Hi Jim,Excenlent guide !However, I tried the section where tuning my ATI Radeon 9200 setting in the Direct3D as you suggested, but to my disppointment, it actually worsen the quality and performance of my fs9 terriblely!The only known best tweak is the setting of fs9.exe to HIGH and dedicated to 1 CPU in the 'Services'! This setting really fire up the quality and boost up the performance!But Jim, as every computer spec is different, some tweak might work or might not. We are still very gratefull that you had taken your tim to guide us! Bravo!Jim, I have a seperate problem, my fs9 pause for 1 second now and then and I noticed that it happended due to the reading/accessing of my fs9's CD? Any explaination or soluton for it?Thanks again!

Dear Samim, Nico,and Kurt. I just want to say.... You're welcome! And thank you guys for the kudos. :)I'm glad this guide has been found useful for a number of folks.Greg,Just thought I'd mention that I also use FSGenesis US Landclass, 38DEM Scenery covering the whole US., and a weather addon program called WeatherCenter. ;) I had a ton of clouds yesterday and it slowed down my sim somewhat but it was certainly still flyable!Thanks again folks for letting me know you have used and liked my guide as I did spend some time in making it. :-coolHave a spectacular flight!Jim Richards

>Jim, I have a seperate problem, my fs9 pause for 1 second now>and then and I noticed that it happended due to the>reading/accessing of my fs9's CD? Any explaination or soluton>for it?>>Thanks again!>>Hi Kevin,Thanks for the compliment on the guide. x:)~ In regards to your question, how did you install FS2004? With the 'Express' option? Or the Full/Complete installation? If you used the the Express(I think that's what's it's called if I remember correctly) then it did not install ALL the scenery to your hard drive and left the majority of it to be accessed through your CD-ROM drive. CD-ROM drives are very fast nowadays, but I imagine they are still not as fast as hard drives(HD's), so the time taken to access(seek time + time to read the data) the scenery on the CD-ROM drive may be a little slower then if the scenery was installed on your HD. Also, most importantly, if the CD-ROM drive motors spins down then when it comes time to access the next scenery area from it it will take a moment for it to spin back up before it can even begin the seek.Regards,Jim

Hi Jim,Opps...you reply actually just reminded me that I could had mistakenly install my fs9 using the EXPRESS option insteal of FULL/CUSTOME option...!I thought all the while I had install FULL into the hardisk..and that's why I was confused about the reading of my CD during the game! It should not be accessing my CD if I had installed it FULL...!You see...I have a 80 GB hardisk with 68 GB free...so no reason for me to install the fs9 partially....my mind must had been occupied by something else during the installation when I 'click" the option....hehe!Jim, thanks a lot again! Well I will have to resintall my fs9 tonight! :-mad :-bang

Yes, I have seen the RAM usage go up into the 7-800 meg range. I did some testing about a month ago during the so-called "autogen bug" crisis under the heading "FS9 - the facts" on this forum. I was doing circuits around a heavy airport scenery area (KSEA) and made about 5-6 passes back and forth across the airfield, building up autogen scenery. I flew the default Cub to minimize aircraft demands during the testing. There is a listing of the RAM demands on that post.I run with my system set up for maximum display quality (not maximum slider settings on everything), and have a P4 3.2GHz with 2 gigs of RAM. This was with 70% 3D clouds, extremely dense on autogen and all other scenery settings, 2XAA and 8XAF (see my other posts on why I don't like more AA). AGP aperature maxed on an FX5900U (256 megs of RAM) running all FSGenesis mesh at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 depending on the panel I'm flying.MDavis

>>Thanks again folks for letting me know you have used and liked>my guide as I did spend some time in making it. :-cool>It surelly is evident after reading it !Thank you Jimmy for this excellent post."Things to do on a rainy day" that's how you should call it Kyprianos Biris :-cool[link:avsim.com/greece/hvacc]Hellenic vACChttp://vateud.org/images/vatsim-eurs.gifhttp://vatsim.pilotmedia.fi/statusindicato...tor=OD1&a=a.jpg

Hi Kyprianos,Well, I would have to agree as it's a lot of stuff to do that some people would probably consider to not necessarily be a lot of fun. Try this, then try that, ect. :-roll Then again it may be fun depending on what kind of modd you're in. ;)Jim

The reason is simple. Time and time again I see "you need a gig of ram for MSFS." Yet I have yet to see anyone back that up with any kind of hard evidence that the sim will use it. Memory costs money. It doesn't make any sense to me to spend money on unecessary equipment - or to advise people to spend more money unless we know for sure the upgrade has a measurable effect so folks can judge whether the change in performance is worth the money. My folks were both research chemists and I have an MBA. Show me the numbers. That's all.