Sheesh, I am amazed how even 2x FSAA with far right slider settings almost cripples my PC, and with 1024 RDRAM on a high-end DELL. Now it is amazingly smooth without FSAA and sliders are full right on almost everything except TRAFFIC. You CAN have too much cloud effects as well by full righti-ing them but it's fun to have that option available.Anyway, turn off FSAA and keep it off. It is a waste of power.JS

What about the jaggies? How horrible are they with it turned off?

Learn to live with them until someone comes up with more frame-rate friendly clouds. You'll have far better luck running at a higher resolution than with FSAA.

Yes, in Windowed mode, they are moderately ghastly. But in full screen mode (which I use all the time after opening FS2004), it is a great deal better. I have a primary 21" TRINITRON set to 1280x1024x32 and honestly, it looks very good in full screen with FSAA turned off. The world in general looks very good around me without FSAA. In FS2002, it seemed a little less fine with FSAA turned off but it helped on that too.JS

I hate to ask, but what are you running FS9 on? I am running either 4x FSAA and 16x AF with no problems at 1600 x 1200 x 32 in full or windowed. Nonetheless, I will try it with no FSAA and see.Noel

Hiya,I have 2 questions about this subject. First one what is FSAA??? and where can I find it???????? Second one at what setting must Anti-aliasing be?????????Regards,L.Jim

I have 1ghz lo-end & 19"crt. No AA of course but 1600 x1280 resolution and the edges are quite smooth because of hi-resolutionDick KLBE

They are talking about Flight Simulator Anti Aliasing. It's the setting in your DISPLAY options under Hardware that gets rid of jagged edges.This new version takes a mighty hit if you enable it, and is unusable on anything but a top end system unless you're happy with 5 FPS or less which I'm not. A compromise is to turn it off within FS but enable it through your video card settings if you have that facility; that saves a frame or two.It's annoying, however, that here we are with the best developed sim yet but we have to turn off the things that make it look good in order to get it to run. AA is one; clouds are the other. I was flying the UK coast last night but as I turned for Exeter at Start Point and saw clouds on the horizon my FPS dropped from 17 to 3. Sheeesh. And that's in default aircraft in a virgin sim. I now tremble when I see a cloud ... it's like seeing a pack of enemy fighters coming in!Sometimes MS push the limits too far, I think. It doesn't have to be this way. I only hope that if Chris Willis does his cloud thing for FS2004 he can get FPS UP, not push it down further. Chris?!Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

Now that's interesting, Dick. I'm going to do some experimentation pushing resolution rather than AA and see what the results are.Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

I have a DELL P4 2.53 Ghz, 1024 RDRAM + Ti4600 card. I CAN run it with FSAA and it does work (OK, the machine is not "crippled" by FS2004, just compromised by it), but I lose about 7 to 9 fps with that utility on at 2x. At 4x, fps drop rather more.I am just fed up dealing with any stutters in FS and buying a new machine every 3 years to fit with a new generation of FS that STILL over-exerts any average processor. Your machine is not just an Athlon; it is "athletic" !I bet you could run FS2004 with no FSAA at the res you have and see little to no diff. I don't run at that res because the desktop and other fonts are too small for my eyes.Please post any reply or advice and I shall keep experimenting.Cheers!JS

Many things determine if you should use FSAA, a high resolution, or both.You say that you loose 9 FPS by turning on FSAA. Well, how much FPS do you loose from going from e.g. 1024x768 to 1600x1200? Think of FSAA as a way of artificially increasing the resolution.My monitor only does 75Hz at 1600x1200. The next 4/3 resolution available is 1280x960 in which my monitor does 85Hz. However, if I choose 1152x864, I get 100 Hz, and, there's enough power to spare to enable me to use 4x FSAA and still maintain 23 FPS (locked) most of the time. Combined with Anisotropic Filtering, the textures are still extremely sharp.Some people may also have LCD displays limited to a lower resolution.Now, if I had a monitor that did 85 Hz, preferably 100Hz at 1600x1200, I would use that, and 2x FSAA, but even at 1600x1200, some FSAA is required to smooth out jaggies.You say you have a Ti4600. Those cards are not really fast enough for FSAA, and they are extremely slow at anisotropic filtering. With such a card, running 1600x1200 with no AA and maybe Level 4 Anisotropic filtering would probably be ideal.BTW, has anyone done an Athlon vs. Pentium4 comparison with FS? The Pentium4 is usually slower than the Athlon XP on software not optimized for SSE2/P4, but if FS2004 is optimized for SSE2 and the Pentium4, the P4 may be faster.

JimmiG:Your recommendation is an interesting idea--but I am amazed (and rather appalled) that you say my Ti4600 is not really fast enough for FSAA. Is it not a huge capacity 3-D video card ?The whole performance issue of FS is really getting absurd as I enter my 7th year of simming. No PC seems to ever be fast enough to max out the current issue of FS and we are lured to the next generation by all those juicy MS screenshots which we find we cannot get without overstressing our PC. In any event, this is not criticism of you; it is criticism of the fact that we amateurs (like me) are sold a bill of goods by the PC makers and by MS. And we continue to wolf it down and say "Thank You. Some more, please?"!!JS

>They are talking about Flight Simulator Anti Aliasing.Actually, not to nitpick..."Full Screen" Anti Aliasing is the actual term. :) IN the past some programs would anti-alias only portions of the screen and image. As technology improved, the capability to do full screen work came into being. And as such, Full Screen Anti Aliasing. The first cards to do it niiice were some of the late-model 3DFX cards.

I think the fact that "No PC seems to ever be fast enough to max out the current issue of FS" is a REALLY GOOD thing!By employing technologies and features which are bleeding edge, Microsoft just "bought" more time for this version to be viable. Newer computers *will* come, maybe not to you or me, but someone. And they will be able to enjoy FS2004 a lot more. With that extra time, addon developers and the community can make the simulator so much more than what it is on release day - hence the fact that a great many of us here still run FS2002 alongside FS2004. It will be a while before FS2002 disappears off of many hard drives. If Microsoft designed the flight sim series directly for the current crop of higher-end machines, who knows what features or items would have been left out or otherwise ignored. I'm running a 3.0 GhZ (HT), 512 MB, Radeon 9800 Pro (4x AA, 16x AS driver setting) powered machine, and even I cannot move the weather (clouds) sliders full right - in fact, mine are limited about halfway. But I don't judge the sim by where my sliders are - I judge it by the enjoyment it provides... and the sim looks absolutely FAN-FREAKIN-TASTIC. Anyway - rant over. :)-Greg

i run 4xx aa and good clouds and 100% trafic have no problem with fpsdonp4 3.061 gig ramti 4600