Hi Ulisses,Yes I forgot to mention that it has made my display much smoother with absolutely no stuttering.

"Visual quality is obviously in the eyes of the beholder."Indeed.I do see some shimmer in the trees. I've been able to narrow it in a band approximately 2-4 miles from my aircraft. Evenso, my 9700 Pro still does a much better job on things like skyscrapers and such than all of my nVidia cards could do. And the AA from this card is light years ahead of my 4600.It would be easy to elimante all shimmer with any of the modern cards simply by running a high LOD level. But then of course the entire visual image turns to mud. It's a balancing act that each of us must adjust for our own preferrance.Cheers,

I thought I would chime in here form an Nvidia users perspective. I was using the GF4 4200 and I can gaurantee you there is plenty of building and tree shimmering with it. Even at higher res, with or without AA you still see it. Especially on the big city buildings! I just installed a ATI Radeon 9800 and I am really happy with it. The only problem I see is the menu/ alt flicker problem. I have also noticed that when in spot view my panning can be a bit rough and jerky, but as soon as I have panned around the aircraft once it becomes smooth, almost like it has to load all the textures, not too bad just slightly annoying.Hornit

"I've got a Radeon 9700 Pro, with no shimmering, no stuttering, no slideshows, no problems at all besides the full screen blinking and menus."EVERYONE who has a Radeon 9700 Pro WILL get shimmering autogen with the default settings. Either you don't see it or you don't want to see it.To fix the shimmering autogen textures, drag the Mipmap slider under the Hardware tab in the Display Settings window to 4 or 5 instead of the default 8.

I have a GeForce MX 440 in here now and happy "enough" with it, but bought a 9500 pro..which as it turns out is a factory dud and has gone back for replacement. During the times (6) of talking on the phone to Tech about it, (IMHO) they are as dillgent as can be to discover what is not working properly, and how to fix it. But also they are a ways yet from finding that. The surprise to me in all these issues is how easy it would have been to give all card makers a "leg up" by notfiying them how MS proposed to operate FS9. We here are dilligent people with some experience..just imagine if this was your very first flight sim? How long would you last with it before throwing it away and never again buying any one?

Congrats, Hornit, sounds like you are making some headway toward getting the sim to work right for you.You might be interested in the latest Rage 3D Tweaker (3.9). I haven't tried it, but I remember reading a couple of weeks ago that they have put a tweak in it that will smooth out the panning in SV.A good resource for ATI stuff is here: http://www.rage3d.com/

"The surprise to me in all these issues is how easy it would have been to give all card makers a "leg up" by notfiying them how MS proposed to operate FS9."Roger that. We'd see far fewer display problems... on both ATI and nVidia cards.

Thanks Paul.Bruce.

A few comments here:Why did none of these problems show up during beta phase? If so, why did MS choose to ignore the problems? Its not as if the Radeon 9700 / 9800 are brand spanking new cards..they have been on the market for some time now.....I find it totally unfair that ATi are taking the hit for the so called 'crap' drivers. They seem to work fine with most other software on the market, why not FS2004?Anyone who has a 9700/9800 and a decent size monitor should really be running at 1600 x 1200 x 32.....these cards love the higher res and are still easily capable of running AA and AF with virtually no performance hit. Running at 1024 x 768 and 1200 x 1024 etc, etc, is really not doing themsleves (or the card) justice. Try it!

Paul,Unfortunately nothing that has been suggested so far has solved the problems I am having with my Radeon 9800Pro 128 Mb and FS9. You can take a look at another thread, posted about a week back: #133865, "ATI Radeon 9800 Pro problems in FS9"I dare say that I have a top-of-the line system, but performance of FS9 due to randomly appearing black lines is totally unacceptable. I do not observe any issue like this in other applications, including FS2002 and Fly! II. I do not know who is to blame for this, MS or ATI.My system:Pentium 4 2.80 GHz, 800 MHz FSBAsus P4P800 Deluxe i865PE Sapphire Radeon 9800Pro 128 Mb 1024 Mb DDR SDRAM PC3200Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9, 120 Gb, 7200 rpm (2x)Creatice Soundblaster Audigy IIWindows XP ProBelow a few screen shots of what I observe when using FS9.Best regards,Henrihttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/31999.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/32000.jpg

Hi Steve,I tested in a monitor at 1600x1200 and it is a lot better, but the problem is that I'm using a DLP projector and the max. resolution is 1280x1024, but I can have a 100" display :)I hope new drivers improve the shimmering and performance.Ulisses

Henri; I mentioned to you a couple days ago that I thought you should RMA that card. It's extremely likely you got bad ram on the card. I've seen folks with the same problems posts pics of that very same thing over at www.rage3d.com over the past year. Their solution was to RMA the card and get a new one. A new card always solved the problem as far as I'm aware. Manufacturing and quality control isn't perfect. You can trouble shoot till the cows come home and it won't fix a hardware problem.

Thanks again for your help. I am still puzzled why the card works without problems in FS2002 and Fly !!. That's the reason, why I think it might not be hardware problems after all. If the new driver by ATI will not solve the problem I will return the card and ask for a new one. I will post what my solution has been.Best regards,Henrihttp://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

Different software places different strains on components. If it's convenient for you, just return it and try another. Is it really hot where your at? You can always try to cool it better.