2 questions on Aircraft shadows and frame rates

[Guest]

Hi! Everyone:I have 2 questions for my friends out there who are having a better luck then I have.1. I read somewhere that deleting the fs2002.cfg file will regeneate a new one which might improve performence. I did that and it was regenerated, but I now have aircraft shadows which are solid black rather than translucent. How can I fix that?2. Frame rates are very low. My system is a P4-1.6384 Meg RAMNvidia Geforce3 200Ti (28.32 driver)SAmsung 19" monitorWin XP. I tried all sorts of settings, incl. everything at the lowest as well as highest (incl. resolution from 600x480 to 1600x1200), but can't see more than 12-15 fps. around O'hare. ATC at 0 or 100 makes little difference. Usually I get 4.5 fps. at O'hare with ATC 100%I read recently that XP has a problem with refresh rates and games cannot change the refresh rates to 'optimal' like in Win98.Any help will be really appreciated. Thanks

[Guest SD Sim]

It may be too late to ask, but did you save your old .cfg file? When you save the old file, you can always swap it back in to see if everything is back to normal. If not, then I would suspect that the problem lies elsewhere. I have learned this lesson through past mistakes :-roll .

[Guest]

Thanks for the response David. (you are the only one who responded!!). The file is still in the recycle bin, but this was happening even before that, that's why I deleted that file.I think that with my system, I should get higher frame rates. I will keep looking for an answer!I looked at your system in your profile, Could you tell me how is your frame rate (esp. in Chicago area)? May be I need more memory.

[Guest]

jerrycwo4 Black shadows. I remember reading a while ago that the choice of either the "16 bit" or the "32bit" ( as in 1040 x 768 x "16" (or "32" ) would either make the shadows "gray' OR ON THE OTHER HAND "BLACK". pLAY WITH THE DIFFERANT ONES.. SEE IF IT MAKES A DIFFERANCE FOR YOU.JERRY

[Guest SD Sim]

Your frame rates sound very similar to what I experienced when I had only my P4/1.5. At the time, I thought that upgrading my GeForce TNT2 32MB video card to a GF4 Ti4600 would make all the difference in the world. Short story, it made a difference, but not as much as I was expecting. I later came to appreciate (with some excellent assistance from Elrond, look here [http://ftp.avsim.com/cgi-bin/dcforum/dcboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=1123&forum=DCForumID8&archive=]) that it was a combination of a rather slow cpu and memory that was the culprit. With the new "server", I did see a marked improvement. I train primarily in San Diego :-cool using Orlando Sotomayers 30m mesh scenery. I keep my frame rate locked at 25 because that's plenty to keep my flights smooth (no wild acrobatics for this boy). Perhaps someday I'll be brave and venture beyond my back yard (I also like training in Seattle where I grew up). You probably see a pattern here. I train where I know the location of the airports. This helps me quite a bit as I try to teach myself basic VFR.But I digress. Back to your question. What type of memory do you have? If it's PC133, and you have some cash, go for a new mainboard equiped with an Athlon XP1800 or above, and pick up some DDR memory. I think you'll find that that helps quite a bit.

[Guest]

This may sound strange however it is true. I have a amd 1Ghz and 512mb Ram. I also had a Geforce2 video card and was amazed at how smooth everything was even if the frame rate dropped below what should normaly render smooth images. Then I decided to get a Geforce3 and now I am wanting to go back to the geforce2. My framerate's never dropped but the smooth factor sure did and the image quality is not that hot either. I don't understand it but the older card wins. I too have winxp.

[Guest]

David and jerrycwo4Thank you for your replies. I tried the 32 bit and the shadows did become translucent (albeit with some overlapping shapes). Also thanks for the link, David. It is very educative. I also increased my bios AGP texture size to 256 and believe it or not, the frames went up by almost double (from 5-6 to 10-11).All suggestions appreciated.--Vik Patel

[Guest]

Framerates are not hardware issues.AMD 900 / TNT2 = 20fps locked all major cities, texture stuff at max, density max, mesh=75If I turn down AI aircraft and autogen to "normal" I can lock perfectly at 25fps.michael