In several responses to yesterday's post by a customer of Flight Simulator Graphics Solutions, there was a request for screenshots, so...I took the attached screenshots last night. They were originally at 1280 x 1024 resolution (19" flat screen monitor), but I resized to 800 x 600 to comply with the forum's 125 Kb limit for attachment size. Obviously, the higher resolution pictures are a bit more impressive... however, I think these demonstrate the sim quality I got after a session with FS-GS.The first pic shows a flight from St. Just, UK included in the RealAir Decathlon package. The weather is included in the flight, and the ground textures are default MSFS.The second pic shows RealAir's Scout over Stillwater, Oklahoma using downloaded real weather (fortuitously, it turned out to be overcast) and Ruud Faber's FScene textures for the USA.The third pic shows a flight from Bear Gulch Aviation included in the RealAir Scout package. The weather is included in the flight, and the ground textures are Ruud Faber's FScene for the USA.Disclaimers:1. No, I'm not associated with FS-GS in any way, aside from being a satisfied customer.2. There is no particular reason for including RealAir's planes in all the shots. On another day, I might be flying Bill Lyons' Piper Apache, Captain Sim's Yak 3, or MAAM's B-25. That said, the Scout sure is sweet :)3. I haven't touched up the pictures at all... that's the way they came off the screen. The trees are default MSFS. The mesh is Justin Tyme's FSGenesis.4. I hope the jpegs show up. This is my first time posting a pic to the forum, and I've included as attachments. If they don't come through, someone please tell me what I did wrong. Thanks! :)Dell Dimension 8300P4 2.8 GHzATI 9800 Pro1 Gig RAMKen

Lovely shots and a good choice of planes!Looks about the same on my system, so I figure that I'm in good shape!

Nice shots and the performance is about what I'd expect from that system. It's similar to what I get but it's very hard to tell exactly how big the difference is because of the dynamic nature of the FS world.Anyway, I'm running:AthlonXP 2400+ @ 2.2 GHz on a 183MHz bus (essentially a 2800+)512MB RAMRadeon 9700 ProI am happy with the performance considering my system is well over 1.5 years old now. It comes down to sacrificing some things - don't use 3D clouds with the highest visiblity and 10 layers and don't use PMDG and Dreamfleet aircraft as AI, for example :-lolCurrently running a dual-harddrive setup (one 160GB and one 120GB, both 7200 RPM/8MB drives). My next rig will probably use RAID or SATA 10k RPM for storage. Actually I'm quite excited about my next project - I'm going for one of those mini systems that have started appearing, but I plan on making it just as good as any full-sized tower, using an Athlon64 CPU, the latest (one-slot...) videocard and lots of low-latency, high-speed storage - adding extra fans and external PSU's as needed :-lolOn the second shot I see complex weather with 3D clouds still kills the framerate. I guess the only solution here is to save up for one of those new $500 ATI or Nvidia cards - you can't magically turn a 9800 or 9700 into a 6800 no matter how much you tweak it.

<>Thanks! You can really feel the effect of the floats on the amphibian version!<>Actually, it's still above 20, which is generally accepted as good. More importantly, the sim was very smooth when I took that shot. Before my FS-GS session, overcast real-world weather like that would have brought the sim to its knees.Ken

"Actually, it's still above 20, which is generally accepted as good"Yes, 20 is still acceptable but to me, only 30+ FPS looks totally smooth. This is the framerate I aim for in FS but of course it's not always possible to maintain when you add lots of clouds or AI traffic.I bet that without weather you'd get more than twice that FPS (I know I would on my systen) which means that clouds still have a big impact on the performance (probably in the region of a 50% performance drop).

You're absolutely right, Jimmi. Weather and autogen seem to have the greatest affect on frame rates.I typically don't fly with the frame counter on, but I knew that's what people would want to see in the shots. So I turned it on, and I was surprised to see what kind of frame rates I was getting. At one point, I was in the mountains with fairly clear weather, and I saw the counter go over 100. Of course, that was an anomaly... but it sure shocked me! I didn't include a screenshot of that because I don't think it's very representative.Ken

I've also seen FPS over 100 at times and it's often in the range of 40-50 FPS. Autogen is a real killer especially the new default.xml-placed objects and vector objects in FS2004 - I disabled most of them and was shocked to see an FPS increased of 50-75% over e.g. Seattle.

Nice shots. What about the AI setting? I'm a fan of lots of AI with many different aircraft, and I know what a performance killer this can be so I'd be interested to know about this on your system?

>You're absolutely right, Jimmi. Weather and autogen seem to>have the greatest affect on frame rates.>>I typically don't fly with the frame counter on, but I knew>that's what people would want to see in the shots. So I turned>it on, and I was surprised to see what kind of frame rates I>was getting. At one point, I was in the mountains with fairly>clear weather, and I saw the counter go over 100. Of course,>that was an anomaly... but it sure shocked me! I didn't>include a screenshot of that because I don't think it's very>representative.>>KenYup fps counts ;) And the only time you can forget about fps is when you have enough fps :)

<I have Traffic set to 100 percent, and in general I have no problems. For example, Seattle-Tacoma with default AI looks good and feels good. But I can definitely tell if there are frame-rate eating aircraft in the mix.Ken

I'd like to see what numbers this guy get's around scenery like Simflyers KIAH or KEWR, then I'll be impressed...All of us mostly with good machines get good framerates with the default scenery. As long as we've tweaked the sim we have no problem. Show us the stuff that counts and that's the performance with addon scenery like Simflyers...

Noticed one interesting thing right off the bat - FS-GS apparently doesn't recommend locking the framerate slider. I thought it had been established that setting it to unlimited actually takes resources away from the sim for processing AI, texture load, etc and pushes them toward raw FPS... Hopefully they'll email me back soon, as I'd like to ask about this now too.

That may be just to show the actual performance he gets out of it ;) I still think they recommend locking the fps even though you can of course tweak it so it don

"I thought it had been established that setting it to unlimited actually takes resources away from the sim for processing AI, texture load, etc and pushes them toward raw FPS..."I have yet to see any proof of this. The only reason I see to fly with the framerate locked is if you want more consistent FPS. For example, some prefer to have 25 FPS all the time, rather than having the framerate jump between 25 and 100 FPS depending on what's in view at the time.Textures load faster with unlimited FPS. This is why it's recommended to use unlimited framerate over photographic sceneries. I have PAI installed and with framerate @ unlimited I still get AI planes everywhere. There's a separate slider for AI traffic density, and I doubt the Framerate slider would override it.

I have to agree, I have done a LOT of testing with and without frame rates locked. Seems to me its better with the slider set to unlimited. If I lock it at say 27 then the dips just seem to be worse than If I let it run at unlimited. No matter what i do, the frame rate still fluctuates too muh to get a totally smooth sim, unless I am out in the countryside away from scenery dense areas. I see this fluctuation in frame rate as one of the core problems with the sim. A simple test is park at any airport, go to spot view an watch the frame rate flutter around, that should not happen. I'm wondering how many others see something similar.Hornit