Is it just me, but most of my flightsload up with fog everywhere forcing me to use the Clearsky plugin. Is this XP9s way of controlling FPS?

Yes. Fog is x planes way of keeping 19fps.Going by your graphics card, GTX 480, you may be pushing your graphics card dependant settings up too high for the card to handle them. Can you post a screenshot of your settings?

Oh this happens on my laptop, desktop is in pieces.