Hello!I would like to know if anyone has found really good settings forFS 9, with regard to performance?I use a lot of addons, a lot of AI-traffic, etc. and I think Icould get more out of my sim.Predsent setup: P4 2.53 gHz, 1 Gig RAM, GeForce 4200 Ti 64MBGrateful for help.PS. I want to keep my resolution: 1280x1024 DS.Thanks!Hans HermanssonSweden

What RAM are you using?Try setting your mip-map level at 4 instead of 8. I did this and noticed absolutley no difference in visual quality (of course I fly GA a lot) and my performance smoothed out...not that it was bad at all before. I did the mip-map thing to eliminate shimmering.

Hi Hans,Have you taken a look at my FS2004 and WinXP Optimization Guide? It's pinned at the top of the MS Flight Simulator Hardware Discussion section. I made this a link you can just click on. You probably won't gain a lot of performance by going through the guide but it'll probably help a little. And as they say, every little bit helps! ;)Regards,Jim

I don't think there's any single "magic bullet" that will do this for you although a newer video card with more video RAM would help a lot, especially if you use FSAA, something that really slows down the 4200. The tips posted on AVSIM and elsewhere will help but the most important aspect of tuning MSFS is deciding what your bottom line is and then having a willingness to downgrade to get there. If you insist on maximum traffic and running everything to the max you may never get to the point where the sim is enjoyable to fly. Less then 100% on a lot of these settings will not change your experience that much but can go a long way towards making the sim flyable.TonyDigital-Flight

I think that the bottom line is that there is no one set-up that suits everyone's PC.When you've read a few hundred of the posts here and in other similar forums it becomes very apparent that the same or similar settings on two apparently identical(or near identical) PCs will produce vastly differing results in terms of performance even assuming all machines involved are running on default FS scenery etc. As soon as you bring addon scenery/aircraft etc into the equation you open a whole new can of worms.IMHO the only way to get the best from your particular machine with FS is to try all the various settings ( one at a time) ,watch the results and either keep or reject that setting before moving on to the next.Apply the same principle to "tweaks"( both OS and BIOS)- some tweaks work for some people- some don't. For instance - there has been a lot written about using applications such as FS Autostart which turn off background running processes. Some people swear by it - it's improved their FS performance by (in some cases) significant amounts and made the difference between awful and acceptable performance.For others - less so. Personally - I couldn't find any difference when using that type of application. I'm not saying it doesn't work - just that it may not produce a noticeable change in performance for everyone .Dave