After reading the article below on the settings in the framerate limiter option, I set my framerates (usually run at a 25 fps limit) to "Unlimited" - this almost doubled my framerates! Both on the ground, and in flight, and during landing. My system: Athlon XP 2,200, 1 Gig Ram, GForceTi 4200.All sliders 80% right, ai traffic "very dense," active sky, chris willis' clouds, etc. Try it out and experiment.ricardo

Which article where?!JS

True it will, but you will also notice that you will lose detail in the scenery and clouds around you (bluries). The reason being that FS9 tries to compensate quality for the increase in FPS...So i guess it's a toss up between good FPS or good quality graphics or a mix of the two ( therefore fps lock recommendations)Cheers

>>Which article where?!>>JShttp://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...d=223517&page=2AB

" this almost doubled my framerates! Both on the ground, and in flight, and during landing. "Did it double the *average* or *lowest* framerate or just the highest framerate? Logically it should only affect your peak framerate and to some extent the average framerate...?"you will also notice that you will lose detail in the scenery and clouds around you (bluries)."I have never seen this and I haven't seen any screenshots from anyone to proove it either. In fact I've taken screenshots with the slider at 10 and Unlimited and they looked identical.The slider sets an *upper* limit for the framerate, it's not some kind of lowest target FPS for some dynamic LOD feature. Interestingly there is a line called LOD_TARGET_FPS in fs9.cfg which also changes when you move the slider. However, another line AUTO_LOD is always set to "0" and changing it to 1 has no effect. I guess Microsoft never implemented dynamic, framerate coompensating LOD into the sim (except for the mesh and aircraft models but those are not framerate-dependant).

That works fine for me, although I don't know if it "doubled" frame rates, I don't pay much attention to them.Some may give you long-winded explanations about why it "shouldn't" work, but it does.

>this almost doubled my>framerates!Only doubled? You can quadrapule them - just set your fps to 12 and then unlock them :-lolMichael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2

>That works fine for me, although I don't know if it "doubled">frame rates, I don't pay much attention to them.>>Some may give you long-winded explanations about why it>"shouldn't" work, but it does.For SOME it does, but not EVERYONE. That is important to keep in mind. For my system, setting to "Unlimited" will bring the entire sim to a crawl and introduces a really bad stutter."Blanket statements" are not really accurate or helpful... :)

There should be some article saying what programs and applications to get to improve FS performance.When I bought FS9 I had really bad performance in FR, texture loading, even the program loading, then I got FSAutostart, new ATI Drivers, Win XP Pack2, high performance clouds and it seems as if I had bought a new computer. I fly the RFP742, the PMDG738, CS727, and my fps never go below 15, not even in overcast or any bad weather condition that AS2004 can bring. Most of my sliders are at their max, and the 15 fps are in very demanding conditions, being the normal 27/29 fps, even on the ground.My system is a p4 2.8 Ghz, 768 Ram, Ati Radeon 9600Pro 128 Mb.Leo

>"Blanket statements" are not really accurate or helpful... :)Excuse me for leaving out the phrase "for some." I am well aware of what blanket statements are and that was inadvertantly posted as one.

I can see this frame rate discussion is going to run and run.If your computer, at the time of unlimiting your frame rates, was capable of doubling your rate and you were at 25, obviously it's going to return 50 fps. If your computer struggles at 50 fps to keep up, there is no doubt in my mind that, depending on your system, the scenery, sound, stuttering and a whole lot of other not very encouraging things will start degrading. On my system the sound is the first to start stuttering, followed by jerky aircraft movement, followed by scenery and texture degredation and poor loading.There is no holy grail setting for frame rates and statements like "my frame rate doubled" are really of little help to others in the context you describe.Setting unlimited will always lead to quite wild fluctuations in frame rates, and in my experience this provides for a not very satisfying flight. You need generous overhead to ensure that frame rates chosen keep up when the system is at its most stressed. In practice this means that if your peak frame rate for smooth running in a given complexity of scenery is around 35, and you get spikes of 40 and 25 respectively, then somewhere around 30 fps is a sensible setting and gives you adequate overhead for most of the time.Kind Regards,Rob Young

Edam, yes your fps will increase markedly if you set them to unlimited vs. limited...just like a if you press the accelerator on your car, it will go a lot faster than if you don't.But the issue isn't getting higher fps per se. The issue is getting the maximum fps ALONG WITH few or no stutters and little if any bluring.We need to fool with limited vs. unlimited in varying scenarios of ai traffic and clouds to see what works best. Regards,Jim

I'm not seeing any "wild" fluctuations in my fps. For example, using German airport scenery, I used to get on average about 13 fps, now it's almost 25. Most importantly, I now get very few sound stutters when changing views. Turns (especially those dreaded turns during the approach phase) are also now much smoother. Whether this works on your system or somebody else's system - I have not the faintest.ricardo

Agreed Jim, I think the limiter was put in so that each machine can be fine tuned to provide the SMOOTHEST experience possible. To fine tune your particular machine, try starting with unlimited, then continue reducing the lock until the SPREAD between low and high (you know how they bounce around from 22 one second to 48 the next?) is only a few frames. The max number of frames is whatever you can do and still maintain a small spread. And this is why it is prudent to set a different lock point depending on the complexity of the situation. Easy to process scenes you can do great setting at 40, but for some it is as low as 22 on my higher end machine.Noel

>I used to get on>average about 13 fps, now it's almost 25. That tells me something is off with either your fps reporting, measurement or with your system. It seems you are claiming that with fps locked at 25 you were only getting 13 fps in some location and now with fps unlocked you are getting 25 in exactly the same location/situation - sorry, having done many experiments with locked/unlocked fps I claim this is next to impossible.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2