Hi,I've been playing with the Hardware-rendered lights slider, trying to see what affect it has on the scene. I've tried it at 4, 6, and 8. I can't see any change in the way the VC view or Spot view is rendered. I also can't see any appreciable hit in frame rate.Can someone explain to me how I can see the visual effect of this slider? Also what framerate hit should I be seeing on a PIV-2.8, 512Mb PC2700, Radeon 9800 Pro system?Thanks,

This is something that you'll notice at night. FS2002 and FS2004 offer a neat effect--wing strobes, fuse light's, etc, can be seen reflecting off of the wing surfaces and inside the cabin. The degree to which you see this is controlled by H/W lights. With some aircraft, increasing the number of H/W lights will offer a dimly lit cabin, similar to what'd you'd see flying on a red-eye. As for fps hit, I don't see any as long as I use H/W T&L....-John

Thanks for the fast reply John.Where is the visual sweet spot for this setting?I've seen your posts and you seem very knowledgable about the FS series, so I'd like to ask you 2 more questions:1) I have been using my system with the FPS locked at 20 and have found it possible to fly in most conditions with the display sliders pretty much full right (except for cloud density at medium). It may drop to the mid teens around KSEA or doing steep turns at 2000' over a city. However, I find the sim a bit smoother set to 24 FPS. What are the visual details that get lost during the busy times when the system is trying to produce the higher frame rates? What do you have your system FPS locked to?2) What is the elevation detail of the default MS scenery? What does setting the TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL variable to higher than 19 achieve with the default scenery?Thanks for your help,

For me, the H/W lights settings is best kept maxed if your system seems to have no issue with it. I've flown some aircraft with virtual cabins at night, and I feel as if I'm there when I see the strobes reflecting off of the wing... As to your other questions:1)....However, I find the sim a bit smoother set to 24 FPS. What are the visual details that get lost during the busy times when the system is trying to produce the higher frame rates? What do you have your system FPS locked to?The system won't sacrifice any visual detail to obtain the higher fps. What it will do is try to meet the fps. If it does, any extra resources left over will go towards other tasks--notably, texture updates. CFS2 had an interesting flag, called Auto_LOD, which is left over in FS9.cfg. In CFS2, detail would adjust downward to meet the fps lock.But it doesn't do anything anymore, so there's no adjusting of scenery detail to match the fps lock, either in FS2002 or FS2004. I keep my lock at 25 in both sims. I can get it too, by keeping AI off and Autogen either off or at lower levels, and by steering clear of the two dozen or so highly detailed cities. Since I have a slower system, I've also had to compromise on my display res, and limit it to 800x600x32. I can bump it up higher, but the 25 I normally get can fall to around 20. One of these days I'll invest in a monitor that can support the higher res's, then I'll be whining about FS's performance, I suspect :)2) What is the elevation detail of the default MS scenery? What does setting the TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL variable to higher than 19 achieve with the default scenery?Comparison shots between mesh in FS2002 and FS2004 seem to give FS2002 the edge. Setting the TMVL to 20 or 21 is supposed to give you the benefits of some of the higher res third party mesh out there. But for the default scenery, it seems to do nothing. And don't try to set it lower--it will crash FS2004. You can kind of guess that I tried it :)

Great reply. Thanks for the help.

>Comparison shots between mesh in FS2002 and FS2004 seem to>give FS2002 the edge.Not in Australia. The improvement in landclass and mesh detail in Australia is stunning is FS2004. There is absolutely no comparison at all. It also wouldn't surprise me if MS has upgraded the mesh in many other areas where it used to be low LOD in earlier versions.

You may enjoy the small text files I've posted describing resolutions of the default mesh for FS2002 and FS2004. Australia is the big winner here!www.fs-traveler.com/cgi-bin/fs2002-default_mesh.zipwww.fs-traveler.com/cgi-bin/fs2004-default_mesh.zipEnjoy,Steve