Hi - Hardware aside, is there any known thing that causes FS' performance to degrade during flight?I notice my textures begin to fail first, and after that everything just gradually slows down.Thanks,Andrew

Are you using Autogen? Have you renamed default.xml to default.old? There's a known issue where Autogen xml objects are kept too long in memory, and it causes serious performance degradation.Also, I find on my slow system I have better results keeping fps unlocked--quite different from FS2002.And last, I don't know if you've upgraded your video card yet. FS2004 fared much better with 128 megs vs. 64 megs when I swapped out my video card.-JOhn

Thanks John - No, I haven't renamed my .xml file.. is that all that needs to be done? And only once?I did a quick search but came up with WAY too many hits!Also, I thought it was only with Autogen on its maximum setting.I do have FPS on maximum.I haven't upgraded my card yet - I want to - but I keep reading debate about whether I could really expect anything out of a new card. My existing card, if you remember, is just a 32 meg card - I can't see how upgrading to a more capable card wouldn't help, unless my CPU really couldn't send any more information to it... Your system was somewhat equivalent to mine if I remember correctly.. but I don't trust my memory ;)Mine's a Celeron 1.2, 640 RAM (just upgraded it from 384 by adding 256 and my FPS jumped 4 or 5 FPS!! .. only to an average of about 14 though) and my existing card is that old Diamond Viper 770 Ultra 32.Best,Andrew

I would be interested to know if you are flying in a third party scenery made up of custom land class or one which has been created from aerial photography? Or, does this happen in default scenery as well?Would you try flying in clear skies, and then use real weather and report if you have any FR degadation in the clear skies?Do your frame rates 1/2 themselves about every 30 miles when flying in a straight line?http://www.asic.ca/flightontario/jimlogo.gif

Hi Jim - No custom scenery - all default.Regarding weather - in fact, clear skies runs with higher FPS than limited visibility. I guess that haze is an expensive effect?I'll try setting up a flight to see how far along the image degrades.CheersAndrew>I would be interested to know if you are flying in a third>party scenery made up of custom land class or one which has>been created from aerial photography? Or, does this happen in>default scenery as well?>>Would you try flying in clear skies, and then use real weather>and report if you have any FR degadation in the clear skies?>>Do your frame rates 1/2 themselves about every 30 miles when>flying in a straight line?>>http://www.asic.ca/flightontario/jimlogo.gif

>Regarding weather - in fact, clear skies runs with higher FPS than >limited visibilityOf course it does, my question is, does it degrade when flying in clear skies?http://www.asic.ca/flightontario/jimlogo.gif

Oh, I see.I don't know, I'll check, though. To test this I'm going to set up a flight using autopilot and save it, and rerun it a few times.Andrew>>Regarding weather - in fact, clear skies runs with higher>FPS than >limited visibility>>Of course it does, my question is, does it degrade when flying>in clear skies?>>>http://www.asic.ca/flightontario/jimlogo.gif

With a FX5950 ultra video card, my roomates computer here gets virtual memory errors after flying for an hour or so. This is running fs genesis landclass and mesh

I found renaming the default.xml even seemed to help when I wasn't running autogen--can't explain why though. I also gained improvements by installing Chris's clouds. Still, the largest improvement (in fs2002 as well) was going to a 128 meg card. For example, dynamic blurring in FS2002 is all but gone. In FS2004, it's never been an issue. I'd also imagine that you'd be able to find something like a 4200 TI for $50-60 omnline. IMHO, it's more than adequate for FS2004 given our system speed. Mine was an OEM version--I've had it about a year now, and it's humming along great.-John

POW!Is anyone else having this problem? It usually starts with textures not "clearing up" as they should - in other words, going "high resolution"...Could it be an old graphics card (32MB) that's causing this?Andrew

Hi Andrew.If everything in the sim is the defaults ( scenery and aircraft ), you may simply be running out of system memory. Run the sim in windowed mode, and use TaskManager to view the memory use. By the way, what's you're operating system and how much system memory?Dick

Hi Dick,Win 98SE, 384 RAM - however, I tried adding 256 and the results were virtually identical.Thanks,Andrew

What else if running on your system?You could try FSAutoStart to shutdown any unnecessary programs. It works on Windows 98SE.

Hi Andrew....and you're simulator is running only the default scenery and aircraft?Dick

Hi Ken - In fact, I did download your program!It opens and closes so fast, I can't tell what it's doing... isn't it supposed to start FS going? I get a dos-esque box that pops up, a bunch of text scrolls real fast and then it closes, but I can't tell what's going on there.After that I usually do a ctrl-alt-del and shut down a bunch of stuff.Thanks,Andrew>What else if running on your system?>>You could try FSAutoStart to shutdown any unnecessary>programs. It works on Windows 98SE.