What are the BEST FS9.cfg settings in these few lines

[Guest melevine]

Good afternoon:I have seen many different postings in various forums about tweaking the FS9.cfg file settings to get the best performance and appearance out of the sim. As a result, I have made some changes over time to quite a few of the settings, but I'm not really sure about what to be using on 10 of the lines. Below are my current settings and in parentheses ( ) are some others that I've also seen being recommended. Would you smart simmers please let me know which settings you would choose for the following:WEATHERMAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=96560 (or 48280 or ?)GRAPHICSTEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024 (or 512 or?)NUM_LIGHTS=6 (or 8 or?)DISPLAYUPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=25 (or?)TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=80 (or 100 or?)TextureMaxLoad=10 (or?)TERRAINTERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=50.000000 (or 100.000000 or ?)TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.500000 (or ?)TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.500000 (or ?)TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=3 (or ?)I'm looking forward to your replies.Mike

[Guest SilverCircle]

>I have seen many different postings in various forums about>tweaking the FS9.cfg file settings to get the best performance>and appearance out of the sim. As a result, I have made some>changes over time to quite a few of the settings, but I'm not>really sure about what to be using on 10 of the lines. Below>are my current settings and in parentheses ( ) are some others>that I've also seen being recommended. Would you smart>simmers please let me know which settings you would choose for>the following:Actually, the "Best" settings simply don't exist. It is always a matter of:a) personal taste (visual quality vs. performance, although on a modern and fast enough system, it is no longer necessary to trade in visuals for better fps as such a system can run FS9 "maxed out"):( system specs (which you didn't post :) ).>WEATHER>MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=96560 (or 48280 or ?)Just the way you want it. Increasing vis range has a small impact on performance, but nothing to worry on a fast system. Setting visibility to "unlimited" can result in a unrealistically sharp horizon line. However, things like the softhr sky textures help with the look of the horizon even at unlimited vis. Usually, the visibility is limited by weather anyway and is nowhere close to the max.>GRAPHICS>TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024 (or 512 or?)Higher = better texture quality. Unless your video card is slow and/or has less than 256 MB of video ram, you can leave it maxed. This setting represents the slider "Global max texture size" on the hardware tab of the display settings (1024 means "massive", 512 means "high").>NUM_LIGHTS=6 (or 8 or?)Some add-ons may require this at 8, or else some light effects won't show up.>UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=25 (or?)Like you want it. I would say, 25 is enough in most cases (especially when flying bigger planes). More than 25 may make sense when flying helicopters or fast jets.>TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=80 (or 100 or?)>TextureMaxLoad=10 (or?)These tweaks only work with a frame rate limit set - if framerate limit is set to unlimited, they do nothing. You have to experiment, because their effect strongly depends on the speed of your system. *Slowly* increase them for better texture loading performance (less blurries). If you do a search here, you can find a detailed article describing how these 2 paramters are supposed to work.>TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=50.000000 (or 100.000000 or ?)Higher values = better mesh quality, especially at a distance. Performance impact is minimal on a modern PC.>TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.500000 (or ?)Does not make sense. Set it to 3.5. Higher values have absolutely zero effect. >TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.500000 (or ?)4 is the maximum which makes sense. Although, values above 3.5 *may* cause mesh rendering errors when addon meshes are installed, resulting in the infamous blue cracks in terrain farther away.>TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=3 (or ?)Again, high values don't make sense. Due to a bug, FS9 can set this to a completely bogus 6 digit value. Setting this to >4 doesn't seem to have any visible effect.For all the TERRAIN_ relating settings, the performance penalty is minimal on a fast system. The only setting which has a very noticeable impact on visual quality is TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1, which enabled the extended texture ring, thus increasing the area where FS9 renders a detailed landclass terrain significantly. Anything else can be controlled from the settings dialog in MSFS and the control panel of your video card. Mip mapping quality in FS, filtering method (trilinear) and the texture quality options in your video card preferences contribute most to image quality.

[Guest melevine]

Thanks so much Alex......You must be a teacher (or do lots of training)...you are very organized and your explanations quite clear. Unfortunately lots of the settings in the cfg. file seem "cryptic" to most people, and there isn't a good place to reference exactly what each line does or means. So....your explanations have really made it easier to understand. I will now make the appropriate changes in my file.Just for you information, I'm running a Dell 8400 3.6ghz w/2GB RAM, currently have a GeForce 6800PCI-E w/256MB hooked with a Matrox Triple Head 2 Go running 3 21" monitors (at an expanded resolution of 3840x1024) and a 4th (17" monitor) used for GPS and ATC comms which is running off of a second card (Geforce 5500 PCE w/256MB). I use 9 GoFlight modules, a CH Yoke, throttle and pedals, and TrackerIR. I'm waiting for delivery of a new video card (Nvidia 7950 w/512MB) to replace my (somewhat outdated) 6800 that will hopefully allow me to eek out a bit more FPS to smooth out operations in complex airports/airspace especially when using complex planes. Again, thanks for the info.R/Mike (Colorado Springs)