OK, I benchmarked all the settings for water effects. I tried each setting in the VOR lesson. I started the lesson, left the panel on 2D, and watched the fps for about 30 seconds. none 28-30 fpslow 1.x 28-30mid 1.x 28-29high 1.x 27-28low 2.x 27mid 2.x 21high 2.x 19-20max 2.x 19-20Big drop from low 2.x to mid 2.x. I'll be keeping mine on low 2.x for now. Also, I confirmed a 5 fps loss when light bloom is turned on. This is rather well known.On to Autogen testing.I updated my sig with my hardware just now while I'm writing this...in case it doesn't make it into this message, here is my hardware:Dual core Opteron 1212 overclocked to 2.8 ghz | 2 gig RAM | Geforce 7950 GT 512 meg | Vista x64

Yeah..the 2Low is the sweet spot. I loved the water so much that I was not willing to go below Max 2. Finally I have come to terms that I could use the meagre FPS available for something else and settled for 2Low.Manny

Good findings.I personally like the visuals of the 1.x high over any of the 2.x settings. To me the only place 2.x water looks good is right on or near the ground.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

Above Low 2.x is where the reflections kick in.. anything that's being reflected, has to be rendered twice. At the max setting, everything, even autogen, is reflected. Hopefully, faster CPUs and DX10 will make make fully reflective water more viable.

I see. That is good to know. If I fly over a lot of water, or use a seaplane, I will turn up the water to get reflections.

Although I have not tested it in a scientific manner, I also believe that 2x low is the best spot for me. The new water in FSX is one of the sim's high points and I just can live without it.