I'm always trying to make sure that my settings are most beneficial to the overall FSX experience.   Just downloaded the latest drivers....384.94's and after doing the Inspector thing, I turned to trying to really optimize my settings in the sim.  I've always checked off "anti-aliasing", and used the Anisotropic filtering.  However, I would like to hear from some forum members as to their professional advice on whether Trilinear should instead be used....and of course, the rationale for either of the choices.

Thanks,

Stan

Anisotropic filtering frame rate penalty, for all intents and purposes, is 0 on today's hardware. So go ahead and use Aniso setting.

VeryBumpy is spot on.  Trilinear is a hold-over from about 15 year ago.  I use nvidia inspector to apply 16x aniso filtering for FSX, which enhances the quality over the FSX in-game aniso setting with no appreciable performance loss.  This setting can also be enabled for FSX in the standard nvidia control panel.  BTW, this is not professional advice....

See the recently updated AVSIM FSX Configuration Guide for the best settings.

Best regards,

Jim

1 hour ago, TheFamilyMan said:

VeryBumpy is spot on.  Trilinear is a hold-over from about 15 year ago.  I use nvidia inspector to apply 16x aniso filtering for FSX, which enhances the quality over the FSX in-game aniso setting with no appreciable performance loss.  This setting can also be enabled for FSX in the standard nvidia control panel.  BTW, this is not professional advice....

8X is actually plenty.. 

17 hours ago, spilok said:

I'm always trying to make sure that my settings are most beneficial to the overall FSX experience.   Just downloaded the latest drivers....384.94's and after doing the Inspector thing, I turned to trying to really optimize my settings in the sim.  I've always checked off "anti-aliasing", and used the Anisotropic filtering.  However, I would like to hear from some forum members as to their professional advice on whether Trilinear should instead be used....and of course, the rationale for either of the choices.

Thanks,

Stan

It depends upon your hardware and add-ons.  My old Core-2-Quad at 3.8GHz and Nv 560Ti with GEX, UTX, Ultimate Traffic X, and Active Sky 2012 no longer likes the Anisitropic setting in FSX.  I had to back down to Trilinear in order to have smooth rendering.  Before I added these programs, Anisotropic provided the best image quality and was smooth.  With modern hardware, Anisotropic is the way to go.

And Bert is right, 8X Anisotropic Filtering in the video card setting is sufficient with FSX.

27 minutes ago, stans said:

And Bert is right, 8X Anisotropic Filtering in the video card setting is sufficient with FSX.

I have come to a point where I certainly respect Bert's opinion on the forum. If I may, to make this a learning opportunity.... what would be the downside of using 16x, rather than 8x? Other than a FPS hit, wouldn't 'more' be better?

Mike

9 minutes ago, orbmis said:

I have come to a point where I certainly respect Bert's opinion on the forum. If I may, to make this a learning opportunity.... what would be the downside of using 16x, rather than 8x? Other than a FPS hit, wouldn't 'more' be better?

Mike

Point of diminishing returns.  For 16x AF you take a bigger performance hit for just a little image improvement over 8x AF, at least with FSX.  I think more modern sims and games see a bigger improvement in image quality with 16x AF.

Easy enough to compare visually on your monitor.

8X looks just fine to my eyes..

If you like 16X better - use it!