FS2004 virtually unplayable on ATI 9700 Pro.

[brucek 38]

I actually get better performance from Windowed mode, with the identical settings as in Full-screen. I get around 20 FPS (which I've limited my settigs at), other than when at an airport with much AI traffic, which for me becomes jerky. But still flyable.Thanks,Bruce.

[Guest]

"It's well known that ATI has driver problems. Ask anyone who has used on of the following cards:Rage ProRage 128Rage MaxxRadeon "256"Radeon 8500They are improving with the 9x00 series but they still have a long way to go."Look how far back you are going.....the latest Catalyst drivers are at least equal to if not better than the detonator drivers. ATi USED to have problems (note the word USED) not anymore. These issues should have been picked up in Beta testing by MS! Anyway....Nvidia cards seem to be having there fair share of problems in FS04 anyway.

[PeterR 9]

>I actually get better performance from Windowed mode, with>the identical settings as in Full-screen. I get around 20 FPS>(which I've limited my settigs at), other than when at an>airport with much AI traffic, which for me becomes jerky. But>still flyable.>>Thanks,>>Bruce.>Oddly enough, I get better performance in VC than 2D cockpit.If you want to run in Windowed mode, you can get rid of most of the title bar by dragging it up past the top of the screen. Of course, you'll have to have the mouse cursor as low as possible to get the most hiding.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)

[JimmiG 244]

Developers still consider Detonator the "gold standard"."Catalyst" is just marketing. They used to call them just "drivers". Now that they call them "Catalyst" they are suddenly completely different?I can't believe noone reported these problems, especially the smearing text in checklists and other texts. Didn't any of the MS beta testers use ATI cards?

[Guest PaulL01]

Jimmy,1The Autogen trees are mipped, and by your settings you are telling the your Videocard to display the highest res mip even though mathamaticly all those pixels cant fit on the screen all at the same time in the same space, hence the shimmering, turn your mipmap slider down a bit! :)2-However, you still will get some shimering with your ATI card as compared to the NV cards because the ATI's do not Antialias alpha textures, Antialiasing the trees gets helps get read of most of the shimmering. (the poor image quality as a result of this is the main reason I wont be investing in an ATI card and cant reccomend one for use with FS along with the still naging driver short commings, but NV is not perfect here either) So you will be a little stuck there and everywhere else FS uses Alpha Textures with your ATI card. :(3As far as AF goes, Of course there will be a FPS hit, your asking the card to do some extra work hence the hit- (just the think what the hit would be if the ATI card AF the whole scene like the NV instead of just a few degrees past verticle and horizontal) :-eeks-And with AF on you will be >gaining:)

[Guest DNelson]

>>"Catalyst" is just marketing. They used to call them just>"drivers". Now that they call them "Catalyst" they are>suddenly completely different?>And your point is?Replace the word "catalyst" with "detonator" and it's just as true.FS2004 looks great on my Radeon 9500, and frame rates are fine. I'm sure the small, nagging problems will be taken care of in a future driver release, but it's irresponsible to tell everyone with Radeon 9xxx cards not to use FS2004 just because of your problems.Dan

[Guest PaulL01]

>>>>"Catalyst" is just marketing. They used to call them just>>"drivers". Now that they call them "Catalyst" they are>>suddenly completely different?>>>>>And your point is?>>Replace the word "catalyst" with "detonator" and it's just as>true.>>FS2004 looks great on my Radeon 9500, and frame rates are>fine. I'm sure the small, nagging problems will be taken care>of in a future driver release, but it's irresponsible to tell>everyone with Radeon 9xxx cards not to use FS2004 just because>of your problems.>>DanHi Dan,I agree with you on the driver issue, Detalyst! :) But as far as FS2k2-4 goes it is true that ATI does not and will not support the game very well since the ATI cards do not and will not Antialias Alpha textures as well as AF the whole scene. It is a shame, because that cards are great and priced right. :(#%$$# Hardware! (I was going to use the word Stinken, but I didn't want to offend anyone. :)

[Guest product]

"I found that my agp aperature size was set at 128. When I lowered it to 64, the problems were gone. I'm going to try 32 and see what happens."Hi, I'm eager to try this- where are these settings found?Thanks,Joel

[Guest PaulL01]

Joel,Settings are stored in your BIOS.

[Guest Bigshot]

I don't know what you all are talking about. I have the menu flicker but that's it. Cured that by setting desktop to 16x12x32 and run in window mode with taskbar hidden. I'm running everything mostly maxed out. Autogen, etc. on very dense. Terrain mesh at 90 percent. Max frames set at 22 and she's pegged at 22 except during heavy thunderstorms and then it's not bad at all. Everything is absolutely beautiful. Ground, trees, buildings and everything is completely quiet. No shimmers at all. Way better than FS2k2. Running 4xAA & 16xPerformanceAF using trilinear filtering with mipmaps slider in game settings at 4. Texture quality and mipmaps in card menu maxed. Visibility at 90; 3d clouds maxed; with cloud density at 50 percent (that's the sky trick) Clouds all the way to the horizon and set on high. When I fly through the clouds she drops to 21.6 frames. She's screaming and I'm extremely happy. Global texture quality maxed. Dynamic scenery maxed. Aircraft on ultra-high. This sim is frigging awesome with my PIV2.53 9700 Pro. I did have to install the latest omega drivers cause my old beloved Cat 2.3 drivers wouldn't work. The new ones are great. Even FS2k2 looks better. Everything is completely stable too.

[Guest PaulL01]

MG,I know you are satisfied with your settings, tis why I suggested he look you up."Everything is absolutely beautiful. Ground, trees, buildings and everything is completely quiet. No shimmers at all. Way better than FS2k2."Perhaps better now that you are back to "stock" FS textures butcompletely quiet? I think you have been away from a Video card that does AA the Alpha textures too long! :-lolI have been able to look at all of NV's and ATI's offerings side by side on FS (0nly 9800P and NV5900non-Ultra on FS2k4) the Non AA filtering of the Alpha via the ATI cards is a real eyesore, not a show stopper, but everyone that sees it, errr ummm...sees it..:-rollThat is what has convinced me as well as some others to spend the extra $100+ for a card that will perform FPS about $25 worth better.Just which 5900 or 5950 Ultra I just can't answer as the features keep going up and the prices are finaly starting to fall, Asus or MSI maybe. :)

[Guest outtatimeiii]

I dont think the ATI issues apply to all the Radeon line. I just got FS2004 a few hours ago and I been getting absolutely great fps for how old my computer is. FPS in the 20's with a lot of options up high, and absolutely no stutters. Have not had any sort of problems with my Radeon 7200, neither has my friend with a 8500 (We both have Catalyst 3.6). Guess these problems only affect the new ATI 9xxx cards.

[Guest]

come back here when you try it in multiplayer and let us know how far your frame rate drops ;-)

[Erv Moore 21]

Agree. With a total 3.4 hours using FS4 on my Soyo KT33/AMD XP 2200+/Win XP, ATI 9700 Pro, 512 DDR 333 and above all Chris Willis suggestions I am very pleased with the new sim. Last week I made a comment that I would leave FS2 on the machine - happy to say I'll have to eat my words. I'm very pleased with this product.Thanks to Chris for the excellent tips.Erv Moore KSDF

[Guest Bigshot]

I think there's a lot of new ATI owners that haven't figured everything out yet concerning their cards. It took me two months of playing around till I figured out the best settings for my rig. Luckily I'd had FS2k2 for almost a year by then and knew the ins and outs of the sim. Good thing some of the folks got this sim a week or so early because I was reading and doing my homework. Knowing how to set up my card, it only took a couple days of monkeying with the sim settings to get to where I wanted to be as far as visuals and framerates.One big item that I'm completely convinced of is to use enough AA to clear the jaggies, max the resolution and max AF but set AF on performance rather than quality. Reason being is it still looks very good and performance AF blends those high res close textures with the distance low res textures very nicely and gives a good framerate boost. The new mipmap slider in the sim's settings/display/hardware is brilliant. A setting of 4 seems to be the magic number. Any lower and the terrain begins to blur and any higher and alaising begins to occur. Same with the clouds. Max em' out and set em' to the horizon; but leave the density around 50% otherwise they begin to hit the framerate. They look a whole lot better in the sim than the screenshots. In FS2k2, I always had just a little swimming off in the distance. That's gone completely in FS2k4. No tree twinkling, no ground swimming anywhere. Just that occasional radio tower twinkle that I don't even notice. I see no power lines, just power poles. Perhaps the lines not being present are a failing on the part of my ATI card. Don't know? I'm extemely impressed with the Omega drivers. Apparently they are tweaked for image quality and not speed. I'd say Mr. Omega Man did one outstanding job on the newest drivers based on the Cat 3.6. Course, I haven't tried IL2 yet. Fingers crossed!