I've seen many, many conflicting reports on various forums as to the best way to configure your Flight Sim with respect to locking your fps. Some say that you should lock them as frame rates any higher than "x" number is a waste, and then others claim (including folks like Megascenery) that setting them to unlimited is the best way to avoid the dreaded "blurries". So I thought I'd appeal to the vast experiences of the folks here to leave their opinions on what they believe to render the best results. I'm a visual kind of guy and I'm looking for the things that will most improve the looks of my sim.Thanks all!

HelloHere is a link to an explanation on the issue of "blurries" and the Frame rate slider written by Steve Lacey one of the Flightsim programmers.http://www.steve-lacey.com/blogarchives/20..._blurries.shtmlSteve also helped to write DirectX so i will go with what he says.

I never understood the big debate over this issue. I mean its not like once you set one its permanent. Try both ways. If you can see no difference, move onto something else to stress over. Like blurries.

In my original post I state that the blurries are exactly the issue I would like to resolve. And yes, I've read that blog from Steve, which is why I currently have them locked at 27fps, but as I said, Megascenery specifically recommends unlimited to avoid the blurries. I just thought I'd get some opinions from others as to what their experiences are.

>In my original post I state that the blurries are exactly the>issue I would like to resolve. And yes, I've read that blog>from Steve, which is why I currently have them locked at>27fps, but as I said, Megascenery specifically recommends>unlimited to avoid the blurries. I just thought I'd get some>opinions from others as to what their experiences are.I would take the word of an MSFS developer over anybody else! He was one of the programmers that wrote the program, I would think he knows what he's talking about!! The best thing I find to reduce the blurries, is to make sure your Texture_Bandwidth_Mult setting is high enough. The default setting is way to low, and slows down texture load times. To high a setting though can introduce, or make worse stuttering. I find a setting somewhere in the neighborhood of 150-200 works best, but your miledge may differ here.

I don't think there is any "right" answer. I've never had any blurries whether I lock the framerate or leave it set to unlimited. There seem to be some system-specific "thingies" about the blurries. Some of us have them and some of us don't. I'd recommend trying it several different ways and just picking one that works. Or, just set the framerate lock to 20, live with the result, and don't worry about it again (20 FPS looks OK to most folks and if the blurries are still present at 20 there is no hope anyway).Doug

I've never seen any real difference. I think people "want" to believe they are seeing some benefit, thus they do see it.

In my opinion the higher you lock the FPS slider, the more you're asking for the stutters as the frame rate starts to jump up and down more. I think if you have a pretty decent system (for the record I have a 3.2 gig processor, an X800 Pro and 1gig of quality RAM - not the best or the most up-to-date system out there, but pretty decent for FS9 nonetheless), then personally I find it's best to cap it somewhere in the 30s for what I would regard as fluid motion. On my system (and yes, I'm simply just talking about MY system to illustrate what I'm getting at) I find that capping it in the 20s does nothing of real benefit in terms of blurries as such and just slows the average framerate down..but that's just in my experience. I personally found that tweaking the FS9.cfg file helped with the issue of blurries a lot more.. Anything ABOVE the 30s causes the frame rates to fluctuate by too great a margin (which is what causes stuttering). I find that capping it extremely high or letting it run at unlimited is just asking for stuttering, blurries and longer texture loading times as you're simply giving the computer too much to do all at once. In short what I'm saying is that there is a reason the slider's there, as it does have its advantages, but I think more so in terms of keeping frame rates more consistent. In terms of the blurring it MAY help by capping it, but not a great deal I don't think. I personally think tweaking the terrain parameters within the FS9.cfg is more effective in that regard...again, that's just through my experience with my system.

I have a really fast system, and anything but unlimited just does not run right. in turns, with a locked framerate, I get obvious pauses, and more blurries. unlimited works best for me.

Interesting responses and it all boils down to what works for you. I have a high end rig and while I can see up to 80-90 fps I get slight stutters/pauses at unlimted. I have it locked at 40 and it's smooth.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir International

For overall smoothness and fluidity it needs to be locked at a point where fps doesn'nt fluctuate. For me it is usually 20 or so and works fine with little or no blurring with default or Bev textures and complex aircraft like PMDG 747. Photosceneries are a different animal, however and seem to run with less blurries with fps set to unlimited or locked high 30 to 40. Generally the higher fps the less blurries. 3d clouds, complex aircraft, ai traffic, anything that puts a load on the system and lowers fps seems to cause blurring. For best results with photographic sceneries it is best to fly in the default or other not too complex GA aircraft under 120 knots, with little or no clouds (or clear all weather). Reduced visibility 30 or 40 miles sometimes helps if using weather. Unlimited fps. To me it depends on where and what I am flying and I lock or unlock accordingly.

Far's I know, the only reason to lock your rate is if you fly online with other peeps. If you do, set the rate at 18 - 20 so that they won't be affected by your speed rate. From the online flying I've done the others won't be happy if you have your rate set above that. If ya ain't flyin' online then it's yer own biz whether you want to set at unlimited or not.:D

I've tried both a lot, and unlimited never did anything to improve things. It didn't seem any worse either. Setting fps to unlimited, higher framerates don't feel any different, even though you would think they would. What is likely happening is that the fps counter is not telling us the whole story. There are still "micro-stutters" no matter what the counter says. One thing I did notice about unlimited is that it feels a little better if you are not pushing the limits of your PC. Say you are flying in a very simple aircraft, far away from any complex scenery. In this case, unlimited works well. However, once you start pushing your system with lots of AI, complex aircraft, etc, fps is going to drop either way. In this case, unlimited doesn't seem to make much difference. I finally decided to lock them at 25, turn the counter off, and just go fly.

Thanks for everyone that chimed in on the question, which confirmed my suspicions that is simply depends on too many factors to have a definitive right or wrong. I currently have mine locked at 27 and have seen little difference from setting it to unlimited as well, but I definitely wanted to get some different experiences to correlate it to.Thanks again for your help.