A graphics ** is a sad person to be but my counselor says I'm getting better and I'll get over it some day.I'm sure most in here want their game to look its best but I'd like to hear what settings are you turning down in your FSX game to achieve your personal performance requirements? This can include disabling addons btw.I'll assume Bloom off, DX10 off are the top ones but what other settings have you turned off or sacrificially reduced?

These are some of the ones I've noticed:AI traffic - framerateroad traffic - stutterslimit cloud layers (registered fsuipc or weather program) - framerate and stuttersground shadows - varies from pc to pcThe performance hit from shadows is an absolute crime. To think you would have to wait over 5 years after release to maybe finally have hardware powerfull enough to turn on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .wait for it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .SHADOWS??? It's the most basic yet crucial element for a realistic, believable 3d world.

Ground shadows, water reflections and bloom. The latter looks unrealistic anyway so no loss for me.

Guess most in here run with everything on or set to max.

What are your computer specs?

Cloud draw distance, but I balance that out by adjusting maximum visibility in AS2012 so that it still looks right. I use high coverage vs. maximum as well.I don't use shadows and honestly don't notice much of a difference in practice. No bloom obviously. Use ENB mod instead.

I keep water at Low 2.X, aircraft and scenery shadows off, airport/road/water traffic turned off. Besides that it's at the max.

I gain a frame or two in the busiest areas from having dropped the following:Scenery complexity to Very ComplexAutogen to Very DenseAirline Traffic 30% and GA traffic 40%Cars around 10%Water 1 notch from the highest.Bloom is off, obviously...None of these bother me though and I can't tell too much difference in terms of visual fidelity between these settings and the max.The single biggest concession I make for FPS/smoothness Vs. image quality is i have DX10 preview switched on, thus losing the ability to use NVIDA inspector to enhance the AF and AA and having to put up with flickering runways etc.Odd really - I have tweaked and tweaked and re-tweaked, experimented with all every combination of .cfg settings and PC settings I could think off, run from several different completely clean installs of both the OS and FSX and the one thing that consistently gives me a noticeably smoother flight experience over anything else, is running the DX10 preview mode.Pretty annoying, as I have the game looking really beautiful with the Inspector tweaks and a few subtle FXAA enhancements under DX9...I just can't stand the micro-stutters and lowered FPS!