Hi all, I need some advice really. (if this is in the wrong forum I apologise, and please move it accordingly).I just built the following system:- Athlon64 x2 38001Gb DDR2 667mhz RAMGecube X1600XT 256mb PCI-E 590MHz 1.4ghz TV DVI DDR3running on WINXP pro......I am amazed at the image quality in fs9! and smooth VC with addon scenery in PMDG 737!!I just really need to know, whats the best settings for AAX and AF?Also texture bandiwth multi? have this at 300 at moment.I currently have AA at 4x and af at 16....is this too high?also should I lock my frames higher that 20?My resolution for info is 1280x800Thanks for advice chaps!Ian

Hi Ian,This might help you.These are my system specs:ASRock 939Dual-SATA2, AMD Athlon 64X2 3800+ (2000MHz)(K8 Manchester), 2GB Crucial PC3200 DDR400 Ram 1CMD (Dual Channel), (AGP 8X) Saphire ATI Radeon X800 XL (R430) 256MB (Omega 3.8.231 (Catalyst 6.3), Hyundai ImageQuest Q17 17" TFT LCD 20ms Monitor (1280x1024x32), SB Audigy2 ZS (Drivers version 5.12.0001.1164 WHQL), WD Caviar SE16 250GB (WD2500KS) SATA2 + Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 UDMA133 (80 GB), ASUS DRW-1608P2S Optical Drive, Antec P150 case with NeoHE 430W PSU, CH Products USB Yoke, Pedals and Fighterstick, Plantronics Headset and Mike combo, TrackIR Pro ver. 4.1 (build 28), Logitech MX1000 Laser Mouse, Windows XP Home Edition (SP2), DirectX 9.0c, AGP Aperture = 128MBCurrently I have the following settings which seem to work pretty well in most situations. (N.B. my installation is far from being an out-of-the-box vanilla FS9):Texture Bandwidth Multiple = 350Profile created using ATI Tray Tools:AA = 6X (Quality)AF = 16x (Quality with Trilinear)Anisotropic and Trilinear filtering optimizations checked.Frame lock = 30 (probably should be a little lower but most of the time when I'm not flying complex 3rd party a/c it appears to be fine)Mike

System in my sig,High Quality Overall settingTextMultitude 450AA 16xSAF 16xTAA SupersamplingLocked at 55 does the job without stuttersSeems to be fine overall, probally can get even more out of it with more tweaking but too tired to do that ;) rather be flying.In other words, Dual-Core does make a difference :)

Thanks for the tips, its all running great now I just have one small annoying problem.....blurries! nooo! hahaWell the textures are sharp up until a point, then they are awfully blurred, any tips?Im running UT europe and GE.....also uk2000 scenery......my display.cfg looks like this:-[DISPLAY.Device.GeCube RADEON X1600 Series.0]Mode=1280x800x32TriLinear=1[DISPLAY]UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=20TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=300[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=80.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=4TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=3.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4any suggestions on ways to make the textures crisper? I have autogen at very dense and scenery complexity at dense...Thanks again, Ian

Ian,Try these settings:TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=96.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=20TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4I have my TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT at 400 by the way too.I run a GeForce 7800GTX at 4X AA with transparency multisampling on (it's called Adaptive AA on the ATI cards) and 16X AF. Works for me!

ahhhh I think im going crazy, ive tried those settings, and searched this forum and tried every tweak till am blue in the face!I have blurry textures, its like a ring around the aircraft, they are super sharp until about 2 or 3 squares out, then they are blurry and dont come into sharp focus until im within 2 squares of them!I have 4aa with temporal aa on......and 16AF on with High quality enabled.....Surely this should equal sharp textures at LEASt 8-10 squares out?Is there ANYthing else I can try? I really would like sharp textures!ThanksIansorry forgot to add I also have adaptive anti-aliasing on also...

i have not posted in a LONG time but I thought I should post on this one. I believe this problem is with ATI cards in FS9. The ground textures are nice and sharp around a small radius and then you can actually tell where the blurring beings. I have not found a fix for this but this does not take away from my FS experince because I do not look outside the aircraft to much. The best thing I can recommend is to have the lastest drivers from ATI (6.8). Use drivercleaner to remove all the stuff left over from the old ati drivers (www.driverheaven.net). Get the display drivers only from ATI and use ATI tray tools for tweaking. Kill any background process you do not need. You can find information all over the internet on tweaking windows xp for performance. I get alittle annoyed with blurries but I can tell you with the FSX demo I did not see any.

Ian try this,TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=0TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.5TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=5

TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.00000 and TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=96.00000 will give exactly the same visual appearance in FS, but with the setting on 96 you will get slightly (very slightly) better performance. 100 does nothing to improve the quality of the mesh.It's a tweakers difference, though. Probably not anything worth doing. But still I thought I would mention it.RhettAMD 3700+ powered by Gerbil wheel + gerbil, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 gigs Corsair TWINX, blah blah, etc. etc.

[DISPLAY]UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=20TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=300[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=96.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=5is my current settings...I have tried almost every suggestion regarding this part of the CFG and nothing changes the blurry part.....I cant believe this is only related to ATI cards??? Surely there must be some sort of fix or workaround?Also regarding texture bandwith multi, what would be the reccomended setting for my GFX card...?Thanks for any help again, Ian!Hope I can get this resolved

Another suggestion, turn off Temporal AA. It probably won't cure the blurries but TAA does nothing for FS AFAIK. Kind regards Jaap

ATI card and blurries go together. Good luckJimCYWG

So because I spent

Maybe not with FSX though??? One can always hope!RhettAMD 3700+ powered by Gerbil wheel + gerbil, eVGA 7800GT 256, ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 gigs Corsair TWINX, blah blah, etc. etc.

If my system copes with FSX haha :(