Really More: "Real As It Gets"

[Guest]

Well I improved my flying skills a lot by changing the moveable office chair I was using to a recycled chair from a Dodge Van. I made a wood base for it to get the proper height and distance to my C&H USB Pro Pedals and USB Flight Yoke. This allows me to have a firm and constant postion each time I fly without worrying about the chair moving or turning.This made a huge difference in complex landing situations, and I recommend it highly. Old car seats can be bought from auto wreckers at a reasonable price.Now when I fly I try to make it as real as it gets by doing the following:I use Surround Sound speakers with a Sub Woofer, a Labtek Stereo Headset with Mike and volumn control (use a Y-Cable on the Front Speaker Plugs on your sound card), I use the seatbelt on the seat and this along with the vibrations from the speakers, the Traffic Control coming clearly over the headset, the Flightyoke and Rudder Pedals gives a postive feeling of flying.I am currently running a XP2100, 512MB DDR Ram, 640 Mb Permanent Swap File, a 64Mb DDR GeForce2 TI with 64MB Ram, SoundBlaster Audigy 2 Sound Card, a 19 inch monitor and Windows 98SE with Nvidia 43.05 drivers and DirectX 9.0A.My general performance on both FS2002 and FS2004 is very acceptable at "1024 by 768", 2X AA, and texture sharpening (enabled through the Nvidia Control Panel).I have my framerate set at 22 for FS2002. All sliders set to Max, MIP Mapping, Reflections, Transform & Lighting, Tri-Linear Filtering, Etc. except for a lower setting on AI. Frame rates run between 13-22 (with a nice cloud mix). This is with a fair bit of add-on High Resolution Scenery.Framerate set to 20 for FS2004, all sliders at Max, MIP Mapping, Reflections, Transform & Lighting, Tri-Linear Filtering, Render to Texture, Lights 6, Mip Mapping at 8, Etc., except can't get Massive Aircraft Textures on a 64MB Video Card, have the AI set down to 15%, 3D Clouds at 30%. Framerates run between 11-20.Future plans call for a upgrade to a XP2400 (to bad I can't get a XP2600 Rev A 266MHZ front side bus any more), I am also planning to get a 22 inch monitor and maybe (a big MAYBE) an ATI 2600 Pro down the road).Love FS2002 and FS2004, gave up on Flight Unlimited 3 and Fly2! but I left the orginial Fly! on my system because of the detailed panels and Vancouver and Seattle add-on sceneries. I actually prefer FS2002 but love the GPS in FS2004.Interestingly, FS2000 still runs like a dog on my computer with framerates dying when using advanced weather and clouds but it's still on my system because of the Corporate Pilot FMC (Framerates vary from 12-85!).For those of you having system problems don't give up! It actually took me a number of upgrades and over one year to get this system running good. Now I am afraid to do anything to it (no more driver or hardware upgrades except for maybe the ones I mentioned before.Regards to you all.