Not knockin' the boys who came up with this payware solution to smoothness.....A lot of contributors to this forum have come up with many a FS9 tweak , that helped most of us..'free of charge'..they put in their own troubleshootin time' to give us solutions -so us(me) simmers could have a more smooth flight. They never asked for a thing!I guess all I can do is thank them all ""a bunch"".I suppose the MS FS9 must have been 'snoozin' while desiging the product if that many tweaks were discovered by the simmin community.Wake up MS-FS9 team, or hire the tweakers!!! :)MB

Not the same "tweaks" that you've seen posted, and I've used all of them.

I agree. I too appreciate the tweaks and troubleshooting fellow simmers have provided to the FS community free of charge. I have to disagree though about Microsoft's snoozing while designing FS2K4. A tweak that works on your system may not work as well on my system. Every computer system setup is different and I don't see how any software company can make everyone happy. That's why we'll always need the tweakers and troubleshooters to provide us with their expert assistance. Regards,Jim Young

"A tweak that works on your system may not work as well on my system"....yes Jim, your absolutely correct.I've just finished an e-mail addressed to the author of the Omega Driver sets. In it I thanked him for all his efforts and applauded his recent decision to reinstate the Fast Writes option in the drivers. Many experience problems with stability when FWs is enabled, but that has never been the case on my system and I'm not alone. Moreover, I have demonstrated over and over again that the sim runs noticeably more smoothly in more situations with Fast Writes active. Like many others, my sim setup is currently quite complex with numerous 3rd party enhancements, hires mesh and so on. Demands, therefore, on the hardware are quite intense.As an aside, I have also noted a modest increase in my average 3DMark03 scores with Fast Writes ON, while many others have noted the reverse to be true. All very strange, but I am guessing it may have something to do with it being a timing issue. Certain systems with faster FSBs may just be more prone to instability with Fast Writes ON since they may be less tolerant of small timing variances. This is just me speculating, of course, and has no basis in fact as far as I am aware.My System Specs:Gigabyte GA-8IRXP MoBo (FSB 400Mhz)Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz1GB Crucial PC2100 DDR RamSaphire ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (Omega 2.5.36b)Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 17" Monitor (1280x1024x32)SB Audigy Player (Drivers version 5.12.0001.0443 Signed)Deskstar 120GXP UDMA100 HDs x 2 (60 and 40 Gig)CH Products USB Yoke, Pedals and FighterstickPlantronics Headset and Mike comboPlexWriter 40/12/40APioneer DVD-106SWindows XP Home Edition (SP1)DirectX 9.0bAGP Aperture = 128MBNo overclocking of CPU or GPU3DMark03:Fast Writes OFF = 5379Fast Writes ON = 5388Mike

I think the fast writes are enabled with 8X AGP cards Mike, mine certainly were not enabled until I installed my GF4 Ti4800SE card.However the 3DMark increase I would say is negligable and perhaps confirm the findings at www.tomshardware.com when they did a comparison between 4X AGP & 8X AGP some time back. Basically said the difference was minimal.

Hi Vulcan,"However the 3DMark increase I would say is negligable".....yes, I agree and I was not really suggesting you should try enabling Fast Writes for faster frame rates - it won't happen. The figures do demonstrate that your overall performance should not suffer whether FWs are enabled or not.However, there has to be some explanation why enabling this feature produces a noticeably smoother sim on MY system. Nothing else has changed. It is reproduceable and consequently I know that this effect is real and now wonder why there are some who persist in implying that folk like me may simply be deluding themselves.This 'discovery' was made when Omega released his previous driver set with Fast Writes disabled. Many were experiencing too many problems with FWs enabled and so his decision was understandable. However, sufficient numbers (none, other than myself, seemed to have any interest in flight simulation, according to the posts I read on the DriverHeaven forums) complained about having the choice taken away and so he was persuaded to release the registry changes needed to re-enable this feature. I had been feeling a little disappointed with the performance of FS as it did not feel as fluid and smooth in familiar situations during turns as it had been previously. Like many who have now managed to turn off the frame rate counter I care little about frame rates, but do expect the sim to perform smoothly as much as is reasonably possible. I was on the point of going back to the previous driver set when I heard the word was out that Omega had relented. As soon as the registry changes were made I had my sim back and I was very pleased :)This is probably all irrelevant for the majority of folk out there but it does serve to illustrate how different our systems can be when "tweaks" are applied. What works for you may not work for me and vice versa. It does not make each tweak less valid, however.I have no idea why this works in my case and not for others. It may have something to do with chipset, choice/quality of ram, FSB speed, cas latency setting, whether the CPU or GPU have been overclocked etc, etc. Who knows, but it would interesting to find out.Mike

I somehow got FS9 to run on my "ancient"AMD 1.4 thunderbird1 gb ddr2700 ram200 gb western digital hdsb audigy platinum w/ logitech z-680 5.1gf 4 ti4600 x4agpstarstorm 56.72 X drivers (I think the drivers make all the difference with my good graphics card)windows xp30% ai trafficall sliders maxed and res 1280x10242xQ AA4x AFAll with a little tweaking the fs9.cfg and downloading the smaller texture packs available here on avsim and elsewhere.