Now, I am well aware that this subject has been discussed a thousand times before. I am only rekindling the fire because it seems that I am suffering from it on my PC. I recently purchased a scenery package, installed it, and then checked out a few of the airfields. That's when I noticed that a couple of scenery features (wooden fences and low stone walls) were shimmering like crazy. I then remembered that a few other distant scenery objects (radio masts and one or two isolated tall structures) had been shimmering prior to installing this scenery package, but the effect was much more subtle, and not really a serious issue.Unfortunately, the shimmering that I am experiencing with these fences and walls is unacceptable, and I need to find a solution.I discovered a reasonable fix last night after trawling the internet for information, and trying different combinations of AF, AA, and AA transparency settings. Messing around with the first two didn't seem to make any difference, but one forum post caught my eye. This mentioned Sparse Grid Supersampling (SGS) in the AA transparency settings. Specifically, the suggestion was to use 4x SGS to reduce texture shimmering.So I tried it. When I loaded my start position, I immediately noticed that the words in the menu at the top of the screen were slightly blurred compared to previously. Well, at least something had changed! However, when I checked out the textures on those fences and walls, I noticed that the situation had improved considerably. It wasn't perfect, but it was a lot better.Unfortunately, it comes at a price. My framerates appear to be hit very hard using 4x SGS. I tried using 2x SGS, but that was useless in comparison. Anisotropic filtering was set to 16x in these tests, and I flicked between 4xS, 8xS, and 8xSQ settings for AA. Sadly, only the 4x SGS setting made any difference whatsoever to the shimmering textures.Which leads me to the following question.....is there a way to match the magical performance of 4x SGS without the framerate hit?Asus P5K-SE motherboardIntel Core 2 Quad Q9550 CPU @ 2.83Ghz4GB PC2-8500 RAM512MB GeForce 9800GTWindows Vista64FSX is running at 1280x1024x32bit resolution on a 17" monitor, with most graphics settings at maximum.

When I updated my ATI drivers it solved that problem for me. Do you have the latest video card drivers for your system?

I am using the 258.96 Nvidia drivers. Maybe I should update to the new ones, and see what happens?

I am using the 258.96 Nvidia drivers. Maybe I should update to the new ones, and see what happens?

266.xx are the latest drivers, but I'm not sure you will find a solutionother than "brute force" which you have found will cut into your performance..Now you know why some folks are buying $400 video cards and the power supply to feed them..

Now you know why some folks are buying $400 video cards and the power supply to feed them..

not to mention the overclocked i7 and cooling system... :(

Well, I must thank Todd2 for the suggestion to upgrade my graphics drivers. I really didn't think that it would solve the problem, but it has certainly made a difference. I have just installed the latest 266.58 drivers, and there is a significant reduction in shimmering fence and stone wall textures with the same display settings. This has effectively solved the problem for me in the vast majority of locations (apart from some wire fences at one airport, but I have simply deleted them for the moment). Whilst the texture shimmering has not been eliminated, it has now been reduced to what I consider to be an acceptable level. I don't need to use Sparse Grid Supersampling, so my framerates are no different!Just for the record, I am using 16x AF, 8xSQ AA, and 4x Supersampling AA transparency.Thank you, Todd2 :(

ChristopherLike I found SGSS had a dramatic impact on frame rates but cured the shimmering. So delving further into nvidia InspectorI changed Antialiasing transparency Multisampling to "enabled" and changed Antialiasing transparency Supersampling to either just "supersampling" or even "Off/Multisampling" and that worked without too much of a frame rate hit. I used to get swimming instruments in the LionHeart Quest Kodiak, Flight 1 Cessna Mustang and the A2A Cub and this setting "cured" that effect maybe not as good as SGSS but pretty close.RegardsPeterH