Interesting discussion, I have to "jump in"The SimFlyers team is very talented and they make very "nice" scenery, but sometimes I think (IMHO) they, like many other designers, have their priorities wrong.The question to ask is "which details add to the simulation and wich ones are only "eye candy" that destroy the simulation by lowering framerates unnecessarily?"I like to have taxi lines, taxiway signs, gates and marshallers, but I don't care about the controller in the tower reading his newspaper or the highway signs on the other side of the terminal where I never go.When I look at the tendency of designers to create so much unnecessary details, I wonder what simmers really want and what they do with the sim? Do they use it to "fly" or do they only "drive" around the airport to take screenshots, run in the cabin looking out the windows? I guess some people use a simulator car to drive to the airport, walk through the terminal using active camera and file with the guy reading the newspaper in the tower before doing a walkaround using Active camera???????? During a flight, when they have to go to the washroom they use Active camera and go to the washroom in the cabin?! Designers want to show up their talent and do better than the other guy, that's human nature and it's fine.Let's get back to what we want to accomplish. Personnally I want a realistic and smooth flight. FS9, with it's nice weather, creates such an environment for me. Sorry for being a little sarcastic, I don't mean to offend anyone. Those designers are really talented, including SimFlyers, but we (I) don't want that much details. Stick to the essential to make it a realistic experience. I you kill our framerates it takes away the realism.Dan

"German Airports" in that respect is an excellent example of that golden middle ground. It has exceptional performance for a scenery in that magnitude.I will also gladly point out the FREEWARE italian ISD group which produce brilliant sceneries (3 of them are already fs9 compatible) with excellent performance/Mike

I expecially like to answer to Anthony "LLgaz", because his post is the one that best matches what I was meaning to say. About all the other replies I can only say that we're already trying to get into the direction they seem to point to, and, on the other hand, what I'm trying to explain does point into the same direction.Well, Anthony gave me the answer I was expecting for. KLAS is running smoothly, despite the hell of details we put in it (also including 'unuseful' details like road signs, billboards, etc.)This does mean that a direct comparison amongst KLAS and all our previous sceneries is not possible, due to the too much different technologies used to create them. Just to compare some figures, KDFW bgls does fill 3,64 Mb on your HDs only, whilst KLAS bgls does need more than 12 Mb, but KLAS does run much more smoothly than KDFW. Why?Gmax is the answer.Some of you do notice that FlyTampa's KMIA scenery is very detailed but it does run smoothly. Why? The answer is the same than above: the Author used Gmax.Also, I'm sure you all did notice that Fs9's overall performances are worst than Fs2002 ones, due to the improved features of the new sim, and this has its effect on add-on sceneries too. A scenery running decently in Fs2002 may become a frame-killer if used into Fs9.KDFW, KLAX, and all the other older ones were developed using the technology available at their time, and it was a good technology at that time. Now those sceneries - in some case - are affected by the general resources hungryness of the new sim, but they - except, perhaps, KDFW - were rated as 'smooth' when Fs2002 was the sim, so now, when a comparison is made between them and KLAS or any competitor scenery made with Gmax, you shouldn't forget this.Ok, maybe in some case we privileged details too much, but on the other hand the future is always going towards machines more and more powerful. Maybe we might decide in the future to redraw some of the older sceneries using Gmax, but - at the moment - stay assured that any new scenery we'll release will take all the benefits from Gmax technology.And - about KORD - please don't forget it's an huge airport (like DFW), and a compromise between size and smoothness is always hard to find. Guess even Gmax might show its limits if the airport is an huge one, and hope you all will understand our efforts - and sometimes difficulties - in order to always offer you the best products possible, as well as we understand and appreciate your suggestions.RaffaeleSimflyers developer

Raffaele,Not being a scenery developer, I don't know how feasible it is but still may I offer a suggestion: could you split the scenery into BGLs so that one can have better control over the degree of detail one's machine can run. very much in the same manner you can leave or remove ststic aircraft for example.Asking people to change their scenery density settings is not always practical since people will be reluctant to do so for one or a few sceneries. Additionaly sometimes one would like to keep his gates and docking systems but wouldn't mind discarding billboards, signs, fences, trees etc. if that will improve performance.Fiddling around with some sceneries (not yours) have taught me that sometimes these 'unuseful' features tend to tax the system the mostRegards/Mike

>whilst KLAS bgls does need more than 12 Mb, but KLAS does run>much more smoothly than KDFW. Why?>Gmax is the answer.>Some of you do notice that FlyTampa's KMIA scenery is very>detailed but it does run smoothly. Why? The answer is the same>than above: the Author used Gmax.There can be many reasons why the BGL's are larger. The use of different LOD models will result in better performance and larger BGL size, but this has nothing to do with GMAX - other programs will design this way too.Anyway, thinking about this made me want to peruse the texture folder of the KORD demo scenery. Guess what I found - 8 bit textures. These are the old (pre-FS2000) style textures which are not optimized for FS9. Of course, DXT textures are what you want to use here. Also, these textures are not mipmapped, another framerate saver.There's plenty written in the aircraft design and scenery design forums, but for the non-designers, I'll briefly describe what this means.DXT 1/3 files are 16 bit images. Not only will you get more colours available, but the bitmap is compressed in a format that is specifically optimized for Direct3D, resulting in a slight performance boost. Mipmapping is a way to improve performance by letting FS9 draw a smaller bitmap rather than a larger one when you are so far away that you would never tell the difference anyway. When a 512x512 bitmap is save using mipmapping, a 256x256 version wil be saved also, as will a 128x128, 64x64....... 2x2, 1x1. So, if that building that is 4 miles away is only printing 12 pixels tall on your screen, then FS will choose the 16x16 bitmap, which would load much quicker than the 512x512 bitmap. This is a similar principle to using different LOD models. This is pretty basic stuff, and most freeware scenery/aircraft uses these formats. FS8/9 used these textures, with the exception that the legacy texture (from previous versions) were left in their 8 bit format. However, most of these textures were small already (64x64). I'm going to convert all the KORD textures later, and take some measurements.- Martin