I got FS2004 for Christmas and I'm going to try to learn how to fly (simulator anyway). I also bought a Logitech Freedom joystick. I don't want the yoke/pedal setup for the moment.Anyway, I found out how to enable the framerate display. It reads about 30-36 or so on the ground and some quick circles around Seattle. I have every slider I can find set to maximum.My question is, are some scenery or other enhancements being throttled down without me knowing it, or is my system really running the sim nicely? I set the framerate target to 30, I get 30, set it to 24, I get 24. Should I set it to unlimited? I want to get the worst framerate possible, then start adjusting sliders down from there. I'm not convinced I'm running the sim at full bore based on the performance issues I have read about here. Or, should I leave it the heck alone??Thanks in advance.System:New Dell Dimension 84003.4Ghz P4 HT, 250 GB SATA as "D" running the sim, 80 GB SATA as the boot/Win drive. 1 GB Dual Channel Ram @ 533Mhz, GeForce 6800 (std), SB Audigy 2ZS.

From what you say I'd leave it alone until you get to the stage where add ons start affecting performance. Most of us are happy to get 20FPS!

It sounds like your machine is running FS9 very well. I'd suggest leaving the fps limiter at 30.If you download "real weather" and fly into busy airports (traffic at 100%) you'll no doubt see the fps counter come down... but that is normal.You are not missing anything, unless you do not have AA (min 2x)and AF(min 4x) enabled on your card and at least 1280x960 (or 1280x1024) screen resolution.

No FS9 never reduces settings without your knowledge. You can control all settings from within the FS9 settings (well, nearly all - some special settings can only be changed by manually editing the configuration file). Oh - almost forgot - like someone else mentioned: Make sure you enable 4x FSAA and 8x Anisotropic Filtering and run the sim at 1024x768 resolution or higher.You can use the framerate limiter to get a smoother overall experience - instead of having the sim run at anything from 100 FPS (when just viewing blue sky) to 20 or less over detailed airports etc. you can lock it to e.g. 25 to even out the difference. Supposedly this will make the sim less jiterry and reduce the dreaded "stutters" that some experience. Just experiment to find which value works best for you - some like to use Unlimited, others lock it to their minimum framerate, maximum framerate or somewhere in between.Re performance - The truth is, FS9 out of the box without any addons runs quite well even on slower systems so it's not surprising that your 3.4GHz machine runs it smoothly. I managed to get very good performance out of a 1.6 GHz laptop by using mostly default and reducing just a few settings. Most users who have performance problems are using some of the complex addons like aircraft, additional AI traffic, detailed airport sceneries and so on.