Shft Z left on, kills frame rates and causes stutters and blurries.I have not turned on the fps readout for 6 months and couldnt be happier.

Oh dear, an argument over frame rates in different media format eh? Well cinema is 24 fps and is NOT interlaced :) Nuff said, and you missed my point.You DONT need anything more than 25FPS in FS for a perfectly smooth experience. Anyone who says otherwise is spending too much time at overclock-my-ninja-pc.com and is talking BS. This is flightsim, not Quake 4 or Half-Life 2. If you've got a decent card, don't waste its resources thrashing it to death with huge framerates, it's completely spending cycles on the wrong thing. Rather, tweak FS9 for *smoothness* and *optimal visuals* and you'll have a much more enjoyable time flying.Glad to see my little tips are helping out. Oh, and as someone pointed out, I forgot to mention that just above the [TERRAIN] section there is this line:TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40 <--- this is too low for current video cardsChange it to 100 and step it up in increments of 50 until FS9 stutters. Then set it -50 of the point when it stutters. Make sure you test in a city area where there is lots of autogen. This will load your textures much, much faster and avoid more blurries

Oh dear, an argument over frame rates in different media format eh? Well cinema is 24 fps and is NOT interlaced Nuff said, and you missed my point.You are wrong still - true that film is not interlaced but film still has an interlaced effect - it's called progressive scan which creates the same blending, motion blur effect. Film is not the same as computer FPS!! - it is MUCH MUCH smoother because because frames are not perfectly still frames. Without this effect you get the flicker phenomenon - look it up, dont take my word for it!.Ok so do this for me - go to somewhere quiet where your FPS can go high and turn them down to 25 and pan around the aircraft etc. Then turn them up tp 60fps (this is not to prove you can get 60fps, just to show there is a difference) - if you don't notice a difference I will eat my hat ;) That's why the real boys in the LevelD Sims use 60fps - I'm not joking you its because 25fps is not acceptable!.

Sheesh -- anybody can get 60+ FPS at 32,000 feet -- but if I could get 25 FPS when taxiing at ANY airport in the world including the complex addons, I would be ecstatic!! 25 FPS is more than enough for me. In fact, I'll settle for a guaranteed 20. OK - you've pushed me now - make that 18. No less - OK you're really a tough one, I can see that - 15 but not one frame lower!. Barry

Hey Barry, I'm obsessed with FPS - if I dont get 30+ I'm not happy!.

All the real boys stay safely in their cockpit. Seriously what are you doing panning auround on the outside off your aircraft during flight? ;-)

Koorby, where/how do I reduce visability to 30miles?Also how do i increase sharpness by +1 if I'm running an ATI card ( Radeon 9800xt with 256mb memory ) with Omega drivers?Have followed instructions to change AA to 4 and AF to 4, but cannot find anything that relates to sharpness of image ?RegardsPhil D

25 fps is fine for me. 60 is waaay overkill and Koorby is right. Also I run at 1024x768 and have no need to crank it higher. it looks great.

Hi there You can set visibility under weather settings. I'm on NVIDIA now, but ATI should have a sharpness scale under an image property tab of some kind (look for color correction).Thanks Koorby, gonna try out your numbers in a bit.-dasher7

25 fps is fine for me. 60 is waaay overkill and Koorby is right. Geez does anybody actually read posts!?, I know 60fps is too much! - I have mine locked at 30 but I was just stating that he was incorrect about 25fps in a video game being as smooth as video/film.

People, here's the short version for your convenience: A) 30 frames are fine for FS. :( Nevertheless, Koorby is wrong... :-hah Regards,

>Excellent quick and easy guide. Thanks. One question, how do>you adjust Sharpness on Nvidia 6800s?>>Edit: found it, duh. Thanks again. OK.. what is it? Let us know please. :)

I HATE TO ADMIT IT! But Koorby is RIGHT! I've always done UNLIMITED Frames and thought 25 was for the weaklings. After making all the adjustments recommended to the Display settings, and to the FS9 Config. file, I went flying in Seattle.Wow....what a difference....Smooth as Butta....I changed to 60 Frames and it was not nearly as smooth. I went back to Unlimited and the same thing happened. 25 FPS setting along with the recommendations in this thread really do work. If you haven't tried it, don't knock it. Thanks Koorby. I guess I'm a believer.

Sorry mate this discussion is about "stable" framerate. If you weren't at least as smooth at 60 as at 25 then your hardware couldn't keep up and it was stuttering that's all.Regards,

Not going to be led into a FPS tangent argument, but will answer some questions popping up:1. ATI cards don't have a sharpness setting in their control panel (I believe - been a while since I owned my 9800) - it's strictly an nVidia thing and comes with a caveat; it does eat frames a little :)2. Visibility is set in your weather settings. Move the slider until it shows "30m/48km"