What keeps me flying with MSFS? Narrowing it down to one reason that keeps me coming back for more is the fun of flying airliners by the numbers as best I understand them. I love to take off, climb out and land smoothly, within the context of a smooth simulator. That is what I reflect on about FS9 when I'm not flying. How well I emulated what a trained ATP might have done. I almost never think about how pretty the scenery was on departure and arrival. I had to get that honest in order to restrain myself from becoming a tweak-a-holic; I turned down the (I mean off) the eye candy in order to achieve the kind of smoothness that my rig will effect for me. Right now the excellent PMDG 737 NG is my airplane of choice. And when I can fly, stutter free (which flying with no eye candy delivers) I got what I wanted. Someone observed earlier that if you want to see your fps go through the roof turn off the eye candy. Really, what I concentrate on, in instant replay, is predominantly from the OM to touch down and I'm watching the center line, flare, main gear, spoilers, nose gear. (Not the terminal AI or background scenery). These grab my attention and when they'er smooth and stutter free I'm satisfied. But smoothness is my first choice.John FranklinVictorville, CADell Dimension 8300

i can surely relate to that. smoothness should be first and foremost in a flightsim. i also mentioned something a few days ago about using LIGHT PRESSURE on the stick when doing ANY sort of manuever and not that i was a hamfist before that but since i got more into using pressure EVERYTHING smoothed out. it's a whole new world now. i can't believe how smooth it is now. yea, smoothness is what it's all about for me too. william

Hi,Could you elaborate more on that statemente "using LIGHT PRESSURE on the stick ".. I'm affarid I didn't understand.Thanks,

Most of the time, I almost max out scenery features and weather. Because I usually don't fly in 8 layers of thunderstorm clouds, I can use full 3D clouds and still get 25+ FPS. Also, because I fly lots of bush / mountain flying (no complex city/big airport scenery), framerate is good even with full autogen, mesh and other scenery features.Bottom line is that I never get below 20 FPS and fly with almost full eye candy :)

I nearly mentioned that maxed-out sliders with less complex aircraft and scenery is not a problem with my fairly high-end Dell 2.6, ATI 9800 SE o/c to ATI pro default specs. MSFS is, by all accounts, a darn good flight simulator. It will handle payware complex airliners with very satisfying smoothness should one choose to use it that way...dial-down the eye candy and stay in the cockpit and fly. Not a thing wrong with that method i.e. if one is looking for silky smoothness. I tend to like that. In my view, MSFS is a good product. With the right aircraft a great flight simulator. Top-nothch payware producers have taken a good simulator and made it better with carefully attention to coding for accurate flight dynamics. Again with the right aircraft it blends aesthetics and accurate simulation together very pleasingly. John Franklin

sure. for me, if i moved the stick enough to cause one jitter or split second jerk of the framerates then i was using to much movement. like an abrupt sudden movement in motion or choppy framerates, not letting or giving the aircraft time to respond to any change you've made with the stick. i guess you can test it like this. fly straight and level then use the VSI and climb at a rate of 100fpm and keep the VSI needle pegged at the 100ft mark for a minute then climb at 200fpm and keep the needle pegged there. see if you can keep the needle pegged at each of those numbers up to the 500fpm mark. don't use trim either just the stick. for me it seems the only way to do that is with light slow pressure and that makes for a smooth ride. if you can already do that then you have no problem. try it in the kingair350 or the baron. william

Sadly for me I need to have a believable game world to be immersed. So turning down settings so I get jaggies abundant and ugly no detail terrain won

Thanks Willian, I'll try taht later.

>Sadly for me I need to have a believable game world to be>immersed.I agree. It's like a problem I need to get over! No matter how much I tell myself that flying is the real reason I am using fs2004, it needs to look real for me.I have a Dell P4 3Ghz, 1Gb ram, Gforce 5600 system, and the framerates are pretty bad. I have installed World Airports 2 (really good package), and on the approach to KJFK, i was down to 6fps, and you can't land a plane on 6fps! It frustrates me because I don't think my system is not a good spec - I think it is. A friend recommends I buy a 6800 Ultra to sort it out - anyone had experience of using it?It's alot of money when the graphics card may not be the problem, though.Gary

For me it has to be a comprimise of performance and "eye candy".I am luckly enough to have a decent system, P4 3.4Ghz, an X800, and 1GB of ram, so I can run very high levels of detail with very good performance.BUT....I think I would sacrifice "eye candy" if my performance was suffering, there is no fun in approaching an airport with FPS in single figures.I think everyone just has to set FS up to there particular machines, and if performance is giving you a problem, ramp down the detail.I also find one of the most realistic things (although the way FS models it is not really that realistic) is AI traffic, I couldnt imagine landing at EGLL and not have a mass of traffic around me, without traffic the sim would lose a lot of appeal to me.Dan.

Have you tried using FSautostart to remove all programs not being used, and the unnecessary services? If not, I highly recommend it. You'd be surprised at how much better your FS9 flies without all the stuff automatically installed . . . .. Have you used RegCleaner and RegScrub, to remove entries left by files you have deleted long ago? Orphaned files which do nothing on your system? Each time the system scans through the registry, it attempts to find these things, and slows down the system. First time it removed 287 references to things which no longer exist. Did you realize if you download to test shareware, then remove it, much of it never removes the entries in the Registry. Especially things which give limited demos. They leave stuff on your system, to detect if it has been used before, so you cant simply keep reinstalling it. Do you use Adaware, and Spybot, to remove all useless modules which many websites add to your system? Neither finds all, but between them they do an excellent job. If you browse the net frequently, I'd buy Adaware, and use the addition AdWatch, which -prevents- your system from being modified, except when you choose to do so.

I haven't tried that, no - but i will do. I try not to install stuff that I think I won't want on there for good (I don't try shareware out or anything), but I know that there must be pointless services running on my PC that I could do without. I also use the start /high command to run fs9, but again I don't really see the difference it makes on my system. I'll take a look in the avsim library for fsautostart.Thanks for you help.g

I wish I was able to put the blinders on to the eye candy. Being an graphic designer I am suckered into the world of details. I have become the tweek-a-holic you speak of and have found a happy medium. I get a few stutters now and then, but it is enough to keep me happy.:D

The reason to turn of all the other programms not used during flying FS is to avoid stutters. The Framerate will change very little or not. But a very short sutter (fraction of a sec) can destroy the smooth feeling that's so important for flying. Every program can cause such stutters because of cpu usage.You got a nice rig there, but your friend is right. Your fx5600 doesn't fit into your high performance system.It's at the low end of the mainstream cards regarding performance. I highly recommend to buy a new card to get the performance your machine should be capable of. At least a Geforce FX5900 or Radeon 9800 (not the slow se version).best,Claudio

One thing that keeps me flying in MSFS is the changing weather from place to place... after all being a prop nut I like flying in variable weather :)