Andy,I'm running an FX5600 ultra and am having the same problem as you but only scince i installed the 53.03 drivers. I had very little shimmering with 52.16 but the improvment in water quality with 53.03 make it hard for me to go back. however i expect to revert to 52.16 soon because as wonderfull as the water is with the latest drivers the whole sim is looking like AA is turned off when in fact i've got it on 2xQ.I relise that this porbably wont help you but my best advice would be to delete you fs9 cfg and start with all your graphics setting from scratch and see what various new setting give you.rgds,Callum

Thanks Callum. I did try deleting the FS9.cfg and starting from scratch - no joy.I have put the 53.03 back in, have 2XAA and 4XAF, mip map set to 4 in sim and no LOD change. The shimmering is still there and its *just* acceptable.I will continue to monitor the forums for "shimmering", but all I want to do now is enjoy a bit of flying!Cheers,Andy

Certain types and modes of Anti-Aliasing promote shimmer, others do not. You would be better off reading up on the differences outside of the forums for FS, as it's a technical issue that I think has only ever been touched on here. I did see a techie site that had a very informative article on AF and AA - I'll try and find the site reference for you.FSAA in Nvidia cards is, I believe, the last modification applied to the image before display, so if the basic image is flawed then no amount of tweaking will fix it. AA and anisotropic filtering are bedfellows designed to be used in conjunction with each other, and in conjunction with LOD adjustments. Basic LOD adjustments are available through the Nvidia Control Panel as image quality checkboxes. Check `Highest Quality` as a first step then tweak Anistropic Filtering from there, concluding with an appropriate level of anti-aliasing (which can be achieved through experimentation). Stay away from `modified` FSAA levels with Nvidia cards in FS (so Quincunx, 4xs, 6xs and all other mods made available by the various tweak engines) as this will cause problems with display of clouds or other items within the sim, possibly including certain types of building. You should also not be afraid to experiment with the default sliders in the sim - just switching the scenery global modifier from `custom` to one of the pre-selected combinations has drastically improved display quality for some.Finally, check that you have appropriate settings for your monitor - only being able to select 72Hz at 1600x1200x32 suggests to me that you are right at the limit of your monitors display abilities. Perhaps you need new monitor `drivers` or a lower res with higher levels of AA and FSAA. Is your monitor running at a `native` resolution at such high res? Possibly just switching to one of the non-4:3 ratios might help - 1280x1024 rather than 1280x960, then adjust the monitor settings to restore the ratio?You should strive to reach 8x level for anisotropic filtering as this uses a layered filtering that best removes the shimmering effect. It is also important to note that anisotropic filtering is a modified version of trinlinear filtering, so trilinear MUST be selected in the sim. However, if this all results in unacceptable fps losses then you have little choice but to reduce the level to 4x or even 2x. But don't turn it off or the mesh texture goes blurry, leaving the autogen scenery even more prominent, making the shimmering worse.Hope this helpsAllcott

Andy, I'm sure that everyone has their favorite settings, but I have a very similar configuration to yours and would not consider going back to FS2002..For what it is worth, here are my settings:P4-2.8, WinXP Pro, 512 Meg, Ti4200-128 52.16 official Nvidia drivers. In FS9.. 1280x960x32, AA off, MipMap=4, Trilinear ON, Autogen normalIn Nvidia properties.. best quality, AA=2, AF=4, Refresh 85 HzThis gives me solid 25 fps rates and, to my eyes, very good visuals..As you said, back to flying! If you need a nice experience, fly any one of RealAir's planes.. the SF-260 or the Decathlon are both amazing..Best of luck!

Allcott, I have looking at this forum since FS9 came (before that too of course) and I have never heard a better explanation for the cause of shimmering and the possible solutions and especially solutions that won't help. It's a copy and paste answer that will go into our CVA FAQ site if I can manage it.As far as screen res. He problably has a LCD montior like I do and 72hz is often the highest you can get. I odn't know why this is so, but it is the same with my monitor.Thks for the info.RonCVA1701

The guys at megascenery have done a thorough treatment of this with their textures. Download their tweaker from the library. in short, it is a compromise. Higher MIP = more shimmer. This can be counteracted by increasing AA and/or AF, but at some point, your PC won't be able to handle it. Gotta find a blend that works for you. I'm happy with MIPs at 6, AA and AF at 2x via aTuner.Good luck!sg

link please--qnh

Thanks Allcott, Bert and Gridley.72hz is the highest I can get at 1600*1200 (Mitsubishi CRT). I have tried 1280*960 @ 85hz - no difference. 1600*1200 doesn't cause me any FPS loss - and I am used to it from FS2002 days (although I didnt need AA or AF in 2002).I run a second monitor at 1280*960. I have the drivers installed for both monitors.I will try the non 4:3 resolutions and see if that makes any difference. I will also try and get AF up to 8X.I have tried all of the "default" scenery settings (i.e. medium, high etc.). Makes no difference. I am not at all affraid to play with the settings! I back up my fs9.cfg file, make a heap of changes one by one and if I don't like the result, I simply restore the .cfg.Bert: I have tried those exact same settings and still have the shimmering.Thanks again for everyones assistance.Andy

Andy...Just for kicks, lower your FS2004 resolution to 800x600. Do you still get the shimmering? I'm curious whether the Nvidia + the higher res has something to do with it... At 800x600, LOD of -.5, default FS2004 AA and Trilinear filtering, and 2XAF set through Rivatuner. I have no other .cfg tweaks, and I get no shimmering. I've been forced to use 800x600 because it's easier on my eyes, and I run it with a monitor refresh of 75MHZ...I should also note that I run FS2004 in fullscreen 32 bit mode, whilst my desktop is in 16 bit mode.-John

Hi John,I have tried it at 800*600 with AFX4 and AAX2 - but not with the LOD at -0.5. The shimmering was still there. The negative LOD just seems to create extreme blurries no matter what resolution.I have a theory that this a DirectX (Direct3D) issue. Why? Because both NVidia and ATI users are suffering. Reading the forums at Guru3D, FS2004 is not the only application with the problem. The only common denominator is DirectX.Cheers,Andy

I've read this thread with interest and actually applied some of the suggestions.I should really write down everything I do, cos right at the moment I'm stuck in work not at my PC at home and having some trouble remembering what I did.Anyway here goes.I unchecked the box ??????? to renderI did the line change in the cfg file regarding NVIDIA CArds, that was mentioned in a different post.I got the new nvidia 53.01 driversI put mimapping to 5 (that made a real difference re shimmies)Messed about with the nvidia settings such as changing from performance to quality and back again.and a whole bunch of other stuff and I have to say that a lot of the problems that I had but which didn't really bother me at all have all gone.The most radical improvement was the elimination of jaggies on planes, this was achieved by unchecking the to render box in fs9 settings under hardware.sorry if this post is slightly confusing but hpe it helps in some small wayWycliffe

I'm curious about your settings in FS2002. There was no slider in that version, only a check box, so is this a setting outside the sim in a "tweak" program?

i have a radeon 9700Pro (3.10) and i have no shimmies, mind you i used to get them so i will put up my settings, well it cant hurt.. i run the sim at 1280x1024 @ 90Hz with 6xAA and 8xAF. in the sim itself, everything is maxxed except the cloud distance which is set to 80 miles and the water effects which, for some reason, actually kills my fps if on high and as it looks worse anyway.... Detail textures are set to land and water. my hardware has not changed since i had the shimmies so i would assume that it has something to do with the external gfx card settings, cheers, James

hi tdragger,you are right. there is no Mip-Map slider fs2002 - only a check box. i stand corrected. i Did have the Mip-Map boxed checked in 2002. as i mentioned in a latter post you should be able to (IMHO) max the Mip-Map slider in fs2004 without getting the shimmering. for me anyway, there was very little shimmering in fs2002. it's much much worse in fs2004. happy flyin, fm