Mike,Sorry I cannot answer to the "PanelAsTexture=0" setting as I do not have enough of an understanding of what it does exactly. I have only heard that you should not need this as long as you have plent of System RAM. If you have plenty of System RAM then you can leave your panel as a texture in memory at all times. With 1 GB of RAM I recommend getting rid of that line. I tried out having it in there once, and my FPS went down, so I got rid of it and my performance returned.Jim

Hi Jim,"From my short explanation of the Aperture setting I believe what is happening here is that that textures are not having to be reloaded from your HD becasue they being retained in 'System Memory' that has been allocated by the higher Aperture size you set."... weird, isn't it? Our understanding of the AGP aperture setting is that it sets aside a specified amount of system ram to be used only once the graphic card's memory overflows. What in fact appears to be happening is running contrary to this explanation in that setting a larger AGP aperture is forcing EARLIER use of system ram BEFORE saturation of onboard graphics memory. Just as well we are using fast ram these days otherwise we would not see any benefit.Are there any utilities that would allow us to monitor graphics ram useage under controlled conditions?This is interesting.Cheers!Mike

Hi Jim,"With 1 GB of RAM I recommend getting rid of that line."......I too have 1GB of system ram. In case I was deluding myself I have just conducted a quick comparison test. I disabled the "PanelAsTexture=0" line by double slashing it out and loaded my default situation - KSEA in the Cessna 172 - and captured a screen with FSScreen.I then re-enabled the line, reloaded the sim, my default situation and, once again, captured a screen.Both images were then compared side by side in Paint Shop Pro and there is no doubt whatsoever. With the "PanelAsTexture=0" line in place the Cessna's panel is noticeably sharper. All the gauges and text are distinctly sharper than the image taken with the "PanelAsTexture=0" line disabled. You might like to try this as well before ditching the line altogether.What is happening here? The thick plottens ;)Mike

Hi Again Mike,Well I don't know about sharpness, but I tried that line some time ago when I was flying the PMDG 737. I don't recall it affecting my sharpness. All I know is with that line there my FPS took a significant drop, when in the 2D panel at least, and I'm not going to be putting it back in, no way no how. ;) I hope someone else will come along that can explain just what it does. Good luck.Regards,Jim

Fair enough, Jim. Perhaps it's more noticeable on my Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 TFT LCD monitor which has an incredibly sharp image while using the digital output. Chalk and cheese when compared to the old Sony CRT which I used to love.Seems little doubt this thread has attracted a lot of interest in a relatively short time. Yet noone has come up with any definitive explanations... as yet! It's looking more and more like it's a case of the blind leading the blind when we blithely accept these tweaks...LOL There is no doubt many of them do work but why do they work? That's what all these enquiring and curious minds would like to know, I'm sure ;)Best regards,Mike

Despite the interest in this thread noone other than OneTinSoldier (Jim) has had the courage to attempt an answer to at least one of the questions posed in the original post. Even Chris Willis has gone silent, and that IS unusual.This begs the question as to how these tweaks came about in the first place? Could it be that MS tipped off various Beta testers by providing these goodies without any qualification (which would certainly be in keeping with their current behaviour)? Or, am I simply playing the devil's advocate here ;)Anybody else got anything to contribute?Just to remind you all,The three tweaks to the FS9.cfg configuration file are:RenderToTexture=0TextureAGP=0PanelAsTexture=0Currently, the only one I have active is the 'PanelAsTexture=0' as it appears to sharpen the 2D panel textures noticeably and for that reason it stays.As to the other two I haven't a clue what they do and I see no obvious changes in the performance of the sim. But then, it's probably because I don't know what I should be looking for.MikeP4 2.4GHz (400FSB), 1Gig PC2100 DDR Crucial, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (Omega 2.4.96b), Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 17" Monitor (1280x1024x32), Gigabyte GA-8IRXP MoBo, Ultra-Quiet PSU 400W, WinXP Home (SP1), DirectX 9.0b

When I tried these lines, the only one that seemed to make any difference was the PanelAsTexture=0 line and it resulted in a slight decrease in performance with the 2D panel. These lines can all be found in the default display.cfg under various card and driver listings. I guess many people may have tried these from reading the "READ ME FIRST!" post anchored at the top of this forum.http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...29218&mode=fullhttp://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ode=full#129555Kurt M