I've been using fs9 for a week or two and there are a LOT of resources online and I've read many of them but not all, so excuse me if I ask something that is a faq.I've got a 9800 pro, two monitors, trackIR vector expansion, 1gb ram.Realism questions:* After becoming dissatisfied with the forgiving nature of the default cessna I purchased the Flight One Cessna! the cockpit displays are nicer, thats for sure. I was disappointed not to find a carb heat control. Where is it??* How accurate is fs9 with maximum realism settings really, with flight-one planes, or others? I ask because using the quality flight-one cessna as an example:I can extend flaps way faster than Vfe and nothing untoward happens.I can also exceed Vne in a sustained dive, and nothing happens. (yes I know u can break the plane by excessive G force).I can fly in the yellow zone speeds, with cross-winds set to 30kt gusting to 50kt, severe turbulence, and "sharp" shears, no problem. In fact, such evil weather just causes a bit of visual bumping. It is still easy to fly. It should be lethal.http://67.100.227.122/fs9/weather_winds.jpgUsing map function I set the speed to 200kts(!) then fly and extend the flaps all the way to 30deg, no problem, speed just drops faster.I can land in a 20kt gusting to 35kt *crosswind*, just crab in and kick the rudder (or not, doesn't really matter). In reality the cessna is not rated for anything near this crosswind condition. Many students like me ground loop the plane trying to land in gusty non-headwind conditions. Speaking of runways, putting a wheel off the runway doesn't really make much of any difference, no pulling, little extra drag..I can stall 20 ft above the runway and there is only the smallest bounce, I can't imagine getting this cessna to prop strike or exhibit porpoising, the nosewheel also appears to be non-collapsable. An idiot new student like me should never be able to land safely over and over.I can get out of shape in absolutely any way and recovery is just a matter of reducing angle of attack picking up some speed and then gently fixing attitude. Although it would be nice to think this is reality, I don't believe it is :)I set icing to "severe" and could not detect any issue flying like that for some time.Project AI:I've installed some Project AI stuff (following their instructions, I think), the main airlines that fly into seattle (alaska, united, us-air). Do you have to hang around for a while, or do the scheduled flights appear the instant you start up at the airport? I'm expecting many more project AI planes than I see. I see just a couple.FS9 graphics and quality:I'm not seeing very good planes. To be honest, they look like ####.. I tried with settings in fs9 anti-aliased and max, then tried over-riding them in the ATI control panel to 4x anti-aliasing and 4x anisotropic filtering...http://67.100.227.122/fs9/cessna.jpghttp://67.100.227.122/fs9/global747.jpghttp://67.100.227.122/fs9/united747.jpghttp://67.100.227.122/fs9/quality1.jpgWhen I cycle through planes with control-w, sometimes they come up naked and take a full 10 seconds or more to clothe themselves with textures. The fs9 directory is on a striped double-disk that should have insane read performance.http://67.100.227.122/fs9/naked.jpgThere are frame rate hiccups. I get pretty much 30fps but every second or so (random) it jerks (drops 10 or more frames). More so when I'm looking around using trackIR. This makes fine control tricky as just when you need great feedback all your instruments freeze throwing your reactions .. this jerking is not eliminated by drastically cutting back on all graphics gee-gaws, resolution, etc.. x-plane runs at 60+fps (stretched across both monitors) with no jerks under the same conditions, so I know it isn't any other xp services or programs stealing bandwidth or cpu! TrackIR isn't the issue, the same hiccups happen when I'm not using trackIR. I don't have SP2 if that matters.Other questions:is there a 'get me lost' button?is there any way to increase cockpit instrument update rate? I feel they are not updating at the frame-rate.. or perhaps the flight model is not recalcuating at the frame-rate.. (bad!)So that is my gripe list that I've not seen addressed online (ok the fame rate issues are frequently discussed but i think the suggestions as to cases are unsatisfactory). Are any of these observations something i can fix??

"* After becoming dissatisfied with the forgiving nature of the default cessna I purchased the Flight One Cessna! the cockpit displays are nicer, thats for sure. I was disappointed not to find a carb heat control. Where is it??"It is fuel injected...

Turn AA Off in FS04.No Get Lost button.Check your video drivers.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/as2004proudsupporter.jpg

"When the Cessna single engine facility re-emerged in July of 1996, the 172R Skyhawk was reborn. New features include a fuel injected Textron Lycoming IO-360-L2A engine with dual engine driven vacuum pumps, epoxy corrosion proofing, stainless steel control cables, thicker windows and new acoustic soundproofing. Cessna claims the 172R is significantly quieter than the O-320 it replaced, and it can produce its maximum power at just 2400rpm."well there you go :) thanks!ATI drivers are fine - version 8.08-041110a-019199E so folks agree my planes look bad, they can snap shots from similar angles, and they look much better?

>* How accurate is fs9 with maximum realism settings really,>with flight-one planes, or others? If you need higher level of realism possible use X-Plane simulator instead of FS2004. In FS simplified equations are used for flight model. In X-Plane it's real physics.For FS2004 airplane with best flight model is RealAir Scout. It's the only plane for FS I know able to realistically slip or spin (but not as realistically like in X-Plane).>Project AI:There are some payware add-ons with traffic like Ultimate Traffic.>FS9 graphics and quality:Turn off antialisaing in FS. Force it on in graphic card driver. It's well known fix.>When I cycle through planes with control-w, sometimes they>come up naked and take a full 10 seconds or more to clothe>themselves with textures.Try to remove frame rate limiter (target frame rate). Sometimes it helps for loading textures faster. Sometimes not.>is there a 'get me lost' button?No. But you can slew fast to some place if you really want to get lost ;)>is there any way to increase cockpit instrument update rate? I>feel they are not updating at the frame-rate.. or perhaps the>flight model is not recalcuating at the frame-rate.. (bad!)2d cockpit is refreshing faster than VC. But in 2d you can't use your TrackIR. Try to reduce gauges quality (Options -> Display -> Aircraft), but in my opinion quality drops to unacceptable level.

Your graphics are messed up. Sounds like you've got a good sytem so if I were you I'd set "Global Texture Size" to MASSIVE, turn hardware rendered lights to 8, mipmapping to 4 or 5, set the fsaa in your vid card options and turn it off in-game, max out the airplane graphics options, and leave "Render To Texture" OFF unless you are using DXT3 cloud textures. I also find that running the same resolution in-game as what you have your desktop res at seems to help smooth things out some. For the "bald planes", check in SYSTEM PROPERTIES/ADVANCED/PERFORMANCE/ADVANCED and make sure that "memory usage" is set for programs rather than system cache. On top of that there are a plethora of tweaks and tricks that can be applied to smooth things and improve (or mess up) the performance and appearance of the sim but you'll have to figure those out on your own.

Hi there,:)I couldn't help noticing you use two monitors and that you appear to have no anti-aliasing etc, even though it's turned on. I also have a dual monitor set up (with a R9800pro 128mb), but when I use flightsim I disable one. This is because I noticed that with two monitors enabled, I would get no anti-aliasing or anisotropic filtering even though they were enabled in my proporties menu. So one day i disabled my "spare" TFT monitor and booted FS9, problem solved. I have no idea why this works, but it "solved" my problem. It's probably not much of a solution if you have FS9 spread out across your 2 monitors though. (I used to just have my extended desktop on my "spare" monitor when in FS9).I hope you get it all sorted out, have fun :)

Well thank you - the TWO monitors are indeed much of the quality problems.Disabling the 2nd monitor, and setting anti-alias to 4x in the control panel, and unchecking anti-alias in fs9, results in:* smoother frame-rate even under high detail* planes etc no longer look like ####* faster update rate for instruments* less delay to bring in textureshere is a lear jet, with nice belly reflections, and all:http://67.100.227.122/fs9/index.htmlIMO, comparing what I see now to the best i could see with both monitors on, basically fs9 is BROKEN on dual monitors under ATI drivers - even if you don't use the second monitor at all!I'm sad/surprised that the realism of flight is so poor. how hard can it be to model a wing correctly when you've got a huge development budget?? Isn't the game motto "as real as it gets?". But at least the visual glitz is there when confined to a default one-monitor, one-card type of PC.