Wow! Thx for taking the time to test this all! :)Although even your system has troubles with the flight (apparently I chose a 'heavy' surrounding to test...!), it's indeed strange my system is slower than yours... I also have stock FS X and a joystick attached. I do have a USB hub connected: maybe I should see what happens when I remove that one. I also have force feedback joystick, but have feedback disabled in FSX. I will look at the driver setting: maybe I can turn ff off there too totally. I do not have any programs running in the background, apart from what comes with Vista, so no virusscanners or things like that. I think Vista might also be a big problem... Vista and the 8800GTX drivers. But I do not have a legal copy of XP lying around, so... and nVidia is still working on the drivers. ;)At this moment I am trying hard to be satiesfied with autogen at Normal: it gives me fps between 15 up to 25 in the area of Bergen, depending on where I look. Maybe new drivers will help in the future. Thx again for testing and thinking along!O yes, what exactly is 'the MDL of the autogen'...?

Hi J.The MDL of the autogen refers to the actual models of the autogen objects, as they are created by 3DMax, and their textures. If some of the models are unduly complicated, or do not use LOD plane reduction to reduce complicated shapes( shapes getting simpler as they are farther from the eye ), then they can eat up a lot of processing and reduce the FPS. However, it's unlikely these are more than very simple shapes.There are 1334 objects within the vegetation.bgl... lot's easier to just move the slider back a couple of notches. I don't know if these SP1 models are the same as the original.Dick

I tested again today using a config that worked well in most areas. I dont think it the mountains as much as it is the trees period. I lowered my autogen to very dense thinking cutting down on autogen would fix problem. Still had bad stuttering performance over any place where dense forest was used, but worked fine in every other terrain. To get acceptable performance I would have to match tree autogen with building autogen which you're not supposed to do. I have just decided to limit where I want to fly because I am tired of jumping through hoops to get this to work in all terrains. Been reading various boards at simviation and found out that ACES implemented dual core at a minimal level working with Intel only (no AMD at all),which is why you see the PR about FSX working with Intel Q6700 and so forth. ACES didn't have time to optimize its dual core code with every Intel dual core processor and every stepping within a product line like say an E6700 like mine. Here's how Ntune lists mine: Family = 6Model = 15Stepping = 6 A later production or earlier production will have a different stepping (maybe model too) as Intel improves the processor. That's maybe why one says SP-1 works great on his e6600 while another e6600 owner says he's having a hard time with SP-1

>2x water settings add a rendering pass.>Bloom adds a rendering pass.>Shadows adds a rendering pass.Good info, thanks. How to turn off Bloom?Dirk.