Well! Just in case anyone really wants to know....I just finished doing exactly what I described above and not only worked my way up to just about where I was before on the sliders (the ones that are turned down slightly are ones I don't think I'd really recognize a whole lot of difference on), but also picked up 3-5 FPS improvement with even better-looking scenery, heading south starting at the north end of Seattle city limits, overflying the city, and continuing to land at KSEA...the FSP stayed at a consistent 20FPS with maybe a very brief burble below it from time to time (something I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed unless I had the FPS counter going!). AND, the scenery textures kept up the whole way - granted, I was tooling along at about 110 KIAS in an ACA Super Decathlon which isn't a speed demon, but I'll refly the flight in my ** FW-190 and I'm sure it will be better too!COOL!!!!!!!!!I got:- Pretty Dang sharp 1m scenery texture resolution, which for me looks fine!- Water effects at 2x Low- Normal Autogen and Scenery density- Medium LOD with a Mesh Complexity of 30 and Mesh Resolution f 38 (I'll turn it up if I hit the mountains and get away from the city autogen, and make a Bush Flying settings file)- Medium special effects detail (and hey, I bet I can turn this up higher with minimum impact)- Detailed clouds- All types of traffic turned on, maybe just not as much as before (but I wasn't REALLY counting the lil' cars and logging trucks anyway)- Hi-Res virtual cockpit and advanced animationsI did exactly as described in the above post and also did something else: I figured my personal acceptable FPS target would be 20 FPS, which to me is quite smooth and flyable and TrackIR pans great at that FPS.Then, I upped that by 25% to arrive at an FPS cap of 25. THEN I started with everything on the bottom and prioritized what I wanted and slowly edged everything up. As it became much better-looking, I kept an eye on the FPS counter and when it started to stumble and stay just below 25FSP consistently, I then LOWERED the FPS cap to 20. Then I didn't touch much else.It was surprising how far I got before reaching that point, and now I have a few FPS "budget" of spare processing time to let FSX keep up with texture loads, updating, and other housekeeping duties...plus handle thunderstorms and more complex weather, glass cockpits and ILS approaches. Maybe not all at the same time without dipping a bit further, but that keeps it in the flyable range.All this on a 3-year-old PC with a couple of upgraded components!Yessir....maybe I'm just figuring out what most here already know, but I'm glad I did that. http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/172215.jpgDefiitely confirms the topic of this post and THANKS for bringing this subject up, Jim!

Congratulations, Stoopy, you've deducted the only right way of dealing with FSX's settings. I thought every nitty-gitty detail and suggestion in the config have been discussed. You should be awarded for the novelty of your approach. Admins, pls make this sticky, this really works.Dirk.

Agree with the approach, and for what it is worth, as per another recent post, the difference between Scenery Complexity "normal" and "dense" seems quite significant in FSX (more so than in FS9), so if you have problems try backing off that slider and see if things improve. Around KSEA, I notice a big difference with this setting.

Max,I would have agreed with you before I tried Tileproxy but believe me autogen becomes less important when you do. OK its currently not going to replace what we have at present worlwide but its a new and different experience. Go to the Tileproxy forum and look under the screenshot thread. Here are some of mine as a taste. In my case I use a TH2G system (3840 x1024) res spread over 3 screens. The first two saves are at Interlaken and the next two near Salt Lake City. (No veggie popping either!)http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/172234.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/172235.jpg

That realy is an intresting approach.I always approach FS-X tweaking from the standpoint that I can use my FS 9 tweaking knowledge, perform a basic setting with the stuff I know to work in FS9 and work from there.Your approach is realy worth a try (certainly when your homeland is as flat as the Netherlands we hardly need a mesh setting here ;) ). Next time I go tweaking somebody's FS-X setup I will use your approach and build up my FS-X tweaking knowledge from there.Thanks for the eye opener.

>Max,>I would have agreed with you before I tried Tileproxy but>believe me autogen becomes less important when you do. OK its>currently not going to replace what we have at present>worlwide but its a new and different experience. Go to the>Tileproxy forum and look under the screenshot thread. Here are>some of mine as a taste. In my case I use a TH2G system (3840>x1024) res spread over 3 screens. The first two saves are at>Interlaken and the next two near Salt Lake City. (No veggie>popping either!)>172234.jpg (the second from the top) desperately needs ground objects. To my taste it is a showstopper without ground objects (like in UK Photorealistic and VFR Terrain, Swiss Pro, even Megascenery). In the game it feels even worse than on JPG images. I don't like the problems associated with autogen, but I hate barren textures, it feels like they are fake and you've been cheated on landing (culmination of the flight btw). :)

Look, we all enjoy various levels of tweaking of the FS series. It is one of the main aspects, if not the main aspect, that has kept this series alive for 25 years. Whether it's adding scenery, overclocking, painting planes, collecting AI, we ALL love it, in each of our own special ways.How many posts have we seen over the past few years concerning the porting of the FS series to Xbox. Why has this not happened, and more importantly, will never fully replace the FS series on the PC? Becuase of customization capabilities that only the PC can deliver to the FS series. Look at the diverse customer base of the product, everyone from my two year-old daughter (yes, she's learning to swtich views), to us overclockers, to the US Airforce, to private pilot trainers, plane museums, to the home cockpit builders, and so on.To whatever extent, it is we, the FS consumers, that enjoy customizing FS to each of our own individual needs, preferences, and requirements. If MS dared to ever, ever, take that away from us, the series would be lost to the ages very quickly.Siming since 1985! and still going, and going, and going, and going...

Thanks, and for the record, I do have some CFG file tweaks still in use - I didn't think about this until afterwards, and I MAY try removing them and doing this all over again just to gauge their effectiveness. For the record, they are, at the moment:TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=10 (interestingly, I had this at 40 but something in the above process reset it!)FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.25PerfBucket=50 (Definitely want to set this back at "5" since an order of magnitude higher seems suspicious)PoolSize=10000000SmallPartRejectRadius=4 (Last item on Phil Taylor's blog, I don't need to see rendered air conditioner units on rooftops)SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT=90System spec is a Gateway P4 HT (Prescott chip) 3.2Ghz, 2GB DDR RAM, ATI 1650 Pro 512MB vid card, latest drivers, Windows XP.O/S tweaks: I set "Sound Card Accelleration" in DXDiag to "Low" (an old CFS3 tweak that works to free up headroom without impacting sound quality) and usually run "SmartClose" before a flying session to kill unneeded apps - however this AM I reflew my test flight without "SmartClosing" and also retained the 20FPS pretty much the whole way....I'd guess that's the 'FPS budget', with the frame rate cap set to below the actual possible number, at work...Tonight I'll rename my FSX.CFG and try with a stock rebuilt one. I have another CFG modified the same way but with specific changes for TileProxy and applied the same process to my TP setup and saw a similar benefit by applying the "ground up" approach.Best of luck and happy flying!

Now, let me preface by stating my name is Bob and I am a simmer. Whether it is FS9 or FSX doesnt make any difference. They are tools that I utilize for my hobby. I fly them both. The advances in FSX capability (and resource demands) is inversely proportional to the development of new products. I'm not talking just about eye candy, but the complete immersion package. FSX cut the momentum of our add-on developers at the knees. And the developers represent a substantial part of the success of MS flight simulators. They make the package complete. For me, FSX is tweak and fly, tweak and fly. Nothing to do but tweak and fly. Because it is missing so many add-on elements that make the package complete, it is hollow. It is missing many of the things that I enjoy in simming. I miss flying big jets (LDS/PMDG/PIC737). I miss the works of art called Misty and Tongass Fjords. I still cannot fly into major cities without unacceptable frame rates and assume that PMDG's new FSX version will not be flyable on my system. I guess my point is that the maturity of FSX will be the longest in the history of the franchise. I'm not convinced that the simmers and developers lost along the way will be worth the step change in advancements. In any case I have cargo to load into my 400F for delivery in FS9. Then fire up the Pilatus Porter and head to upper state NY in FSX. Bob..

Hey i used the small part reject radius at 4 and lost my paint scheme on the default caravan....i tried the red and white paint scheme, but with that setting, the paint was all white - does yours do that?

>Now, let me preface by stating my name is Bob and I am a>simmer.Hiii Bob. :)

Hmmmmm.....the way I understood that tweak, is it applied to Autogen objects only so that's curious as heck!No, I just check mine (first time I've flown the Caravan, finally!) and she's clean as a whistle....did you get your "Global Texture Resolution" (On Display -> Graphics tab) back up from very low yet? Mine is set to "Very High".It's easy to forget if you fly an add-on plane that isn't saved with mipmaps, since it'll always look nice and sharp. I ran a final test last night with the default Maule and realized I forgot that particular slider, and bumping it up didn't hurt me, or at least too much noticeably.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/172271.jpg

Well, opinions and interests vary, and I'll say that although I've been tweaking for a long while myself and not on just this sim, I don't particularly enjoy it. Like you I started back in the 80's (when FS3 came out) and there WAS no tweaking....other than picking Hercules Monochrome or CGA Color when the sim started up. I'd MUCH rather fly and experience the sim.....am very very glad that now I can do it with it working the way it should be finally, thanks to attacking it from the "bottom up" so to speak where the soft white underbelly is. Tweaking is somewhat fun for a spell, in that it's an intriguing puzzle and you get to test out different theories, but after a while there's places to go and aeroplanes to fly.Heck, I remember when FSX came out I read that there's supposed to be like 100-odd "Easter Eggs" scattered around, and so far I haven't read of one! Personally I'm gonna go work on THAT aspect.....after a few more missions which are now much more flyable and enjoyable as well.

>For me, FSX is tweak and fly, tweak and fly. Nothing to do but>tweak and fly. Because it is missing so many add-on elements>that make the package complete, it is hollow. It is missing>many of the things that I enjoy in simming. I miss flying big>jets (LDS/PMDG/PIC737). I miss the works of art called Misty>and Tongass Fjords. I still cannot fly into major cities>without unacceptable frame rates and assume that PMDG's new>FSX version will not be flyable on my system. I agree with your concerns. I tired from the wait for LDS and PMDG. With FS2Crew preparing to launch its A320 software, I decided to try the Wilco A320. I am very happy with it but it really affected performance. I had excellent results after SP1 but using the A320 knocked performance down immensely and I had to really back off the sliders. I expect LDS and PMDG to have the same or more of an impact. I cringe when I think about what will happen if/when I add weather and scenery addons.Everyone has different preferences with FS and for me it is complex big birds with accurate weather, scenery and ATC. FSX is far superior to FS9 in many ways, but I simply cannot have the same type of experience with a fairly good system (Dual Core E6600 (2.4G), Nvidea 8800, 2GB Ram). So, I don't think I am being unreasonable in being disappointed that I cannot run FSX as I ran FS9 and enjoy the improvements of FSX. Most of us do not have unlimited budgets for a hobby and I can understand the frustration of many with FSX. I suspect that even ACES would admit they would have done a few things differently (SP1 is evidence of that)with the benefit of hindsight. They had no choice but to make decisions and compromises and some were better than others. I don't condemn them, but lets not blame the customer too much. MS makes a product, we buy it. If the product does not meet expectations, we complain. Nothing wrong with that.

>>Now, let me preface by stating my name is Bob and I am a>>simmer.>>Hiii Bob. :)LOL!