What Nick said. I learned a LONG time ago to quit worrying about the darned FSX Frame Rate counter. With over 30 years IT experience, and 35 years real-world piloting experience, I have a realistic perspective and EXPECTATION on what is "As Real As It Gets" when using FSX. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER to try and get 60+ FPS in FS. FS will run, and display, just fine at even 20 FPS in most cases. I routinely do approaches in FSX using complex aircraft addons to complex airport addons with complex scenery addons around the airport...at FPS "as low as" 15 or 20 FPS. It works FINE...as long as those frames are SMOOTH without stuttering back and forth, and I'm not horsing the aircraft all over the place. Nick has continually stressed this point in many of his posts...it is SMOOTHNESS in FSX that makes the difference, NOT high frame rates.As for LOD settings, I use the higher 8.0 ONLY when I want to get some serious...and usually "NOT As Real As It Gets"...eye candy in FSX. With a large geographical photoscenery addon like MegaScenery or FS Dreamscapes VFR+ Utah, if I crank up the LOD to 8.0, the photoscenery looks VERY impressive all the way to the horizon. It looks really cool...IN FSX. But it is usually NOWHERE REAL as to what I would see if I was in a real airplane flying in the same area in the real world. In the real world, atmospheric distortion, haze, you name it, usually results in distant objects even only 15 or 20 miles away appearing "indistinct", even on the best of VFR days. The real world just ISN'T "crystal clear" more than 10 or so miles from your aircraft in most cases while flying, even in VFR conditions. For folks having performance issues in FSX, one of the BEST things they could do is add a "visibility layer" of no more than say 30 miles, using the FSX Advanced Weather Settings. This alone will reduce the strain on FSX tremendously. Setting that visibility slider to "Unlimited" can be the Kiss of Death in FSX unless you have a small Cray computer running FSX.There are many people in these forums who insist that FSX "doesn't work", and swear by FS9 yet. They keep saying, "I can crank up all the sliders in FS9 now on my computer, and it runs great!" Fine...stay with FS9. But doing that is NOT "As Real As It Gets" when using FS. If they used settings in FSX that WERE more "As Real As It Gets", then FSX would run just fine for them, too (assuming they know how to, and do, regular "computer user maintenance" on their computers...which a lot of people DON'T do in the first place).Many addon developers produce some incredible scenery addons for FSX. Nick's work with the GEXn addons is one of them. SOMETIMES, I will even use LOD 8.0 with GEXn, WITH high(er) autogen settings, and other "maxed out" settings (like "Texture_Max_Load=4096" for high resolution clouds). I can get away with doing that IF I am in a SLOWER aircraft, like a Cessna 172 or even a Beech Baron. It I only get 15 - 20 FPS then, it is fine...as long as those frames are SMOOTH and not jumping all over the place. Try it in the F-18 Hornet at 500 kts, horsing the aircraft all over the place, and it usually ISN'T going to work. If I want to play "Maverick" in FSX, then I gotta turn some of the stuff down to more "As Real As It Gets" settings, and then it works fine, too.Eye Candy is Eye Candy. The Real World is the Real World. Ask yourself WHICH one you want when using FSX. 95% of the time when I fly in the real world, it DOESN'T look like Crysis (or whatever that program is called). So I don't expect, nor demand, that FSX represent it that way either...IF I want to use FSX as a flight "Simulator". If I want FSX to appear as a "Flying Game with Tons of Eye Candy that is Nowhere Near What I Would See in the Real World While Flying", then I CAN choose to run it that way. But in THAT case, I darn sure won't ###### about how it PERFORMS when I do it.Rick

After installing MyTraffic X and deleting the existing CFG file to allow FSX to rebuild a new clean one , the load time after clicking on the FSX icon is now about 40-55 seconds. Is this normal?(I use Vista 64)Andrew Dixon

Hi Andrew,FSX initial load of a flight in 36 seconds.I had AI airtraffic set to 0%. UTX Europe installed with FSGenesis 76m mesh. Dense autogen.FSX installed on a VelociRaptor 150GB disk.Ending the flight and a reload will take about 6 seconds.

Words of wisdom indeed, for sure what we all want is decent looking scenery that does not look blurry or snap into focus in blocks as you fly over it. And definitely, smoothness is the key, for me I am happy at 25 - 30, that seems the sweet spot for performance, anything over that is a bonus I guess, but unlikely the way we all seem to want to push the sim !!!!Cheers, Mark