Hi Reggie,Unbelievable, the amount of thinking work which those guys at Microsoft must have performed in order to develope FS with all it's extremely complicated (hidden) functions etc. They never stop impressing me, even after more than six years of FS experience on my part.However, as a result of your highly appreciated technical explanations it would seem a logical question in asking how to reduce the 108 Nm active AI radius around user aircraft, a.o. because addon radar/TCAS systems only go as far as 40 Nm max. and, by the sound of it, standard ATC even less. But I assume that that would be almost impossible due to some of the FS9/FSX basics a.o. the world wide grid sizes, all of which would then have to be reduced as well.You speak about a lot of (AI) data from the eight grids around a user aircraft being cached for instant use. Sounds very logical but is this solely done in the systems memory ? If yes, could this mean that 2 Gb can sometimes overflow onto a HD page file, especially in combination with complex addon user aircraft, panels/gauges, sceneries, weather, and ..... many many active AI aircraft within the 108 Nm radius ? Is 2 Gb sufficient ?Well, for the moment it seems that some of us more technically inclined armchair pilots will just have to wait for Intel/AMD to produce even faster processing systems/capacities, especially for those of us with huge amounts of addons etc. and who prefer maxed out sliders without stutters and marginal frame rates. Do you or does anyone else know of any (possibly drastic) Intel/AMD plans in that direction ? Or is processor heat production/energy consumption still the main obstacle.RegardsHans

The 108 nm of FS2004 is a little over double the distance of the Active AI Zone from FS2002.When MS added real world approaches - they had to increase to about that size to get AI to work with the system. (If MS adds STARS to FS11 - the zone will have to expand exponentially again).It is impossible to change the distance. 108 nm appears to be the upper limit - though near national borders and major airspace boundaries it is shorter.KSAN and SPIM are two airports where the zone only appears to extend 40 nm to the east. Jim Vile had trouble with LOWI because the pattern would push AI aircraft over Germany - and that's not part of the Austria AI zone.Yes, I think it is quite common for things to be pushed out to the page file in FS, textures especially.One of the blogs recently talked about how much FS has to cache and keep ready for display. It's massive.I've got no idea where FS11 is going - but I don't see increases in processor speed.We might all need quad-core processors with dual SLI DX-10.1 graphics cards, a 5,000 watt PSU and the radiator from a Mack truck to cool the thing in two years.

>But I want to emphasize this - you must have sufficient>parking at Gatwick, Luton, Stansted, London City, Biggin Hill,>Farnborough and all other airports within 110 nm of your>aircraft - or you will get major performance hits. I fly exclusively in and out of London Stansted and have developed a "trick" that prevents my system being bogged down by unwanted AI flying into and out of the other London majors.Only flightplans that contain a flight into or out of Stansted are allocated an AI% of 1%, all other flights are allocated an AI % greater (the actual value isn't important) than 1%.Now whenever i'm approaching or departing the London area, using a quick FSUIPC key assignment, i set my AI% to 1%. I still see all the relevant Stansted traffic but my system is no longer required to process traffic relevant to say, Heathrow or Gatwick. Result, at least 15-20% fps improvement.When departing Stansted, once i'm about 50 miles away, i just reset the AI % back to 100% and all flights are returned.This methods does require that every flightplan that i add has to be editted so that only those flights relevent to Stansted contain 1% AI, every thing else gets replaced (via a simple text editor's search & replace feature) to 2%.Gary

I like your style Gary! "...thinking outside of the box" :-beerchug

regardsEdaka Capt. P[/font color]i[/font color]c[/font color]a[/font color]s[/font color]s[/font color]o[/font color]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v640/edetroit100/Ed3.jpgMy FS9 Videos] AMD Athlon 64 3500+, 1024Mb PC3200 DDR, 300Gb HD 256Mb DDR Nvidia 7800 GTX PCI-E, Audigy 2 ZSViewsonic VP2130b 21.3" LCD[/font color

Hi Gary,The original question in this thread was if there was a limit to the number of active AIs flying around. Reggie said no but he highlighted an indirect and structural performance/stutter issue in relation to the (in)availability of sufficient AI parking catagory/capacities at airports in a radius of about 108 Nm. from a user aircraft. It transpires that this 316 Nm. diameter circle even moves, with your user aircraft in it's center, as you fly anywhere in the world at whatever altitude or speed.In other words, frame rate variations can occur when the AI engine activates and de-activates (far out of sight) AI movements as the circumference of this circle moves across airports on the ground. Under normal flying conditions at higher altitudes these frame rate variations should not be noticable especially when you have set your frame rates to a maximum. However, at lower altitudes near e.g. "heavy" addon airports with many active AIs, this issue can get so bad that even the default ATC gets overloaded and visible stuttering (= very high frame rate variations) can occur.I agree with you that certain user tricks can be devised in order to lessen this performance issue, the most drastic one being to reduce the AI% to zero but my personal opinion is that anything in that direction will effectivly reduce my flying experience especially as I fly all over the world with a hugely expanded FS9. It all boils down to a question of personal taste but my "wait" (as I have done before) is for a much faster processor/mother board/chipset/memory/Mack truck radiator combination which seems for the moment to be the only real way out, also for FSX and the possible FS11 which Reggie mentions.In the meantime a lot of us will just have to accept the existing hardware limitations and keep watching this forum for good ideas.Your input is appreciated, as is Reggie's.RegardsHans