Today I was flying and noticed that FSX was stuttering more than usual. I closed it down and checked my fsx.cfg file and discovered that something had been changed. I opened up one of my back-up files and changed some of the lines and restarted FSX. I couldn't believe my eyes, I had never seen FSX this smooth!!:-eek :-eek :-eek I was getting an average of 35FPS on the ground in a forest and around 22 in the air above the forest with 5 mile vis and 100% cloud cover. I usually got 15-17 there with the same weather setting before the tweaks (I have a low-mid range PC). Here's what I did:Under the {Display} heading I changed the line reading:TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400 to read,TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40Under the {Main} heading I wrote:FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.18Under the {SCENERY} heading I added the line:SmallPartRejectRadius=2Under the {TERRAIN} heading I added: TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=800TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=3000And at the bottom of the fsx.cfg file I added the following:{BufferPools}PoolSize=6000000I also used the following downloads:reduced_treesreduced_default.xmlreduced_cloudsAutogendescriptions.spbI hope this will help some of you who read this, it has really helped me. I have also attached my fsx.cfg. If you decide to use it make sure you change the line:{DISPLAY.Device.Radeon X1300/X1550 Series .0}to display your graphics card type instead of mine.Also remember to change the curly brackets, {}, to the boxy ones.

ouch....5 mile vis....that sucks that you would have to fly in that all the time...Glad something worked though!

Under the {Display} heading I changed the line reading:TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400 to read,TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40Unlike FS9, this should never be set over 40 anyway. Phil's blog goes into detail about this.Lowering it to 30 gives the best results for my setup.SmallPartRejectRadius=2Try this at 4 instead. It should improve performance more and is hardly noticable.Glenn

I actually enjoy 5-mile vis, I usually fly in "bad" weather because its more of a challenge. For me, higher vis actually causes more of a FPS hit than lower vis. I will try those tweaks you mentioned, Glenn. Thanks!

How do you set the visibility???? I have been trying to figure that out for weeks!

The visibility I am talking about is changed in the weahter setting section of the free-flight page. It is essentially telling FSX if you want fog or a clear day and if fog, how much. The other type of "visibility" (the one I think you are reffering to) is called the "Level Of Detail Radius or, LOD". That can be changed on the settings page, under the custom section and it can be set to high, medium, or low. Hopefully this will help you. If I haven't answered your question or you still can't find what you are looking for, just tell me and I'll be happy to help you figure it out.

Good thread. Can you please explain what Level of Detail does visually for the user. Thanks.

I believe that the LOD changes how far away you start seeing trees and how far away textures start loading.

>I believe that the LOD changes how far away you start seeing>trees and how far away textures start loading. I was under the impression that it make distant objects rendered at a higher quality, but then again I dont' notice a difference no matter where I put that slider. Maybe its has more effect is bigger cities, which I avoid usually anyway. It might be the trees though, I'm not sure. The reason I even question it is because if you download PicNic by Aim

Level of Detail Radius determines how many tiles out, you get the highest texture resolution that you have selected (like 2m textures).The "large" setting corresponds to 4.5 tiles out from your airplane.Beyond this radius you get lower level resolution.You can try setting it to 5.5 in FSX.cfg to get a larger radius, but I have not found a way to make this setting stick. Any change in Settings will reset it to 4.5. Also be aware that you are increasing the memory load on the video card if you increase this setting.

Bell417,I've tried your settings with pretty good success; however, I'm unable to find the downloads mentioned in your message. Can you enlighten?

Sorry, I thought they were on Avsim. Here they are:Reduced Default.xml= http://www.fox-fam.com/FSX/reduced_default.xml.zip Autogen Descriptions= http://www.fox-fam.com/FSX/AutogenDescriptions.zip Reduced Clouds= http://www.savefile.com/files/146259 Reduced Trees= http://www.savefile.com/files/146254