16x none the less.Make sure if using Nhancer to set both the FSX Profile --and-- Global listings to the same settings.. THEY MAY NOT WORK IF TOU DONT. And make sure "enhance in-game AA" is -not- enabled in Nhancer as that will remove clean AA in many casesmake sure to be using a driver for Vista which is not old.. with the SP1 VISTA update it required above a certain driver revision to enable Vsync and AA correctly if I recall the WHQL Vista SP1 issue correctly.I am still on XP x64 and will remain there until Vista is either Sp'd with real perf fixes or Windows7 is released. The 174.74 beta drivers are still the best for the GTX 8 cores and Nhancer is still in use for best image quality on my XP systems. There is more to Nhancer than simply enabling AA and other settingsmany may not notice the differences or care about them, I doVista can be a bit of a bugger so do not write off the possibility of a bad driver install, etc.. check things like that out and verify thay did install correctly. Perhaps try another driver revision too.I am hearing some reports the 177.92 drivers (beta) which are helping the GTX280 are also helping the 8 series cores as well but not enough to confirm that... I will probably test them later this week.:)

[Mark_A 31]

I tried all combinations and just settled back with 174.74 and Nhancer. Still not getting the same results as XP but I'm spending too much time tweaking and not playing the game so I'm just trying to ignore the shimmer and flashing textures now and just focus on the flying. After a while my mind tends not to notice the tree shimmer too much. I've installed FSWC which tends to hide the water shimmer.It's a shame Vista is not giving the same results as XP but after paying for Vista I'm not reverting back to XP.

[Guest djt01]

>It's a shame Vista is not giving the same results as XP but>after paying for Vista I'm not reverting back to XP.Have you tried just using the Nvidia control panel without nHancer?I was running a dual boot machine with Windows XP/SP3 and Vista 64/SP1 and did not see any differences in Nvidia image quality between Vista and XP. On clean install

[Mark_A 31]

>Have you tried just using the Nvidia control panel without nHancer?Yep, I've tried everything possible, each time doing a full rebuild, I'm totally lost at what's going on there. I can tell straight away what the shimmer will be like when FSX loads the free flight page and my stomach just sinks. A lot of people recommed ticking AA in FSX but I've never found that to work that well, I always leave it unticked.I found 175.19 and Nvidia Control Panel only gives the same result as 174.74 with Nhancer, but after trying 174.74 with Nhancer one last time I have just stuck with it, as I mentioned I just want to do some flying now.What actually kicked all this off was FTX Melbourne aiport, it was just a total blur of the surrounding texures but I was really happy with everything else outside of this scenery. It seems Vista has cleared this issue but I have also unticked all off the scenery options for YMML such as trees, cars, lights etc. Now I have an ok YMML but have screwed everything else.After all this I was about ready to throw FSX in the bin but there's a time now and then in the game especially with FTX that I'm very impressed, I think that's the only thing that keeps me interested. Really these days we shouldn't have to go through all this to get AA working with no shimmering, the whole FSX nvidia/ati thing is a mess, I don't know whos really at fault though.

[Guest djt01]

>Yep, I've tried everything possible, each time doing a full>rebuild, I'm totally lost at what's going on there. marka,I don