Keep in mind that what you see isn't the same as capturing accurate motion to simulate flight, and responsiveness to control inputs. While 20-25 may indeed "look" smoothon your screen, significant movement is in fact being lost between frames (especially importiant during final approach and landing). You need at least 25-30FPS to accurately capture the motion part of the equation. Rob Young at RealAir Simulations (few better to advise on flight dynamics in FS)recommends a minumum of 35fps for their Marchetti.Of course this is difficult to achieve on many systems without serious compromise on the eye candy sliders.Best,Joel

I keep mine set right at 27 FPS. These seems to make FS run the best for me, if I turn it up to 30 I get some anomalies that tend to effect cockpit and aircraft redraws. So , 27 works best for me!

I have mine locked at 30 fps, and it stays there most of the time.Pentium 4 2.6 Ghz 800 FSB Gigabyte GA-81PE1000 Pro1 Gb dual-channel 400 Mhz DDR80 Gb Seagate S/ATA HD256 Mb nvidia GeForce5600 Soundblaster Audigy 2 Windows XP HomeJim

As an old habit from FS2002 days, where frame rate limiting did reduce texture blur, I had my frame rate in FS2004 locked at 30 until a week ago.Now set to unlimited, I get no blurriness and there is no impact on smoothness. Granted, > 30 FPS doesn't make the sim perform hugely faster, but it does make me feel good that I'm not wasting all those FPS ;)Gary

Always leave it on max (if you are using FS2004)I do great framerates, no blurries

Yeah, thats all well and good, but at 150fps things get very wierd indeed, it just feels wierd at the high end of framerates.Dan.

24 fps works great for me. If I set it at unlimited, my framerates go from one extreme to the next, so I don't bother doing that anymore.

18 FPS MAX works the best on my system (PIII 1ghz, Nvidia GF4MX440 card with dual 17" monitors, 512MB SDRAM, Windows XP Pro) and gives me the smoothest performance.Also the "re-draws" of the outside scenery is the fastest at this limit.I tried 20 and 25 fps, but I still get the best performance with the slider set at 18fps max.Happy Simming!Scott :-)ATP/CFII - KCOS

Like many others, I too used a figure of around 25-30 to lock at. Again, like many others that have posted here, I've found that unlimited is better.Also forget displaying FPS, unless you get so low it stutters, FPS doesn't matter. Aside from that, if anyone is looking at instant FPS because they've not edited the cfg file tomake it show average FPS, the figure being shown is meaningless.

Just wondered where my sig disappeared to in the earlier post :-)http://www.blandreynolds.btinternet.co.uk/DF_PG_sm.gif

>1. 24FPS is motion picture quality and smooth enough for me>in almost any situation.While 24 FPS IS motion picture quality, we're not talking about motion pictures, are we! ;)"24 FPS is all we can see" is a Computer Legend!!While 24 FPS is certainly smooth for some, it's been shown that with computer graphics, the human eye can detect persistance-of-vision anomolies at much higher frame rates. 24 FPS for films is an acceptable number because the of the film itself. Film, by nature, consists of little photographs - in these photographs is motion blur, which smoothes out the appearance of motion between frames. In essence, On a computer screen, you are NOT getting this motion blur effect. The computer is outputting a fully crisp and perfectly rendered image every 24 frames, which makes the motion much more jumpy.Lets take an example... Throw a football across the field of view of a movie and of a computer image, in which the ball is in frame for 12 frames (1/2 second)... With the movie, you'd see the football, but it would be in the form of a oblong blob, distorting from the beginning of the exposure to the end on each frame (illustrating the motion taking place during the exposure). On the computer screen, it's a perfectly formed ball jumping from one position to the next (as if the football was suspended in one place during that frame).Thus, film effectively captures the motion happening during the frames through motion blur, making 24 FPS acceptable. Computers do NOT get this motion, and the only way to make up for it is to add more frames to imcrease the number of "capture points" for a given object's motion. 3DFX was pioneering motion blur in their 3D video cards way back when, but nVidia came on the scene and stole their thunder and customers. And then, 3DFX disappeared along with the motion blur work.I personally keep my slider down on 20-24. It is an acceptable rate for me because I am trading up for some additional eye candy. I get good performance in almost all situations at that locked rate. It is ONE HELL OF A LOT SMOOTHER if I let it go up to 30 or 40, but it gets choppy when I get in dense areas.Hope this helps to dispel the 24 FPS legend...-Greg

>>film itself. Film, by nature, consists of little photographs ->in these photographs is motion blur, which smoothes out>the appearance of motion between frames. In essence, >>On a computer screen, you are NOT getting this motion blur>effect. ....>Hope this helps to dispel the 24 FPS legend...>Greg,Frankly I am not so sure about this myth ....I have seen the above argument repeated in other places and I do have some basic problems with it. Take for example Walt Disney's animations. They were put together by combining 24 of ultra sharp individual frames - if someone ever watched a documenatry on Walt Disney's animation technique could certainly appreciate absolute sharpness of their drawings with no 'motion blur'. And despite very intense action in those movies you see absolutely no need for more frames - it is perfectly fluid at least for my eyes.It is quite possible that in today's computerized world some bluriness is being skilfully injected into animations for extra realism however looking back at Disney's 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs it is good enough for me.;)Michael J.

I don't think anyone is saying 24fps isn't "good enough." I think the point being made was that while 24fps (or even less actually) might give a reasonable sense of motion in a game, 30 or 40 or more definitely gives a game a much smoother visual flow. I've heard people argue that the human eye isn't capable of resolving more than 30fps so anything above 30 is a waste. This is another falacy.

>I've heard people argue that the human eye isn't>capable of resolving more than 30fps so anything above>30 is a waste. This is another falacy. It may be a falacy but I am talking about practicality and not some laboratory setup where humans are asked to look for a difference. I argue that an average viewer could not see much difference between 24 fps and say 48 fps if such was available in Disney's animation. In other words anything beyond 24 fps and we are moving into region of quickly diminishing returns.Michael J.

After reading all the above - last night I unlocked the FPS and let the sim run free.Normally I keep locked at 35.I tried various sceneries(Default at KSEA, low level thru Grand Canyon/Boulder Dam area in AC500/E2C on an aircraft carrier /XB70 at mach 2 at 70000 ft over Arizona )The result - well OK the fps leaps up to phenomenal numbers at times - as said above very high numbers seen to produce some odd effects.. The main thing however that I noticed that in Spot Plane view - if you do a complete 360 lookaround ( IE the point of view orbits around the aircraft,) the result is much much smoother with the FPS locked at 35 than it is unlocked - even though the unlocked FPS may be well above 35.Why ? I have no idea but I shall continue to stay at 35 locked.DaveSystem.MSI KT6V-LSR(MS-7021)AMD Athlon XP3000.768 MB 333mhz DDRAMTi4200/128MB GPU.60.72 driversMaxtor 80GB HDD(7200rpm)Maxtor 40GB HDD(7200rpm)LG CDRWLG CDR 52Xo/b AC97 soundThermaltake 480W PSUWinXP- SP1.Direct X 9BSaitek Cyborg 3D Joystick