In years of flight simming, the best frame rate improvement I ever found was to increase the cpu priority level of the program one step.Only...(sob)...I had to reinstall everything and lost the directions on how to accomplish this feat.Frame rate now only 15+/- where it used to be locked at 29.If you will tell me how to change program priority I will give you my fistborn (he is now thirty) or my eternal gratitude.

You can minimize FS9 and then right click the icon and set its priority but you need to do this every time you start it. I seem to recall that there's a way to add a line into the properties and it's done automatically. Anyone have any ideas?billg

Hello,You can use FSAutostart, it's 1 of the options.

Are you saying that your framerates dropped from 29 to approx. 15 after you reinstalled "everything", where everything means your operating system? If so, ensure that you reinstalled all of your drivers, especially your motherboard chipset drivers. A failure to reinstall your chipset drivers (e.g., for enabling AGP 8x) is consistent with a framerate loss of that magnitude.

Thanks for all the suggestions, Guys. Guess sometyhing else is screwed up here because none of them worked...even Autostart had priority change option grayed out. When I finally get it figured out I'll post the solution.Guess nobody wanted my firstborn.Pappyhep

>>Guess nobody wanted my firstborn.>>PappyhepI'll take your firstborn, if she's 21, 5 feet 11, and blonde. :-lol ricardo

Pappyhep,You can change the Target field in your FS9 shortcut toC:WINDOWSsystem32cmd.exe /c start "FS9" /High "C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesFlight Simulator 9fs9.exe"That's assuming of course that you used the default installation. If you instlled to a different folder you will have to modify the above. Also, I use this on Windows XP Pro. I'm not sure if it works on other OSs.Mike

Tip of the year? Maybe. Thanks!

Can someone explain what this tip is and how it improves framerates?Thanks,RH

It simply gives FS9 processing priority over most other running applications. It probably won't do much, if anything at all, to improve framerates. And the downside is that if you also have anything running such as RC3, FSMeteo, ActiveSky, FSNav, ActiveCamera, etc, etc, those processes may have a difficult time doing their job under their "normal" priority. My advice? Leave the priorities alone - changing them isn't going to fix a framerate problem and it could well degrade everything else.Doug

Thanks Mike -I'll give it a shot and report back with the results

> It simply gives FS9 processing priority over most other>running applications. It probably won't do much, if anything>at all, to improve framerates. And the downside is that if you>also have anything running such as RC3, FSMeteo, ActiveSky,>FSNav, ActiveCamera, etc, etc, those processes may have a>difficult time doing their job under their "normal" priority.>My advice? Leave the priorities alone - changing them isn't>going to fix a framerate problem and it could well degrade>everything else.>>DougIf every claim for improved frame rates that I have read and tried in the last 5 years or so actually worked, my FS9 would be visually better than looking out the windshield of a real airplane. :)

>If every claim for improved frame rates that I have read and>tried in the last 5 years or so actually worked, my FS9 would>be visually better than looking out the windshield of a real>airplane. :)Yeah...but since I've installed the new XP 8600 CPU, my frame rates are REALLY good...(with some sliders set to their middle positions, though)...:D

"If every claim for improved frame rates that I have read and tried in the last 5 years or so actually worked, my FS9 would be visually better than looking out the windshield of a real airplane. :)"LOL! :-lol rgrds fredrik

Absolutely. I'd think something on the order of 11,345.2 FPS at a minimum :-) .Doug