No disrespect to Tony and his attempt to assist, but, I'm still seeking the render.ini settings that will optimize Fly II for my system. Any assistance would be appreciated.933 mhz (Pent. III)512 MB RAMGeForce Ti 4200 128 MBNvidia driver 40.72Thanks,Jim

Jim I`m sure if you do a "search" in this forum for render.ini you will find set ups that are comparable to your systemQdog

Jim, Hey dont worry about disrespecting me. I certainly dont take it as that. Im as we type doing a search for any and all render settings. In the meantime can I get you to post your render.ini here? if you will do this I will work on the math for your card settings. TonyFlyII! ver. 2.40Directx 8.1nVidia drivers 41.09ECS K7S5A SOCKETA /DDR/ATX MB, DDR SRAM 128MB PC-2100 266MHZ MEMORY ,AMD ATHLON T-BIRD 1.2GHZ 256K FSB266 PGA , NVIDIA GEFORCE2 MX-400 64MB AGP

Tony, OK, here you go with the currect settings I'm using. They seem to work, but, I'm curious as to whether they are really optimizing my setup.Thanks again,Jim[Graphics]mipLevelCount=8vertexIndexFormat=0premultiplyColorAndAlpha=0allowAutoMipMapping=0directTextureFlag=0[Textures]maxTextures32=20maxTextures64=16maxTextures64_565=110maxTextures128=72maxTextures128_565=999maxTextures256=20maxTextures256_565=85maxTextures512=8maxTextures512_565=0maxTextures1024=4mipMapFlag=896maxTextures64=4[NonAGP]maxTextures256_565=0[AGP]maxTextures256_565=0

Jim,Even though we use the same kind of card, my settings may not give you anywhere near the same performance, mattering on what scenery and graphics selections you've made, MB, AGP Aperture, RAM & CPU, etc. I also use about 5 different render files, as some persons' scenery is loaded with way too many polygons to work with a single INI file.I've found that Allen Kriesman's "Flystart" program is a great tool, allowing me to preset aircraft, location, sky settings, camera settings for each aircraft, and separate render.ini files for the type of scenery or location I'll be flying in. If everyone made their scenery properly, following Allen's and TRI's guidelines, this wouldn't be necessary - unfortunately, that's not the case. Here's the one I use about 50% of the time for good results with my system:mipLevelCount=5vertexIndexFormat=0premultiplyColorAndAlpha=0allowAutoMipMapping=0directTextureFlag=0maxTextures32=20maxTextures32_565=20maxTextures64=16maxTextures64_565=110maxTextures128=72maxTextures128_565=999maxTextures256=20maxTextures256_565=85maxTextures512=8maxTextures512_565=0maxTextures1024=2mipMapFlag=896maxTextures256_565=0maxTextures256_565=0

Jim Ok heres your render below.mipLevelCount=8 <----------You can try 6 or 7 here. vertexIndexFormat=0premultiplyColorAndAlpha=0allowAutoMipMapping=0directTextureFlag=0These are your current settings.maxTextures32=20maxTextures64=16<-----------You have this entered twice.maxTextures64_565=110maxTextures128=72maxTextures128_565=999maxTextures256=20maxTextures256_565=85maxTextures512=8maxTextures512_565=0maxTextures1024=4mipMapFlag=896maxTextures64=4<-----------Double entry?maxTextures256_565=0maxTextures256_565=0Below is the calculation of how much actual memory that is being used.Texture Slot Allocation SummarymaxTextures32 20 81,920maxTextures32_565 0 0maxTextures64 16 262,144 maxTextures64_565 110 901,120maxTextures128 72 4,718,592maxTextures128_565 999 32,735,232maxTextures256 20 5,242,880maxTextures256_565 85 11,141,120maxTextures512 8 8,388,608maxTextures512_565 0 0maxTextures1024 4 16,777,216maxTextures1024_565 0 0 Tot Tex Mem Size MB 76.53So this shows that you still have roughly 51-52 meg free to use. As I said before I dont have 128 meg card. All you need to remember is to make a copy of your original render.ini and save it in a ither folder somewhere. Below is a test render for you to try. Make the changes and save it to your Fly system folder. This is a start. Let me know what your FPS is before and after trying this.maxTextures32=20maxTextures32_565=300maxTextures64=16maxTextures64_565=110maxTextures128=72maxTextures128_565=999maxTextures256=20maxTextures256_565=85maxTextures512=8maxTextures512_565=20maxTextures1024=6maxTextures1024_565=12mipMapFlag=896maxTextures256_565=0maxTextures256_565=0Below are the results showing how much memory will be used with this render.ini. It still leave about 9-10 meg free.Texture Slot Allocation SummarymaxTextures32 20 81,920maxTextures32_565 300 614,400maxTextures64 16 262,144 maxTextures64_565 110 901,120maxTextures128 72 4,718,592maxTextures128_565 999 32,735,232maxTextures256 20 5,242,880maxTextures256_565 85 11,141,120maxTextures512 8 8,388,608maxTextures512_565 20 10,485,760maxTextures1024 6 25,165,824maxTextures1024_565 12 25,165,824 Tot Tex Mem Size MB 119.12TonyFlyII! ver. 2.40Directx 8.1nVidia drivers 41.09ECS K7S5A SOCKETA /DDR/ATX MB, DDR SRAM 128MB PC-2100 266MHZ MEMORY ,AMD ATHLON T-BIRD 1.2GHZ 256K FSB266 PGA , NVIDIA GEFORCE2 MX-400 64MB AGP

One other thing - if you use FSAA and other enhancements, a portion of your card's memory will be allocated for that. I use FSAA and therefore plan as if I have 90-100MB available...not 128.

"If everyone made their scenery properly, following Allen's and TRI's guidelines"Randall that hurts! Perhaps I am not following the guidelines and I have to plead ignorance as I did not know there were guidelines.I do, however, include a render.ini file will all the sceneries and my system is slow. If I don't have an fps problem, I can't understand why others would.Any help you, or others would provide on scenery will certainly be appreciated by myself.Perhaps the guidelines could be posted on the flydevelopers forum.Thanks,

Randall brings up a very good point. You don't want to allocate all of your cards ram to textures. FSAA and anisiotropic filtering use quite a bit of ram when enabled so leaving enough free for those functions is important. They're isn't really an optimal setting for a render file. It's very dependent on scenery and hardware. If your frame rates don't plunge when your are in certain scenery areas, your pretty well optimized. I have only tweeked a few settings and that was only because of the increase in 256-565 textures used in FS Imports scenery.

First, a big thanks to Randall and Tony for their willingness to assist and their suggestions. I've tried both render.ini files suggested, and, the results, like many things in life, fall into the "six of one, half-dozen of the other."To check the fps with all three possibilities I used the Fly II startup position at KSFO. With the render file I started with the fps reading was 27. With both of your files the fps reading was virtually identical, 21.As I understand it, any fps reading above 20 is probably more than the eye can comprehend anyway, so, it looks like any of the files would work. I suspect that the drop in fps from 27 to 21 is due to the fact that more resources are being used for other tasks, but, not being a computer whiz, that's just a guess. I'll do some more flying around and try to discern whether the scenery looks any better at the lower fps.Thanks again y'all.Jim

That wasn't a poke at you personally, Wayne - thank God for you and other scenery-makers! You've made a huge contribution to Fly!First of all, the biggest problem with some sceneries are polygons run amok! There are too many sceneries being released where creators ran wild with the amount of buildings and objects or types of objects, vastly exceeding recommended polygon levels. Allen Kriesman makes it pretty plain that around 20,000 polys should be the limit for a scenery set - yet I routinely see sceneries released with 30,000-40,000 polys! I had one scenery set exceed 70,000 polys - are you kidding me?! Most of these sets have been removed from my hard drive - and that's too bad, because I know that the developer's worked hard on them and wanted to share their work.Needless to say, these high-count sets bring frame rates crashing down and stuff texture slots beyond most user settings.Also, TRI designed Fly! so that models could be flagged to load low, medium, and high detail versions of models at varying distances, allowing them to appear at natural distances, yet not impede frame-rates. According to Rich, few people are taking the time to make and flag these models, thereby causing stuttering and pausing in some cases, as high-detail models are loaded at 10-20 miles out.The larger airports present unique problems, I know, as they have a larger area of buildings and objects to render - I would recommend that fewer models be used for these: tower, terminal, a few representations of other hangers and buildings in each ramp area (but not every building!). Also, just a few planes and other models will surfice - no need to show the whole fleet! :-) The end result is a nice environment to fly in and out of that represents many of the actual buildings and other objects at the real airport - but the frame rates and polygon count will be acceptable and useable by all.Wayne, I have recently downloaded a high number of your airports. My HD crashed a while back and I've had to rebuild my Fly! environment from the ground up. I must say that I enjoy your airports very much and have had few problems. I have run into only one of your airports so far that has a high poly count - I also have some problems with 3 others. These have just been loaded in the last few days, so I haven't had an opportunity to communicate with you about them - I will send you my questions and concerns via e-mail before the day is out...maybe I've messed up somewhere! Overall, your sets load up just fine, have acceptable poly levels and really add to the magic of Fly!