Thanks for pointing out this BlueSphere project. I haven't installed it yet but from the pics it looks like it is a great improvement.Michael J.

Xplane by default sets visibility at 10 miles-and has a maximum visibility of only 25 miles.Mystery of good frame rates/stutters solved?! I have always maintaned (since fs2000) that if MS limited the maximum visibility to similar parameters there would be much fewer complaints of performance/stutters! Visiblity (along with autogen, antialising, and ai traffic) is one of the biggest performance killers :-)Where I live > than 25 miles happens few times a year 80 miles is not unusual-but it seems if MS had a default much less than it is now a lot of complaining could be avoided....http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Hi,Looking at your screenshot right now:You have visibility limited to 5000/100 = 50NM when weather is clear.You have visibility limited to 2000/100 = 20NM when weatehr is Cloudy.You have visibility limited to 2000/100 = 20NM when weather is o/cast.YOu have visibility limited to 1000/100 = 10NM when weather is rainy.In the box below that, where it says "Stop visibility going below", if you enter the number 1100 there, then that will solve the poor visibility FS9 renders when the visibility is reported aa 10NM. This is because it will stop FS9 from making the visibility go below 11NM.

I agree, most times you can't see very far from a real airplane, I leave my setting at 60 miles, because that's as low as it goes without add ons, I flew from Jackson Hole headed North over the Tetons, Real scene 2004 installed.http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/72534.jpgThe mesh adds to look of the Mts.http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/72535.jpgHave Fun :-vuurAllanBush Flying Unlimitedhttp://avsim.com/hangar/air/bfu/logo70.gif

>I agree, most times you can't see very far from a real>airplane, I leave my setting at 60 miles, because that's as>low as it goes without add ons, >I flew from Jackson Hole headed North over the Tetons, Real>scene 2004 installed.>Nice pics. I was flying that way (virtually)on Monday. I just wish there was a better way for FS to show cliff faces. Victor

>I agree, most times you can't see very far from a real>airplane, I leave my setting at 60 miles, because that's as>low as it goes without add ons, ??, you can set the visibilty down to 1/16 of a mile.Kurt M

Actually X Plane doesn't handle this very well at all. First of all, limiting visibility to 25 miles is simply not very realistic. Longer visibility ranges are common in many parts of the world. Even here in my location northwest of Seattle it's not unusual to be able to see Mt. Rainer and that's a straight line distance of 60 miles. While it's true that reducing vis. distance in MSFS will give you a few more FPS it's not a huge difference. If you're having problems with stutters reducing vis. distance probably won't eliminate the problem. X Plane on the other hand is very inefficient in the way scenery is displayed and takes a huge hit if you extend vis. out to the maximum range of 25 miles. Going from 5 miles vis. to 25 miles cuts my frame rate in half in X Plane. The 25 mile limit in X Plane is not there for realism, it's there to keep the sim running.TonyDigital-Flight

To answer the original question: yes, I always have reduced visibility. Unlimited vis. looks utterly artificial and kills any atmosphere if you're into that kind of thing which I am. As someone else pointed out though, 10 miles vis, looks wrong. I think that those who take screenshots of their scenery should always add some reduced vis. to enhance the look of their work.

.. and as it was pointed out both unlimited visibility and 10- mile visibility issues can be solved with a single stroke by using the BlueSphere textures.Michael J.

I did mention that the West of the US often has these higher visibility ranges-but I think you will find "more common" much less visibility than that in most parts of the world the majority of the time. We have 60 miles visibility where I live also-but the majority of the time if you get 8-10 miles that is great. I just looked at some stats for Seattle-out of the year 229 cloudy days,160 precip days, 79 partly cloudy days, 57 clear days....Just suggesting that the default being set at a lower level (with the option to increase it) might more sense than the highest (unlimited).I would disagree with visibility setting not making a huge difference in performance-it has on every computer I have ever owned-along of course with ai traffic, antialising, and autogen since fs2002-and usually more in the "stuttering" area than fps.When fs2000 came out and stuttering was the complaint-visibiliity settings were found to be a huge factor.As for xplane....no disagreement there.http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/rxp-pilot.jpg

Done it Anthony,looks bloody marvellous now,and guess what...those annoying little stutters are gone too.thanks very much for you're help,Steve

Well even in crystal clear weather you don

I use Bluesphere with 10 mile visibility, and it looks like a photograph.BUT- be sure to reduce your "Cloud Draw Distance" to the same as your visibility- this not only adds to the realism, but drawing clouds out to 20-30 miles makes a big hit to FPS.You have to manuallu alter this in the FS9.cfg file, and be sure to check it every once in a while as FS has a way of resetting it to default 30 if you access certain settings menus.Best,Joel

I have to thank all who post on this forum for their wisdom and expertise. When this post was much newer, I read it, and it started a chain reaction that resulted in my installing Bluesphere, Chris' Clouds, and AS 2004. Ultimately, this post helped me get my system working much better than it used to.All hobbies should be so fortunate as to have a forum like this!

The reason you need to have a low visibility in x-plane is because the textures don't have any mipmaps, and the mesh doesn't feature dynamic LOD.In FS, the mesh is rendered at a lower resolution farther from the viewer wheere high detail isn't needed. Scenery textures also use a lower quality farther from the viewer. So, going from 20 to 100 miles of visiblity doesn't make a big difference to the performance of the sim since you add very little in terms of CPU+GPU workload. Adjusting cloud draw distance has a great impact however, try setting up a flight with lots of clouds and Cloud Draw Distance and 3D clouds at the highest setting then gradually reduce the draw distance. You should see a big FPS improvement every time you reduce draw distance on notch.In X-Plane, the mesh is rendered at the highest resolution all the way to the horizon and and the scenery textures are not mipmapped (they are mipmapped on your videocard to reduce "shimmering" but the textures themselves only contain one miplevel).One GREAT feature of X-Plane is the ability to adjust autogen draw distance. In FS, this distance is fixed. In FS2002 it was around 3-5 miles and in FS2004 it's up to almost 30 miles for certain objects. If it was possible to set autogen distance to something more sensible in FS2004, performance would improve.