I had all but given up flying FS2002. My FS2004 performance is as good if I don't exceed what I had cfg'd for FS2002, and the graphics are far nicer.But sometimes, for clear sky flying away from the major cities, especially in mountain terrain in the late afternoon/twilight hours, I find FS2002 still gives enjoyable flying. I had a good six hour session flying around the southwest and also a 2 hour flight from Moscow to Budapest over the weekend.There's something that FS2002 does which I think is still better than FS2004--the way it applies haze, even at the ultra high (100 mile+) visibilities. I find it gives a more natural look to the terrain.In FS2004, unless the vis. is 30 miles or less, the distant mountains will sometimes stand in sharp relief against the horizon, although in the midday, this isn't so noticeable.Anyway, I am glad I have both sims. FS2002 isn't wasting space on my HD--it still provides beautiful flights under some circumstances, and I'm thankful that it has stayed on my system longer than any sim since Sublogic's ATP.-John

That's funny. I actually find the FS2004 haze far more realistic-looking than FS2002. FS2002 gave the landscape a bluish neon-glow that looked unnatural. Also why would you fly with 100 miles visiblity anyway? It'd have to be an extremely clear day to get that kind of visiblity. I typically don't use more than about 40 miles and usually 20-30 miles which looks more realistic IMO.

"Also why would you fly with 100 miles visiblity anyway? It'd have to be an extremely clear day to get that kind of visiblity. I typically don't use more than about 40 miles and usually 20-30 miles which looks more realistic IMO."Don't know why I am wasting my time answering this question, since I wasn't soliciting opinion on the validity of running with higher vis settings. Anyway, if you have spent any time flying in the desert southwest, vis. exceeding 150 miles is not uncommon--more the norm than 40 miles, that's for certain. I used to fly out of Sky Harbor about once every 2-3 days, but I've settled to once or twice a quarter today. Unless we have cloud cover, and once we break out of the valley haze, one can easily see the San Francisco Peaks, 100+ miles distant. Every other week, I'd fly between PHX and SLC. At night, Vegas could be clearly made out, more than 150 miles off of the aircraft's flight path. The record was 200nm--the PIC came on the com while we were still over NM once on the way home from BWI, and could make the lights of PHX 200NM out.Anyway, since I live in the desert southwest, such vis is the norm and I normally prefer to fly in the environment in which I live. At 30 miles vis. FS2004 is much more realistic in the way it recreates haze. At 100+ miles vis, FS2002 wins that contest. Just my opinion, based on frequent flights in the environment.-John

John,Totally agree with you about the visibility issue.....on a clear day with high vis (40+ miles) the horizon line is way too sharp.Do you have a an ATi graphics card? I have the 9800 pro and I have tried many a time on the forums to find out if it is just us ATi users. I have tried editing the scenery.cfg, FSUIPC settings, adding table fog commands to the fs9.cfg, all to no avail. My fs9 setting for vis is at 60 miles and I always used to use the fs9 real world weather option for actual visibility. Now I have Active Sky 2004 and on clear vis reports I still get the sharp horizon line with jagged mountains in the distance. Regards,Glenn

I have an Nvidia card--older 4200TI but high vis screenshots with a wide variety of cards also show the issue when they crop up in the screenshots forum.However, you can reduce the issue a bit by changing dates. Some dates use more realistic env bitmaps than others. It's the env bitmaps that control the color of the "haze". When I set the date to 6-11-03, as an example, the haze looks better except at dusk.I think this is actually a FS9 issue--and likely by design in order to support controlling the "color" of haze through env. bitmaps. If you set vis to 30 miles and raise the vis ceiling to 99000 feet, you get as realistic a fog effect as FS2002 could ever put out. However, simply change the vis to 40 miles and the fog effect is gone. For the reason I suspect, I think it's FS9 code that arbitrarily kicks in fog effects at only 30 mile vis. and less.-John