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Most of what you said is valid Elrond but I don't see the need for an actual flight.A benchmark, IMHO, is not to show who has the biggest or fastest but to offer a comaprison between RAM, CPU & graphics cards and I submit this can be done with a static view as long as each person uses the EXACT same settings.Some years ago, in the land of Compuserve, a number of people were involved in setting up a standard FS setting and asking people to run FS with this setting and posting their specs and results. This was organised into a spreadsheet by one guy so we could all see which combination of h/w got best results.The standardised settings were done using a modified fs cfg file and a situation file (for some weather effects) with instructions on how to create an icon to run this setup for testing and leave your own fs settings intact. So there was no need to keep changing FS config each time you wanted to compare fps.As you point out, the two screen shots attempting to compare fps do look to have different setups so the fps figures are meaningless as comparision figures.Rgds

1280X1024X32, windowed mode [email protected], dual channel DDR, GeForce Ti4600On my machine Fs2002 windowed mode FPS is higher than in full screen even in lower resolutions. For best performance window should be stretched over whole screen and then maximized. I noticed big FPS drop when restore window is significantly smaller than maximized window.Cheers, Petar

Hi Vulcan,You bring up good points: indeed, for setups to be comparable all FS variables must remain the same.While a static shot would work to show some hardware differences (CPU mostly, video card a distant second), it fails to stress the other parts of a machine. A few flying videos played back in strategic areas of FS start to show the overall difference between machines because it stresses CPU, video card, memory and drive performance all at once.When it comes down to it, a good benchmark needs to stress individual pieces of hardware on their own (such as your static shot for the mentioned video card and IQ) as well as total system performance. As long as your guidelines are rigid as far as setup and cfg, doing so would give the best comparison results from box to box.The final piece is to create a front-end that controls external FS variables such as AA, AF, LOD, resolution and bitdepth on multiple runs. If it was made with scripting abilities and could control FS automatically between runs - and even more important to graph and provide final results from all aspects, all the better. If all of those pieces were put together, you'd have a great FS benchmark suite.Take care,Elrond---Not enough bandwidth to display this signature! Don't reformat hard drive? (Y/N)

Well ... here we go. 1024x768x16 is a bit of a grimy image IMHO. Much prefer the 1600x1200x32.

6X AA with those jaggies in your screenshot? Compare your shot to shane737400CDN's above, which depicts 4X AA.No offence, but it looks like AA is off to me.

Performance figures for my rig at the specified settings are 32.2 fps for Quincunx AA (what I use normally) and 40.0fps sans AA. Interestingly, I don't usually see fps this high in normal use of FS. A healthy weather pattern compliments of Activesky WxRE and complex scenery textures in areas like Oahu usually keep me in the 15 -> 25fps (capped) range.System Specs:P4 2.4GHz @ 2.7GHzAsus P4PEGF3 Ti200 at stock GF3 speedsOnboard sound

Here is mineWinXP HomeXP 2100+756 High Performance CAS2 mem (pc133...lol)Radeon 9700pro (Omega drivers 3.1)Gigabyte MoboCarlos

Shane,I noticed you have a GeForce 4 TI4200 installed in your P3 866Mhz system. I also have a P3 but with 933Mhz. I wanted to install the TI4200 also but was concerned my 200W power supply would be insufficient. Assuming you have the same power supply, have you run into any problems ?ThanksJohn

Hi Elrond,Point taken about stressing various parts of the system with a flight, also back then most people didn't bother with AA, AF, & LOD so that made the set-up a little easier :-)

Yeah I know I'm looking at that but I also know whats checked off in my ATI control panel. I don't understand it. Could it be my combo of directX9 and 3.1 Cat drivers?. I'm happy w the framerates I'm getting but not with the image quality I seem to be getting. If anybody has any ideas I'm open to suggestions.Bobby

1024x768x32ALL sliders maxed, ALL boxes including ground shadows etc. checked:http://www.frontiernet.net/~wavrider/images/new-a2.jpgAnd slewing straight up we get:http://www.frontiernet.net/~wavrider/images/new-b2.jpgHowever for my personal favorite settings are 1600x1200x32 2xAA and 4xAF (actualy 8xAA is very stunning but until NV35/RV98P this is it):http://www.frontiernet.net/~wavrider/images/16x12aax2.jpg

Paul:I'm running XP on ona P4 2.8 @ 2.9 with 512 of Smasung 2700. I used to run with AGP Texturing disabling in DXDIAG. I'v erecently enabled it and tried ratcheting up AGP setting in bios, but anythying past 32 MB and I get a Windows Delayed Memory Writing Failure. Any ideas?Thanks

what video card are you using, drivers and how did you install them?

After saying screw it and reinstalling XP w just FS2K2 on it I found that the Cat3.1 drivers were giving great Framerates but bad Image quality. Installed the Omega Drivers and the difference was amazing. Will post screenshots when I get home.Bobby