http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=xKRsCpx4

 

It's fairly self-explanatory. The right hand column lists the settings I am using since needing to tweak Flight for Alaska's more demanding locale. It looks almost as good as all max settings, but runs much smoother.

 

Before editing your Flight.cfg, back up both %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Flight and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Flight to be on the safe side.

 

To edit Flight.cfg go to %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Flight and open Flight.cfg in your text editor of choice. Make sure to set Custom=1. Changes can be made while Flight is running. Pause Flight (ESC), Alt-Tab out of Flight, make changes, save, Alt-Tab back to Flight.

 

My recommended settings should be a good starting point. Autogen would probably be the first thing to lower to gain more performance.

 

Good places to test are Honolulu, Anchorage, and Bear Creek. Set conditions to sunset or sunrise with weather to truly test your settings.

Flight is new to me, and thank you for your recommendations.

 

My system is a laptop i7 2630QM 4 core 2.0/2.9 in turboboost and ATI Mobility Radeon 6570M. 8GB RAM

 

Did you test with the GPU option to let the application or the GPU to take care of the Antialising and other GPU options.

 

Thanks for your help.

Great list! Good work!

When you say back up, is that just a matter of making a copy of the default settings and keeping them in a file on your PC ?

I only ask because I have never played with any of the files in Flight before and don`t want to screw up.

When you say back up, is that just a matter of making a copy of the default settings and keeping them in a file on your PC ?

I only ask because I have never played with any of the files in Flight before and don`t want to screw up.

 

What he means is you should copy both folders to a safe location (might be another or folder or drive or USB stick). So not copy the text out of the cfg into a new document but copy everything.

 

SInce the folders are hidden by default, the easiest way to get to them is to copy this

 

%APPDATA%\Microsoft

 

into the search option of the taskbar (click on the Start button or whatever you call that to see the search option), hit Enter and the folder will open. Copy the entire Flight folder to another location.

 

Repeat with

 

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft

 

After that use the above lines to get to Flight.cfg inside the Flight folder. To directly open it, you could copy this in the search option

 

%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Flight\Flight.cfg

 

You could also create a shortcut the Flight.cfg on your desktop if you plan on tweaking a lot.

OK Thanks. I`ll have a good look through all this before I change anything.

This is fantastic, thank you.

 

I'm going to try it...but one question...in Hawaii, I had everything maxed out. (max on what was possible, high on the few that only go to high) in Alaska, (turning off vertical synch helps alot) I am finding that I slow down to 20fps or so over dense autogen.

So, I turned two things down a bit..sharpness and scenery quality are now set to high, and my fps is great again.

However, because of the lower scenery quality setting, I have lost my water reflections....which is a shame, as my slowdown never occured becuase of water, so I'd like to get that back. Do you know if there is a cfg setting that brings back my water reflections, without changing the scenery quality back to generic maximum?

Did you test with the GPU option to let the application or the GPU to take care of the Antialising and other GPU options.

 

I briefly tried Nvidia's FXAA, but it was far worse than in-game AA. I've not tried any sort of MSAA. I do however force 16x anisotropic filtering, it makes a big difference on the ground and on approach.

 

@J van E: Thanks for clearing up my lack of verbosity.

 

Do you know if there is a cfg setting that brings back my water reflections, without changing the scenery quality back to generic maximum?

 

HIGH has water reflecting sun, clouds, and terrain. I honestly can't tell the difference between HIGH and MAX, but HIGH runs much better. On MEDIUM you lose terrain reflections, but keep the rest.

HIGH has water reflecting sun, clouds, and terrain. I honestly can't tell the difference between HIGH and MAX, but HIGH runs much better. On MEDIUM you lose terrain reflections, but keep the rest.

are you sure? I could have sworn I lost terrain reflections on high. Plus, I just found this post by Jeroen

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/364699-graphic-settings-examples/

he has screen shots, and says in the post that maximum quality gives reflections plus "effects" but high only gives "effects" same as medium. That's also been my experience.

are you sure? I could have sworn I lost terrain reflections on high. Plus, I just found this post by Jeroen

http://forum.avsim.n...tings-examples/

he has screen shots, and says in the post that maximum quality gives reflections plus "effects" but high only gives "effects" same as medium. That's also been my experience.

 

Yes, afaik high loses terrain reflections. Someone else corrected me btw by saying you keep the cloud reflections.

 

@J van E: Thanks for clearing up my lack of verbosity.

 

You're welcome. I am known for my verbosity... I can't even say 'You're welcome' without adding a few lines to it which don't add anything to the purpose of the post. I always have problems saying things in one clear sentence. See...?

are you sure? I could have sworn I lost terrain reflections on high.

 

SceneryQuality=HIGH sets ReflectionQuality=LOW.

SceneryQuality=MAXIMUM sets ReflectionQuality=MAX.

 

J's shots are using the ingame presets. I'm suggesting you set ReflectionQuality=HIGH in Flight.cfg and ignore the presets.

J's shots are using the ingame presets. .

 

Correct. My last post here was also about the ingame High setting and not the settings in the cfg itself!

sorry, I wasn't clear enough...I know Jeroen's post was dealing with in-game presets...I wanted the cfg setting to bring back my full water reflections when on high

 

Do you know if there is a cfg setting that brings back my water reflections, without changing the scenery quality back to generic maximum?

 

and you've given it to me! THX

 

I'm suggesting you set ReflectionQuality=HIGH in Flight.cfg

 

Perfect, I'll try that when I get home....thanks again!!

Well there goes the "I'm so happy I'm not spending hours tweaking." as far as Flight is concerned. Yup, the honeymoon is over and we are now facing the reality of tweaking once again. I just know I'll end up latter tonight sitting for a couple of hours playing with all the cfg file settings to eek out that very last frame of the highest quality. Sometimes I think I should give up games and just throw my lot in with those guys that spend endless hours and money to get the best scores on benchmark programs. For me with FSX/FS9 it was always about the tweaking and never about the flying. Tweak and short hop, tweak and short hop, tweak and short hop, tweak and short hop until I had one too many martinis and it all looked good no matter what the settings.

Well there goes the "I'm so happy I'm not spending hours tweaking." as far as Flight is concerned.

 

Certainly not for me, my system still runs Flight very well still using the ingame graphics options I have been using.

I have everything at highest level cept the scenery density, which I have on high versus maximum.