Dear Simmers,Good morning.I was wondering about this million dollar question,but honestly i'm really confused. Shall I lock my fps or I leave them unlimited? What's the best solution t redure stuters?! Currently mine are locked at 60 fps,( in certin airports i See around 20 fps) but sometimes I leave them unlimited and it goes over 80 fps especially when I'm criusing.My specs are Intel core2Quad 2.66, 4GB RAM, BFG GE-FORCE 8800 GTX OC2,WD 150 GB.I'll leave it up to you guys :)Regards,Justin

Best bet is to lock it. Testing with my current system, it works much better when FPS is locked, but everyones system is different. Plus, depending on your monitor, it probably has a 60hz refresh rate anyways, so no use going over 60. I usually change my monitor refresh to 50Hz and lock fps at 50, seems to give the least amount of stutters.

As Red1 said, I beleive it depends on the system. On my end I really see no noticeable diffrence between locked and unlimited.

My opinion (again, "my" and "opinion")...If you don't lock your FPS down your computer will use resources to always try to gain the maximum frames per second - which usually means "if you add something here, you are gonna' have to take away here" kind of mentality. Perhaps you'll loose on scenery load times, etc. Personally, with very little going on (for instance slew out over the open ocean) without any extra mesh for your computer to run or tons of ai traffic for it to handle I notice little (if any) difference between 20-25fps versus 60 or 70fps. My understanding is that anything much over 20fps the human eye won't pick up anyways BUT there are many variables to that! For instance in order to get the sim to appear smooth running it might not only mean cutting back sliders but trimming ai traffic as well in order for the computer to be able to process the info in a timely manner in order for you to be happy with what you are seeing. poeple get so hooked on max fps - I just tweek things so the end result is what I am happy with so far as what I see on the screen.On my rig I have it locked at 20fps and I'm running all sliders to the right, with all the WOAI packs and PAI packs installed (minus duplicate airlines) and GA Traffic at 100%. At busy airports I'm happy with the results.Here is an excellent link to help you out. Pretty informative. I learned some stuff myself. This will explain it better than I can.How Many Frames Can Humans See?Hope this helps!Jeff aka mrmertz

Honestly now that hardware is so powerful I doubt it matters much. I lock mine at 35 and I never see drops below that. Flying is always smooth and I get no blurries.

My opinion (again, "my" and "opinion")...My understanding is that anything much over 20fps the human eye won't pick up anywaysJeff aka mrmertz

:( Spreading of this needs to stop, its getting ridiculous.Other points, I completely agree.

HelloMy solution is this.You could 1.Set it to unlimited.OR!2.Set it to a restricted number 25 35 default or whatever you like.That is my tech solution of the week.Cheers professor Technic :( No charge for that either

Just another point, if you are wondering if it makes a miniscule diffrence, just go ahead and lock it at say 40fps if your computer can run it at a steady 40 frames. With 40 frames it will give you a very smooth sim, no need to be running it at 70 fps.As for the human eye only seeing 20 frames, that is very controversial around here :( So as I said above I would lock it at 35, 40, 45 whatever you think is right. (only if you are that worried that running unlimited will have adverse affects)

Lately I've been locking my framerate at 40, and have found it's a good compromise between smooth operation and crisp textures. YMMV and all that. My system is a Q6700 running at 3.3 Ghz and a GTX 260.

Lately I've been locking my framerate at 40, and have found it's a good compromise between smooth operation and crisp textures. YMMV and all that. My system is a Q6700 running at 3.3 Ghz and a GTX 260.

If you fly online using FSHost there is another consideration (for other users):How many players can I have in a game? / How much bandwidth is required? Even though FSHost supports an unlimited number of players in the game, you'll probably hit a bandwidth limit long before you approach the "unlimited" level :-) Since Flight Simulator works in "peer-to-peer" mode, the server does not relay the messages between the players -- all messages are sent directly from one player to all other players in the game. This means that every time another player (or even another add-on like FSNavigator) connects, all players in the game start sending their data to that new player also. FS2002 sends location data four times per second. It's not possible to predict exactly how much bandwidth you'll need for a certain number of players, but a rough estimate seems to be about 1 to 1.5 Kilobytes per second, per player in the game. The observer built into FSHost, and add-ons such as FSNavigator, only receive data and don't send it, so they're more like a half of a connection, each. That's for FS2002 players, anyway. FS2004 sends location data at the same rate as the display frame rate in the game. This is, without a doubt, a bug in FS2004. Some users on 3 GHz machines are able to get 100 frames per second or more, which means they're sending location data to all other FS2004 players at a rate of 100 times per second also. There are very few things in life that should be done 100 times per second, and sending Flight Simulator location data half way around the world over the internet is definitely not one of them. The only way to prevent your own FS2004 from sending data at this ridiculously-high rate is to go to Options / Settings / Display / Hardware, and set the "Target frame rate" to a more reasonable level, such as 20 or 30 frames per second. This also makes it impossible to predict what kind of bandwidth will be required to host an FS2004 session.http://www.chocolatesoftware.com/fshost/Most server admins recommend 24-25 fps.Rob

I read somewhere that frames should be locked at 31 when using nHancer so that's what I've done for along time. I don't remember the reason for 31, but it made sense as my frames were locked at 35 anyway.Bob

I read somewhere that frames should be locked at 31 when using nHancer so that's what I've done for along time. I don't remember the reason for 31, but it made sense as my frames were locked at 35 anyway.Bob

Hey Guys,Thanks for your help..well today I flew from MLA - MAN wiht my fps locked at 70. I have to admit that I'm running my sim full screen and from the Nvidia control panel options i have all set to max ( you know x16 AA etc etc) I noticed a drop in fps as soon as i was on approach and infact i landed with fps between 20 - 30 ) I'll try to lock it to 40 and we'll see, ( even though that by doing this,I beleive that my sim will not run that smooth)Regards,Justin

I am probably the L A S T person here to comment on this. So I will. My machine was found by Alvin along with all the other Titanic artifacts, so getting Frames is a real task. I have an old HP Pavillion (04) vintage. Processor: Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 3.00GHz (2 CPUs) 1536MB RAM (Nvidia GeForce 9400 GT).So for me I am all about locking in the FPS at 30. On my particular set up, Fred and Barney are peddling Freds Flying machine pretty well and I rarely dip below 20 FPS. My rig doesn't run FSX too well. That will be another day when I get a faster system. However with all the popular tweaks I have got it running smooth with Autogen set to low (With it set to max, I find my airports in my area don't even look real. Way to much forest. So of course I set the tree generator to like 5 or something.What works for me then is locking the Frames and working more with tweaks and sliders. I am very very new to all of this but I have found in a few short days that this probably best for most. One thing is for sure. There is no (one fix, fix).Anyone have a good laymans link on the Nvidia GeForce line on ways to set it up for FS9? That still is confusing me. Thanks Much!Jet.

If you restrict Frame Rate (as opposed to Unlimited), then if the sim scenery is changing faster than the restricted FR, you will get a stutter.In rapid manoeuvres such as turning on the ground or airborne roll/pitch, the distance of scenery element movement from frame to frame can easily exceed a fixed frame rate. When this happens there will be a perceptible "jerk" between frames.Phrased another way, the amount of scenery change between this frame and the next, needs to be small enough that one's brain doesn't notice the change. Rapid motion needs a high FR so that the amount of movement is less than that retained by persistency of vision. (ie the duration of an image retained by the brain after that image has gone- classically reckoned but oft debated, as less than 1/16 of a second.) If frame rate is fixed, there are almost certainly going to be occasions where the frame to frame movement is great enough to be detectable- appearing as a stutter.My take is to set it to unlimited and take advantage of whatever horsepower your CPU has to offer. Why put a governor on a race car?Alex Reid