Finally flying with FSX / SP2

[Guest dom993]

I have FSX installed for over a year, and the only thing I had been doing thus far was tweaking & tweaking more, never reaching a point where I would find an enjoyable result, so I never flew FSX during that time.My PC is Athlon X2-3800+ @ 2.4Ghz, 2Gb RAM, 6800GT/ 256Mb, and I can't afford to upgrade it these days.Then I reinstalled FSX clean, added SP1, then SP2 (with the usual run once FSX after each step, then defrag), and tried different settings.I finally settled on the following, which give me enough enjoyment I finally started to fly FSX :GRAPHICS - 1280x1024x32, Anisotropic + Anti-Aliasing - Target Framerate : Unlimited - Global texture resolution : Very High - No lens flare, No light bloom, No advanced animations AIRCRAFT - 3D Virtual Cockpit, High resolution - Aircraft cast shadows on ground - No aircraft cast shadows on itself - Aircraft landing-lights illuminate groundSCENERY - LOD Radius : Large - Mesh complexity : 75 - Mesh resolution : 10m - Texture resolution : 2m - Water effects : Low 2.X - Land detail textures - Scenery complexity : Very Dense - Autogen Complexity : Very dense - NO Ground scenery shadows - Special effects detail : LowWEATHER - Cloud draw distance : min (60mi / 96km) - Cloud detailed - Cloud coverage density : LowTRAFFIC - all 0With these settings, I get between 18 & 34 fps flying around Seattle, and the 2m textures seem to load reasonably (I am flying the Cessna 172), contrary to the 1m textures which would only load once the aircraft was right above, and leave bluries ahead.I also installed the modified WaterShader2.0 (see the FANTASTIC ... thread http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...19193&mode=full ) which I much prefer over the default once.Bottom-line - I can finally enjoy FSX on my "old" hardware - thank you ACES & all of FSX pioneers that spent countless hours bringing various tweaks to the community !My only regret is that there is absolutly no way on my current PC to open 2 views in FSX ... I used to fly w/ 3 views in FS9 (I have 3 LCDs, 2 out of the 6800GT, last one on a FX5500), and I miss this a lot... I am curious to know, if anyone out there is able to run decently FSX with 3 simultaneous views on 3 LCDs ???D.

[Guest TBomBM3789]

I'm glad you've hopped on the FSX boat!Welcome. Took me awhile to get good results too. Seems that Sp2 was the key for me, can't wait to see how it'll perform on newer hardware.

[Guest dom993]

I added today GEX & UTX-USA to my FSX. The result is very nice (doesn't compare at all with FSX default scenery) and to my surprise, it seems to run smoother than default scenery !Anyway, I am now using the 1m resolution with same or better framerate I had on default FSX scenery at 2m. I upped the TEXTURE_MAX_BANDWIDTH from 30 to 60, and locked my framerate to 25 fps, this seem to help reduce blurries quite a bit on my "old" PC.D.

[trimwheel 5]

D.Similar rig and settings and addons in use here. I concur that SP2 has somehow breathed new life into my old rig. Texture loading is faster for sure.New hardware is on the way soon though... :-)cheersGreghttp://www.fs2crew.com/linepilot.jpg