Big Trouble w/ Flight Simulator 2004

[Guest Star_Ruler]

Hello. I reinstalled the game but the problem is still there, the poor terrain. The terrain just looks a mess, as usual. Shouldn't it look better on a 256mb PCI GeForce FX 5500? Here are some screenshots so you can see what I'm talking about:http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j250/sto...34/terrain1.jpghttp://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j250/sto...il234/view1.jpghttp://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j250/sto...34/terrain2.jpghttp://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j250/sto...34/terrain3.jpgHere are the current display settings I have:http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j250/sto...234/scenery.jpghttp://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j250/sto...34/aircraft.jpghttp://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j250/sto...234/weather.jpghttp://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j250/sto...34/hardware.jpgThanks.

[johnh_049 0]

check in game:options/settings/display go to hardware section and make sure the current video device is selected. sometimes it still tries using the old onboard graphics.

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,I think you are taxing your whole system with those settings.Turn sun glare and lens flare off.Turn render to texture off.Turn anti-aliasing off.Put the Mip map slider at 4.Move the global max texture size to full right.Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[Guest Star_Ruler]

Thanks for the reply, I changed the settings, no change :(

[betelgeuse 41]

Detailed clouds consume lots of CPU processing power. Change to simple clouds, sight distance 50 miles, percentage 50.Have you a recent version of FSUIPC? Use it to clear all weather.

[HoratioWondersocks 4]

HelloI know your card is fairly old now,but you should still be getting much better results than you are at present.I used to have a radeon 9200SE card(a very basic card that came with my comp when i bought it)and i used to get very good results certainly nothing like your screenshots AND i didn't have to use BASIC clouds.I now use a GForce 6600 (not super duper)but FS is fine with it.(but not really that much better than my old Radeon).PS i notice that you have your sight distance set at one hundred miles you should perhaps set that to the minimum(sixty i think).I suspect that this will probably not really change things but worth trying everything in these situations, i notice you have water effects set to full try turning them o ff as well(bloomin horrible anyway in my humble opinion of course).As someone else suggested have you looked at your FS9 CFG file to see that your card is selected?I still think you should get a reasonably decent sim experience with your card.cheers Andy

[Kimchoc 1]

did you disable your onboard graphics in the bios?

[Guest belga1]

Hi,You must be able to run FS2004 ways far better of what you show us actually...For infos .. this is my hardwares/softwares specifications:Windows XP SP1aCPU P4 3Ghz1 GB memory on boardGraphic card Nvidia chipset TI 4600 128 MB memoryDrivers ExtremeG 78.03DirectX 9.0c (latest release)Old PCI 128 sound card SoundblasterHard disk SATA (WD)first generation 120GBWith Windows XP and FS2004 tweaked at the best of my knowledge ... FS2004 run perfectly and almost smoothly with a frame rate of 22 (FPS)Please check few of my videos there:http://www.vimeo.com/1542518http://www.vimeo.com/1541154http://www.vimeo.com/1539951http://www.vimeo.com/1536060http://www.vimeo.com/931083http://www.vimeo.com/1278729http://www.vimeo.com/929295I readed all the answers above and this is in some wise advices !Be sure your onboard GPU is disabled in BIOWill be nice if you have more memory onboard.Be sure to enable the antialiasing filter in the GPU console and not in the game settings.Be sure to reduce your visibility to a nice distance 40 -50 milesPlay also with the weather settings.Remember:FS2004 very demanding in CPU time.Be sure to run FS2004 in a clean softwares environement (no antivirus running in background ..etc ...)This is a exerpt of my FS9.CFG ..(I know settings for me are maybe not the optimum for you .. but save yours and try them for have a look! all varies from machine to machine)Mode=1280x1024x32TriLinear=1TextureAGP=0PanelAsTexture=0[DISPLAY]UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=22TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=1950TextureMaxLoad=1024WarnBadSecondary=0RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=0.7RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=0.7RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=1.0RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=1.0[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=50.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=4TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=3.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=232TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=0Cheers.

[mackintosh 0]

1. Make sure the onboard card is disabled (as already mentioned).2. Don't use the most recent drivers. The more recent the driver, the more chances of them breaking something in older cards. Use whatever driver was the latest released when the next generation of cards showed up.

[Mike T 208]

A couple of things stand out.1) MSFS is processor and memory intensive vs other games that hand off the graphics to the GPU and dedicated video memory as much as possible. It has been admitted in Aces Blogs that even FSX has this issue which hopefully will be fixed in FS11. 2) 512MB of RAM is NOT going to get you crisp visuals in FS9. FS9 will tax a 2GB system and can even swamp a 4GB system given the right circumstances. 512MB of RAM is barely enough to run Windows properly much less FS9 which will also consume your RAM to load textures into.3) The reason you see a blurry mess is due to the fact that there are not enough resources left to load textures into. Even if you had ALL of your memory resources available (which you don't) you'd still only have a total of 768MB of RAM if you add your main system + video memory together. FS9 swaps textures into and out of your main system memory in addition to many other things that need to be loaded in there.4) You have a PCI video card. You will get poor performance in a PCI video card for graphically intensive games because the bandwidth is so limited on the PCI backplane. AGP tried to solve this at 8x and PCIe solves this at 8x and 2x8x=16x. That faster you can get the graphics to the GPU from the CPU the better your performance and the elimination of the bottleneck.What can you do to fix your issue? If you don't change anything on your system, nothing. FS9 does not behave like other games which is why you see no difference between your 32MB card and your 256MB card. You MAY be able to get crisper textures if you lower your resolution.A) Upgrade your RAM to at least 2GB and you'll get rid of the blurries (in addition to a little FS9.cfg tweaking):( Get an AGP minimum video card which will assist with performance.Brute Force is the only way to get performance and better visuals in FS9 and FSX. Fast CPU, lots of fast memory, fast hard drive, PCIe video card (AGP 8x will slide you by). Unfortunately, with 512MB of RAM and a Celeron 2.4 what you see on your screen is probably as good as it will get on your system. Regards,Mike T.

[tunnelcat 1]

Star, what driver version are you using? Some of the more recent Nvidia drivers are causing some problems. You might want to get an older version to try out, something around the 93.xx version maybe. Did your card come with a driver disk that has drivers on it? Be sure to uninstall the present driver from the add/remove control panel first if you decide to change it. You may want to look for driversweeper or drivercleaner to clean up old drivers as well.Also, there are a large number of settings within the driver's control panel that will affect the way FS9 looks. Give these settings a try (right click on your desktop to find the Nvidia Control Panel):AA = 2X (uncheck the AA option within FS9 and use the card's settings here)AF = 4X (both of these settings, AA and AF, impact the visual quality the most in FS)Anisotropic Sample Optimization = offTexture Filtering = High Quality (will drop your total fps in FS9 but with better visual quality)Trilinear Optimization = off (your card isn't capable of more the 30fps with FS anyway)Vertical Sync = onTriple Buffering = offNegative LOD Bias = clampAnd you may want to try and set 'Force Mipmaps' to 'on' for an experiment and set mipmaps all the way up in the FS menu, but you may get a 'shimmering' effect but possible a sharper image.If you want an easier interface with your graphic card's driver, get Nhancer (you need .net framework 3.0 from Microsoft as well) to make up your profile for FS9 and get rid of the FSX profile that interferes. Also, you may want to go to tweakguides to get a grip on all the nuances of Nvidia graphics driver terms and profile settings. A better card to buy would have been at least the Nvidia 7900 series for FS to run well, frankly.http://www.nhancer.com/http://www.tweakguides.com/All.html