Apologies if you have read this elsewhere but my problem was buried within another thread so hope giving the subject it's own topic will furnish some opinions!?I have done lots of reading/research the last week about how fs renders scenery and horizons but have found no mention of what I'm witnessing......When flying in mountainous areas, the horizon seems to "ripple", "shimmer" or "tear" as new mountains are rendered into view. The effect can clearly be seen by setting up the sim at KSEA on 34R, unlimited vis, no clouds and looking at the far horizon. The mountain range in the far distance displays these attributes although it sometimes settles down when stationary.Another way to clearly see the effect irrespective of your sight, vis or other settings is as follows;Get airborne for KSEA and turn south east to point toward Mt Rainier. With the mountain in view, enter slew mode and then slew backwards until the mountain dissappears from view. At this point, exit slew mode and fly back in the direction from whence you have come. As th mountain comes "back into view" and is drawn by FS, the edges again display the behaviour above.If you have the time (and inclination!) I'd appreciate someone having a look at this and seeing if you witness the same behaviour or not? I'd like to establish if it's "Just the way FS9 is" or if it's some problem with my hardware/settings.FWIW I have tried every setting under the sun from drivers, cfg tweaks, different wx and vis settings, using additional mesh (FSGenesis), changing NHancer settings etc etc all with no effect on this particular behaviour.I did find the following link which seems to talk about the same thing but I'm amazed that if it's a common "problem" it's not talked about more? And no, I don't just want to limit my flying to flat terrains! :(

...the horizon seems to "ripple", "shimmer" or "tear" as new mountains are rendered into view. The effect can clearly be seen by setting up the sim at KSEA on 34R, unlimited vis...

...those letters in red, that's the problem. Put your visibility on some normal/natural values like 30 or 40 miles.

...those letters in red, that's the problem. Put your visibility on some normal/natural values like 30 or 40 miles.

In reality, here on the west coast, 20-30 mile visib. is a very nice day! That is, for low and slow. High and fast may see the world differently.Alex Reid

...those letters in red, that's the problem. Put your visibility on some normal/natural values like 30 or 40 miles.

Thanks Dally but as you will see from my first post I have tried different vis settings with no effect. All that changes is that the mountains are drawn when closer to the aircraft but the effect is the same.The only reason for setting the vis to unlimited in the example I gave was to make it simple for someone to try and replicate what I am seeing.If you like I could rewrite the question like this;Set Visibility in the custom weather to 30nmSet Sight Distance in the Display-Weather tab to 60nmSet up no or little cloud (this is just so you can EASILY SEE the effects I am talking about)Set up flight on runway 16L at KSEAYou can see the mountain range in front? Let me tell you, that's NOT 30nm away! The 30nm setting only adjusts the distance at which detailed textures/mesh etc start to show up. The actual horizon you are looking at is probably aropund 60nm as per the display-weather tab (the min). Anyway I degress.....get airborne with those settings and point towards Mt Rainier. Climb to 2-3000 feet and enter slew mode. Go backwards in slew until the mountain disappears from the horizon (about 20nm back from KSEA with these settings). Then start flying again and watch to see how the mountain appears on the horizon.......the effect for me is the same no matter what my settings......the time at which I see it occuring obviously changes depending upon my vis and sight settings.......how about you guys?I don't wish to go off topic but although I agree that a vis distance of 30-50nm is accurate at lower levels (up to 15-20,000') we all know that at cruising levels, away from cities, the actual visible horizon can be well over 100nm in each direction. This is where I'd like to eradicate my problem....in the cruise approaching a mountain range. The only reason for me using the "Unlimited vis" in the previous post were to help easily illustrate the effect I see......the effect is the same no matter at what distance the horizon appears

Solved!!I'm not sure which of the following has helped but did the following yesterday and this morning;Installed FSUIPC (as yet, unregistered)Installed NVidia 196.34Installed FS Genesis "Filler Mesh"I suspect it's FSUPIC that's helped because I now see a "haze" layer even went vis set to unlimited no matter what my altitude. With unlimited vis set I guess I'm seeing about 100-150nm at FL350 (pretty normal for average days) ad the mountains just "appear" out the haze layer....that is to say the start the same colour as the haze then slowly become more defined (ie a darker colour) as they emerge....no shaking horizons, no rippling, no tearing...perfect!!The only thing is, I actually installed FSUIPC yesterday but didn't see any difference until I did the other two things this morning....coincidence or not? Don't care, just very happy now and can het on with buying some add ons and starting my FS9 experience in ernest!Thanks to all for your advice and suggestions

Hmmmm...knew it wouldn't be THAT simple....it gets more intriguing!So, a few hours on, loaded the EXACT same flight but now see the horizon a lot further away and the same as before....shimmering etcSOOOO....I turned back the time on the "Create" flight tab to midday (when I thought it had been solved) and, hey presto! Same result as before....a "haze layer" which makes the visible horizon invisibleI played around some more and much to my surprise.....whenever you change the date, time etc in the "create flight" box, the "look" of the wx changes before your eyes! I tried changing to yesterday, midday and saw the horizon and clear blue sky. Changed to summer sometime, midday and completely different horizon again, Changed to same day, 1700, different again! Changing the year has no impact but there are definatley different amounts of "haze" being drawn at different times of different days with EXACTLY the same vis/wx/sight settings.....did anyone know this?!?So my next questions (sorry guys!) are;1/ How can you manually adjust these parameters (whatever they may be) to give the haze effect all the time? Is it maybe something to do with the temp?2/ Will ASA or similar give me greater control?It's worth noting that I also played with a (registered) copy of FSUIPC and no matter what I did with the vis settings, the different date/time/wx patterns from FS override the "haze" effect. FSUIPC just alters the "overall" visibility and doesn't add in the haze layer I talked about in my last post

For those who are wondering just what I am talking about.......this is it;

Apologies for the quality but it shows the effect well. This was shot at 2x zoom to better highlight the effect and I even have "soft horizons" installed for this flight.Seem familiar? Anyone seeing or seen this in the past? Please let me know one way or the other because I'm going mad not knowing if it's my system or FS9 performing to spec?!

------------------Seem familiar? Anyone seeing or seen this in the past? Please let me know one way or the other because I'm going mad not knowing if it's my system or FS9 performing to spec?!

stranex-Never seen that in the six years I've had FS9 installed on this machine. (AMD XP2200 1.8 GHz, 2GB RAM, 2 GeForce FX5200 GPUs/ 3 monitors/views, Win XP)I fly West Coast mountain areas, low and slow, Real World Weather, most of the time.For what it's worth, this is FS9 1.0, Weather Sight Distance set to 60m (minimum). Never yet had to reinstall- disc 4 just keeps on twirling! Alex Reid

stranex-Never seen that in the six years I've had FS9 installed on this machine. (AMD XP2200 1.8 GHz, 2GB RAM, 2 GeForce FX5200 GPUs/ 3 monitors/views, Win XP)I fly West Coast mountain areas, low and slow, Real World Weather, most of the time.For what it's worth, this is FS9 1.0, Weather Sight Distance set to 60m (minimum). Never yet had to reinstall- disc 4 just keeps on twirling! Alex Reid

Cheers Alex, had a reply on youtube as well stating similar to you.....starting to think it's a grpahics card issue as I've reinstalled numerous times and even tried a different copy! Anyone else care to comment even if only to let me know you've seen nothing like it before?

HelloThere is something very badly wrong there, I get sometimes a slight shimmer from distant terrain depending on what visibility my weather program is sending at the time, but nothing as bad as that.Shimmering issues aside it looks as if your textures are quite blurred (could be the Video though).Have you followed the setup guides by N.Needham they will get you in the ball park as far as setting up the OS and FlightsimBut every machine is different.Post your FS9.cfg here and your hardware setup , monitor res ect.I am sure someone here will be able to help you get things sorted.check out post 18 in this thread to see what is posssible using good hardware and N.Needhams guideshttp://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=276284

HelloThere is something very badly wrong there, I get sometimes a slight shimmer from distant terrain depending on what visibility my weather program is sending at the time, but nothing as bad as that.Shimmering issues aside it looks as if your textures are quite blurred (could be the Video though).Have you followed the setup guides by N.Needham they will get you in the ball park as far as setting up the OS and FlightsimBut every machine is different.Post your FS9.cfg here and your hardware setup , monitor res ect.I am sure someone here will be able to help you get things sorted.check out post 18 in this thread to see what is posssible using good hardware and N.Needhams guideshttp://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=276284

Hi Mad Dog,I think the reason for the blurred textures was due to me just having reinstalled (again) and not having had a chance to play with the settings before taking the video. I will indeed post a copy of my fs9.cfg when I get home tomorrow pm. Do you want to whole thing or just certain parts? In the meantime here is my machine spec;ASUS P7P55D-E Pro / i7 860 O/C to 3.9 / Gigabyte SOC GTX260 896MB / 4GB DDR3 1600Mhz Corsair 9-9-9-24 / Win7 Home Premium 64 / IIyama E2407HDSD running @ 1920x1080 / Seagate 7200.11 500GB I know the RAM is a little slow but surely if this was the problem I would be seeing other "problems" as well? Other than that I feel it should handle FS9 very well and certainly not cause this particular problem which seems related to the rendering.I have followed Nick N's FSX set up guide and tweaked where neccesary for FS9.....Is the a specific one written by Nick for FS9? Like I say, I've not "tuned" this particular install yet but I have reinstalled 4/5 times over the past few weeks and each time tried several different Nvidia drivers. Everything I've done had been as per Nicks guide (including O&O Defrag) and had exactly the same results as you're seeing now.If it helps at all, I see very similar results in FSX although not quite so pronounced. It seems as though this is related to FSX's better default "haze".....the way I see the horizons in FSX are similar to how I see it in FS9 with "soft horizons".....I can still see the effects in the video above but they are partly "hidden" by the haze layer

As requested by Red yesterday, here is my fs9.cfg file (well what I'd consider the important parts)Still like to hear if anyone else has ever experienced the problem shown in the vid?DynamicWeather=0LOADWEATHER=1MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=241401CLOUD_DRAW_DISTANCE=33D_CLOUD_PERCENT=100DETAILED_CLOUDS=1CLOUD_COVERAGE_DENSITY=6CloudsImpostorRingRadius=48000.000000[GRAPHICS]FULL_SCREEN=1PERFORMANCE_MODE=0DEF_PERF_MODE=6TEXT_SCROLL=1AUTO_LOD=0DETAIL_TEXTURE=2WATER_EFFECTS=1TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_MAP=1TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=1EFFECTS_QUALITY=2GROUND_SHADOWS=0SMOOTH_VIEW=1IMAGE_SMOOTHING=1TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=1LANDING_LIGHTS=1IMAGE_QUALITY=0TEXTURE_BLDG=1TEXTURE_GND=1TEXTURE_WATER=1AIRCRAFT_TEXTURE=1SEE_SELF=1TEXTURE_QUALITY=3LOD_TARGET_FPS=42NUM_LIGHTS=6[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260.0]Mode=1920x1080x32TriLinear=1[DISPLAY]UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=60TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=300[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=4.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1[sCENERY]IMAGE_COMPLEXITY=5DYNAMIC_SCENERY=1DYN_SCN_DENSITY=3DAWN_DUSK_SMOOTHING=1SUNGLARE=1LENSFLARE=0

Hello What mesh are you using ?The only setting that differ with what I am using areMAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=64000TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=70.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=0.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=200.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=4TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.9TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.0TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1

I would consider playing around with the mesh settings:TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21In particular, I would experiment with the error factor going to 95, 90, 85, 80 and see if that does anything for you.scott s..

Hello What mesh are you using ?The only setting that differ with what I am using areMAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=64000TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=70.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=0.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=200.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=4TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.9TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.0TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1

Hi,I have tried variously, default mesh, FS Genesis West Coast Mesh and then West Coast + Filler Mesh. Results are the same whatever I have installed :-(

I would consider playing around with the mesh settings:TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21In particular, I would experiment with the error factor going to 95, 90, 85, 80 and see if that does anything for you.scott s..

Thanks Scott, I have tried different values under that setting but will try the exact ones you mention and report back....