I love this new sim, but have an annoying problem that in full screen mode, the FS menu screens misbehave (aircraft selection goes black except for a spinning airplane for example..)I can work around this by changing to windowed mode (alt-enter) each time I want to access the menus and all is fine, but I wonder if there are folks out there who have solved this!P4 2.4, Windows XP, Ti4200, 43.51 drivers, DX9b.1280x960x32 resolution, 2xAA and 2xAF enabled in display adapter properties.

I haven't had this problem and I have the 4200/Ti, but I haven't tried the 1280x960s32 res... I'm afraid with my small monitor, I'd hardly be able to see the menus at that res. I am running the 30.82 drivers, if that helps. -John

Hello,I am using driver 44.71 and a FX5900 Ultra and have the same issue. The problem appears to be NVidia drivers, perhaps at high resolution (haven't tested this idea yet). The issue goes away when you set AA = application or Off. I just turn on AA from within FS9. I am using 1200x1600/32bit resolution, AA = application, AF = x8.I hope Nvidia's next driver release will resolve this!Cloud9

The problem with using AA from within FS, is that it appears to enable 4xAA which costs me too big of an FPS penalty.. I prefer 2xAA as the best balance on my system.I'll try the 30.82 drivers which I used for quite some time with FS2002 until I got convinced that the scenery was improved with the 43.51 drivers.Will report back!

"I'll try the 30.82 drivers which I used for quite some time with FS2002 until I got convinced that the scenery was improved with the 43.51 drivers."If you use the 30.82 default drivers, you may find the scenery looks "muddy" in FS2004. Locate and DL the latest version of Rivatuner, and apply the "negative LOD" patch, then adjust your LOD to about -.5 (or lower, if that's what you've used in the 43.51 drivers). Then just leave FS2004's mipmap level at 4. If you're using aniso filtering, it should produce some awesome results...best texture clarity I've ever seen in any Flight Sim.Also, be advised that using the drivers to force AA in FS2004 vs. using FS2004's own option, may yield some strange results. I found by doing this, I couldn't capture print screens unless I was in Windowed mode. I had other odd things happening as well. It may be O/S specific, however. I haven't had a huge fps hit with the default AA in FS2004, but I also keep Autogen at a minimum or even off if I'm flying the heavy iron.I believe you'll find the LOD patch buried a bit within RivaTuner's folder structure.Good luck!-John

Thanks, John! The 30.82 drivers work flawlessly... now I'll have to do the Rivatuner bit since I've lost the AF setting option in the driver applet. This should get me to a "happy ending"!Maybe a future driver release??

OK.. many thanks to those who responded!I've gone from a happy FS2002 + 43.51 driver user to a happy 30.82 + Rivatuner FS2004 user..Indeed, the 30.82 drivers with Rivatuner LOD=-.5 and AF=2x tweaks have got me back to a solid FS2004 experience. I did try both the 44.67 and 45.20 drivers, but neither worked. Somehow, Microsoft must have changed the way they handle the menus in Full Screen mode.. my guess is that in FS2002, they returned to windowed mode for the menus and that that is no longer the case.. either way, things are working again! :-)

Sorry to butt in when you have found the solution but I have the same menu problems using a Ge-Force4 Ti4800SE. Unfortunately the solution goes over my head because the driver I am using came with the graphics card package and bear no resemblance to those numbers you quote. Also what is a Rivatuner, what is LOD=-.5 and AF=2XtweaksBest Regards Pat

Works fine with my TI4200 128mb. I have Direct X 9a. I have the simset at 1280 by 960 with beautiful results on a 22 inches monitor.Athlon XP 2200 1.8ghz 512 of RAM

Pat....This requires a long answer...Rivatuner is a utility for tweaking some of the settings that the Nvidia and Radeon cards support. Some of these settings can be tweaked from the advanced display options menu, but not to the degree that they can in Rivatuner.LOD controls the detail in the mipmapping. Mipmapping is supposed to add to the realism of scenery "fading into the distance". It's used in MSFS and other sims. But by default, even with the best "default" driver settings, it is sometimes overdone, and causes textures to appear a bit too blurred, too close to the viewer (in our case, the aircraft). By tweaking the LOD to a "negative" value, you can get clarity beyond what the default driver settings support and pretty much adjust things to your taste.Nvidia's newer drivers since the 21.xx series (more or less) prevented this. Rivatuner includes a "patch" for new versions that allows it. Other, third party providers have dropped their own driver sets (you may have heard of the "Omega" drivers). Usually, these are a combination of various drivers and present registry settings, combined with Rivatuner's patch or something similar, that provide a "default" setup clearer than Nvidia's intentions. But I believe Nvidia is going after some of these--patching a driver yourself is one thing, but distributing them--pretty much a clear violation of copyright. I'm staying neutral on that one :)Last, AF stands for anisotropic filtering. For lack of a better description, it's another type of sharpening filter. I combine AF and LOD adjustments to get a look just right. With your card, AF can go all the way to 8x I believe, just like mine. Incredible texture clarity, but a bit more of a fps penalty. I stick with 2x, and the LOD adjustment.

Pat, if you go to the display adapter properties page in Windows Control Panel, you should find the video driver release level (4 digits with some dots in between, such as 4.3.5.1 or such.. short form: 43.51)For some reason, FS2004, GF4 drivers over 30.82 and 2xAA don't seem to mix..What I did, was download Nvidia driver 30.82 from www.guru3d.com, uninstall my 43.51 driver via the Windows/Settings/Add-remove page,re-boot, install the 30.82 drivers and everything worked again.To get the same scenery quality as I was getting with the 43.51 drivers, I downloaded Rivatuner from the same site and, using the "Customize" function, manually set LOD to -.5 and the Anisotropic filtering to 2x.In the 30.82 driver settings applet, this is unfortunately not selectable.Let me know if you need more detail!

Thanks John Ci, Bert and Jose for your excellent replies. I will try the downloads as explained and see how I get on. Lifes simple when you know the answers.Regards Pat

Hi Just to confirm I am also getting this problem with the menus. It looks like us NVidia owners are getting menu problems not just the Radeon folks.The only way to stop it happening is to use either no AA, or 4x AAThis is not good as no AA looks horrible and 4xAA is too demanding on this SIM.I have a GF4 Ti4400, Win XP. I tried drivers 41.09, 43.45, DX9a & DX9b all to no avail.Thanks for the tip about the 30.82's, I might try this fix but didnt really want to go back that far as it is quite old and sounds like the LOD problem is a bit of a pain too.Hope either Nvidia or MS can solve this serious problem ASAP. They will probably blame each other and not fix it for ages I expect though. :( Regards Geoff

I Rivatuner still shows -.5 LOD, I have 4 tap AF set, 4 mipmp in FS2004, but it looks kind of muddy compared to how FS2002 looked.Would the DX9 install have altered this at all?- MylesGF4-ti4600

The problem I always noted with any Ti4x00 driver earlier than the 42 series, was that the ATC text was always blurred and "ghosted" if anisotropic filtering was enabled. This always happened in FS2002 and the 42 series or higher drivers were needed to rectify this. So are we now saying that in FS2004, the 30.82 drivers together with 2 x anisotropic filtering does *not* produce any onscreen ATC or red text blurring and ghosting?