Mitch, I see NO difference. Not a slight pixel change. I compared the shots of previous drivers - I believe they were 197.13, and had absolutely no change in picture. 3 shots compared. 197.13 without TRI/AA in FSX, Nhancer per Nick, and 197.45 with and without. Happy that's working out for you!

Mitch, I see NO difference. Not a slight pixel change. I compared the shots of previous drivers - I believe they were 197.13, and had absolutely no change in picture. 3 shots compared. 197.13 without TRI/AA in FSX, Nhancer per Nick, and 197.45 with and without. Happy that's working out for you!

Word Not Allowed, fly over different topography and see if you see an improvement. Forests, deserts, other textures. Use 197.45 as well as Anisotropic and A.A. in FSX. nHancer version 257 as per Nick's settings for all mask. Also, crank all sliders on FSX's SCENERY MASK: to MAX less this;AutoGen Density at: VERY DENSEMesh Resolution at: 2MWater Effects at: HIGH 2.xLand Detail Textures as check on of course.This is how I am seeing FSX with 30 locked down FPS. These are my Scenery Mask Settings. I am stating fantastic clarity and visuals that have betterment over Trilinear and no A.A. in FSX. Try my settings and then see if there is a noticeable improvement to I.Q. All Bojote tweaks under their proper headers, and LOD at 6.5 with BufferPools=500000 Fabulous results, Word Not Allowed!Mitch

Word Not Allowed, fly over different topography and see if you see an improvement. Forests, deserts, other textures. Use 197.45 as well as Anisotropic and A.A. in FSX. nHancer version 257 as per Nick's settings for all mask. Also, crank all sliders on FSX's SCENERY MASK: to MAX less this;AutoGen Density at: VERY DENSEMesh Resolution at: 2MWater Effects at: HIGH 2.xLand Detail Textures as check on of course.This is how I am seeing FSX with 30 locked down FPS. This is my Scenery Mask Settings. I am stating fantastic clarity and visuals that have betterment over Trilinear and no A.A. in FSX. Try my settings and then see if there is a noticeable improvement to I.Q.

My FSX is set to that, except AG is at Normal, otherwise it kills my system, especially if I load it with some heavy scenery and/or PMDG 747...What I saw, I believe, is some improvement in cloud performance, I can't say 100% for sure, because it's very hard to reproduce same cloud coverage in FSX. On 60m cloud 8/8 cumulus coverage, I used to get often FPS drops below 30fps. Even with simple aircraft. Now I get none. Nada. Zip. Tried more than once... with all 110m, I do get drops however.But really, no IQ difference. Flew over couple of my saved sceneries, I saw really no big or at all difference in picture quality.

I'd like to mention this again here:The 197.45 is the best driver I've used since 182.50 for win 7 64.I have not tried changing my nhancer settings. I'll make the changes, just to see how it looks. I always felt that nhancer 8xs was the best visual setting for fsx.

My FSX is set to that, except AG is at Normal, otherwise it kills my system, especially if I load it with some heavy scenery and/or PMDG 747...What I saw, I believe, is some improvement in cloud performance, I can't say 100% for sure, because it's very hard to reproduce same cloud coverage in FSX. On 60m cloud 8/8 cumulus coverage, I used to get often FPS drops below 30fps. Even with simple aircraft. Now I get none. Nada. Zip. Tried more than once... with all 110m, I do get drops however.But really, no IQ difference. Flew over couple of my saved sceneries, I saw really no big or at all difference in picture quality.

Well, that then only goes to show that as always, different systems, different resources in play, and YMMV should be the de facto, right? :)I finally pulled myself out of PNW for a spell. Took a flight from Myrtle Beach to Charleston, S.C. Great weather right now via A.S.E. Stayed at 72 F at 3,500 ASL just slightly off the coast. Some haze. ENBSeries rendering totally believable UTX/GEX textures. FSX looked fantastic! In fact, has never looked better.Cheers,Mitch

Well, that then only goes to show that as always, different systems, different resources in play, and YMMV should be the de facto, right? :)I finally pulled myself out of PNW for a spell. Took a flight from Myrtle Beach to Charleston, S.C. Great weather right now via A.S.E. Stayed at 72 F at 3,500 ASL just slightly off the coast. Some haze. ENBSeries rendering totally believable UTX/GEX textures. FSX looked fantastic! In fact, has never looked better.Cheers,Mitch

No doubt, definitely YMMV.You know what would be a really cool thing - if all known AVSIM peepz would just meet for like a week or so at some mega-5*-hotel with all their machines and equipment and just tweak tweak tweak and exchange and compare. That would simply rock!

You know what would be a really cool thing - if all known AVSIM peepz would just meet for like a week or so at some mega-5*-hotel with all their machines and equipment and just tweak tweak tweak and exchange and compare. That would simply rock!

LOL, but if this meeting was in Austria I would rather be skiing the Hahnenkamm at Kitzb

LOL, but if this meeting was in Austria I would rather be skiing the Hahnenkamm at Kitzb

You know it sounds interesting, but I would have to know how many geeks would be attending. There needs to be some normal people there too! :(

Ok, I have over the last hour I have determined that this new driver does not offer the same aa quality, for the same Nhancer AA setting used with my old driver (182.50). I had to apply additional step up AA in order to settle at the same quality as my previous driver. Small text on a couple of the nameplates in the VC were unreadeable due to shimmering. Even though I had to up the AA setting, I was still am able to up the AG density 1 notch which I could not do with the 182.50's without losing fluidity. At least for me this has been a worth while change/effort.Bob G

Ok, I have over the last hour I have determined that this new driver does not offer the same aa quality, for the same Nhancer AA setting used with my old driver (182.50). I had to apply additional step up AA in order to settle at the same quality as my previous driver. Small text on a couple of the nameplates in the VC were unreadeable due to shimmering. Even though I had to up the AA setting, I was still am able to up the AG density 1 notch which I could not do with the 182.50's without losing fluidity. At least for me this has been a worth while change/effort.Bob G

I'm curious--what aa settings are you now using. I also noticed aa is a bit less compared to the 182.50s.

I'm curious--what aa settings are you now using. I also noticed aa is a bit less compared to the 182.50s.

Hi,I went two notches up. I dont have my box running right now, but it was upped by 2 in order to stop the shimmering. I did not test it long enough after the change, so tomorrow I am going to run it hard for an hour or so on these new settings.Bob G

Hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but this is absolutely placebo if you are forcing settings with nHancer. (predefined override checked, enhance in-game AA unchecked etc) There's absolutely no difference - both are resulting in forced AA/AF from the driver. I see zero difference with the in-game checkbox on or off - it looks like 8XS AA and 16X AF in both cases. Regardless, what any game does when you set AA and AF inside the game itself is just call the same functions in the driver that it uses if you force it on. The whole issue with FSX is that it doesn't let you set the LEVEL of AA and AF. That's the whole reason for using the driver/nHancer, it lets you set higher AA levels than what you'd get with the in-game checkbox. (just from observation, the in-game AA option looks like 4X Multisampling to me, the AF option appears to be 16X, but it shows certain artifacts that aren't there when you force 16X from the driver, probably due to certain performance optimizations defaulting to on) In virtually any other game I have, I set AA and AF inside the game because most actually do let you set the levels, it's not just a single checkbox like FS.

I agree with Ryan. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.No difference here between this driver and the 196.xx i installed a couple of weeks ago (i was using 182.50). And no difference by setting AA in FSX either. The IQ improvement Mitch sees is probably because he set Anisotropic instead of Trilinear in FSX. That, yes, makes a difference. I always use Anisotropic inside FSX instead of Trilinear.I also agree 182.50 is the driver that gives better AA in FSX and i guess i will be going back to that one.Cheers.

No way Jose!Without Nhancer's AA FSX looks like crap on this end.

No way Jose!Without Nhancer's AA FSX looks like crap on this end.

I also agree with Ryan, Most other games/sims allow you to choose an AA level within the game itself usually just 2x 4x 8x or 16x but the beauty is then the game itself is determining what gets AA'd. This means the entire screen might not have AA applied but the game engine can determine where to apply it. With FS, we are forcing it and then blanket AA'ing the ENTIRE screen clouds and all which is usaually what drops our performance... It is a shame this is one of the things MS dropped the ball on but I certainly think we have found our own work-arounds ;)-Paul