Just bought Balearic Islands X and looks lovely flying low down , but a bit blurry at altitude.4,00 feet + and hills in the distance, I had heard it should be the other way around?

I am running over 3 screens on 680gtx. $gig

Now the question is the AA setting. Word Not Allowed recently posted about setting this in Nvidia Inspector at 8 x. I have noticed at low altitude the mountains appear to look a tiny bit better if I up this to 16 x or 32 x. Frame rates don’t seem to have changed in the brief testing I have done. Is this a good idea or will it slow things down over time on a long flight? ie overload the graphics card?

 

Supersampling is 4x

 

I must stop tweaking and just fly 5 weeks is enough ! ;-) However still learning and welcome any advise

Thanks all

Steve

 

I would like to know what the preferred antialiasing setting is as well, as things get blurry as I increase my AA.

The best Antialiasing setting for you depends upon two things: your system power and your personal preference. Some people prefer to have higher frame rates, and others prefer to have perfectly sooth edges.

There are a few major types of antialiasing:

• FXAA - Fast Approximate AA: Is much less taxing on your system, but is noticeably blurrier when compared to other AA solutions. This bothers some people, but if you don't have the best computer, FXAA is your best bet to reduce jaggies.Note that FXAA is Not turned on in the same manner as MSAA or SSAA it has its own box within NVIDIA inspector. There are no settings for FXAA, it's either on or off.
  
• SSAA - Super Sampling AA: This is the most basic form of antialiasing, where images are rendered at two, three or even four times your normal resolution, and then reduced in size to fit your screen. While it achieves great results, frame rate hits tend to be high. This can be combated by using the 1x2 or 2x1 settings, which instead of rendering at double resolution only increase resolution along one axis. Only use SSAA if you really must have perfect edges, and don't care about your frame rate
  
• MSAA - Multi-Sampling AA: An optimization of SSAA, only partially increasing the rendering of specific values. Still quite resource intensive, but the de-facto standard for older games. To answer your original question, 16x achieves better results than 8x or 4x, but at a much higher performance cost. I would suggest either 4x, if you don't care as much about jaggies, or 8x if you care more. 8x AA should be as much AA as you need (but this is all about personal preference).
  
• CSAA - Coverage Sampling AA: According to NVIDIA, CSAA produces images similar in quality to 8 or 16x MSAA, while only incurring the performance hit of 4x MSAA.
  

I recommend using either CSAA or FXAA, depending on how you feel about FXAA's blurring of the image. If you turn on AA via nvidia inspector and see little to no performance hit or visual difference, that means that the setting didn't actually take effect. Follow these steps to make sure your settings take:

1. launch the Inspector Settings Profile Window. It should look like this:
   
2. Look at the box indicated by a 1 on the above image. if it shows _GLOBAL_DRIVER_PROFILE (Base Profile), click inside the box and type in MS Flight Simulator X.
   
3. Find Antialiasing Mode (2 in the picture) and set it to override any application setting​. This is very important! If you prefer to use FXAA, do not change this line. Rather, toggle FXAA by selecting "on" from the menu next to Toggle FXAA on or off (2.1 in the picture). After setting this value, skip to step 5.
   
4. Select an Antialiasing setting from the drop-down menu next to Antialiasing - Setting. In NVIDIA Inspector, The types of AA used are listed next to the setting. In the picture, I picked 8x, which is 8x CSAA.
   
5. Press the Apply Changes button in the upper right hand corner(4 in the picture above).
   

Launch FSX, and you should notice a difference in the quality of the rendering of the aircraft in the "new flight window"

 

NOTE: In game AA should be disabled via the options menu!

 

I hope this helps you.

If the mountains are blurry it may be the LOD setting.... That will sharpen the textures on mountains... Be careful about not going too high, you'll get OOM's.

 

Under the Terrain section:

 

 

 

LOD_RADIUS=6.5

Thank you very much. ESP Dancanmsn for such a comprehensive and understandable reply

Until reading this, CSAA - Coverage Sampling AA: According to NVIDIA, CSAA produces images similar in quality to 8 or 16x MSAA, while only incurring the performance hit of 4x MSAA.. I had no idea about this CSAA setting. None of the guides from Word Not Allowed or NickN mention using these settings within NI. I have the setting at x16 CSAA now with SGSS at 2x. Seems pretty good so far.