OK, (rant on!) I have very few complaints on FS9, I think it is am amazing sim, and haven't had any CTDs or problems with anything else. I mainly fly GA, and love bush flying. Until recntly, I was unable to use real weather much as it was just to much for my G4 4600 to handle, but that is a big part of bush flying, unpredictable weather and IMC. I have a fairly high end rig, clean and strictly for FS and recently got a Radeon 9800 pro just so I could use the real weather when flying. So far, the performance is awesome, and I am very happy with the card and the IQ.I loaded up a VA flight today from our CYBL FBO, in the AWX B200, everything was set, beautiful day, rolled out and climbed, leveled out and just soaked in the experience, it was great. Right after Vancouver the scenery refreshed for no reason and then the weather went from what I had to very extreme, and I don't mean just extreme as IMC, I mean as in slideshow! I tried to figure out what had happened short of putting off that the weather programming in FS is just really WHACKED (and to think the programmer got an award!??), but I don't know. This is frustrating, because my rig is at the top of what was available when they released this sim, so I should be able to run it in all it's glory, especially if it runs that way at other times. (rant off!)I refuse to use the FPS friendly cloud textures as I tried them when it first came out and they just don't look good to me. I used Active Sky for FS2002 and it did ok, will the current version help in this, or make it worse, any ideas?Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/PBTMCa.jpgCalVirAir International VACalVirAir International

Hi Mike,I will not promise anything, but the wide variety of options in Active Sky does allow for more custom settings to fit your system. I know you video card but don't know your CPU and other settings. I can only suggest to give us a try.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004proudsupporter.jpg

Jim, thanks. My rig is : Athlon 3200XP,A7N8X-DX, 1G XLS GEil 3200 DDR, XP pro, ATI 9800 pro, all settings maxed, AA at 2X and AF 6X. Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/PBTMCa.jpgCalVirAir International VACalVirAir International

"all settings maxed"Does this include Sight Distance and Cloud Draw Distance?Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004proudsupporter.jpg

Agree with Jim... You probably do not want sight distance and cloud draw distance maxed.

Sight distance isn't a real biggie-- Even on my slower system it's never caused issues. Since I do a lot of sim flying in the desert SW where visibility is high, I keep sight distance between 120-150NM.But let me also chime in and say that draw distance is a killer. Combine that with dynamic weather or real weather where you don't control how many cloud layers you have, and you can have slow performance.Some of the utilities out there help because they allow you to limit layers (if I understand some of the posts correctly). Why would a state of the art system suffer? My own take--I suspect the industry (both on the cpu side and graphics card side) didn't move as fast as anticipated when FS2004 was written. We saw an explosion of cpu speed and technology after FS2002 was released... CPU speeds more than doubled. But that's slowed down a bit during FS2004's life.Still, by compromising on draw distance and keeping "3-d" layers to two, I am able to fly with all the other cloud sliders maxed. In open country--away from the fps eating airports like LAX, I'm still getting 25fps or higher in the flight levels. I WISH I had a faster system--but recently I've learned how transient things like home computer systems are given the short time we're all given in this world. My "new" system--is actually taking my family to Disney World some time in the early winter....Regards,John

>after FS2002 was released... CPU speeds more than doubled. >But that's slowed down a bit during FS2004's life.John,I also noticed this slow-down. And Bill Gates only 4 months ago during one of his speaches remarked he believed that doubling of PC speed every 18-months would continue in the forseeable future. I think he was wrong. They are running into nasty heat problems and seem to be switchng to the double-CPU architecture as a remedy for die-shrinking problems. Michael J.

Also look at reducing the 3d cloud percentage. Oh and ActiveSky2004 is a great program, but it won't help with fps related to weather much. It can limit the cloud layers used, so that helps a little. You mentioned the better fps clouds, but did you try the 32bit ones by fsw? The dxt3 ones aren't that great looking, but the 32bit ones look quite good, and give much improved performance.

>>after FS2002 was released... CPU speeds more than doubled.>>>But that's slowed down a bit during FS2004's life.>>John,>>I also noticed this slow-down. And Bill Gates only 4 months>ago during one of his speaches remarked he believed that>doubling of PC speed every 18-months would continue in the>forseeable future. I think he was wrong. They are running into>nasty heat problems and seem to be switchng to the double-CPU>architecture as a remedy for die-shrinking problems. >>Michael J.Gates would be correct if by December last year you could have bought a P5.7 Gig--or 5760 Mhz to be precise. Thats based on a doubling factor since 12/94 when a P90 was the fastest on the block. That would also mean a P23.0 Gig will be available by 12/2006--sure...That doubling was fairly easy and was attained when a P60 only needed to go to a P120 in a year and a half. Try it going from a P2.0 to a P4.0 in 18 months.David