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Guest Allan Jones

Moved up to Radeon-- looking for render.ini suggestions...

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Guest Allan Jones

After a long search, I scored an original (not 7000) Radeon Mac edition for my Beige G3. I can now set the visuals higher and get the same rates, or leave the visuals as they were and see some rate improvement.Does anyone have a "sweet" render.ini number set that rocks on a 32MB Radeon? I don't think I'm close to using all the texture slots. The ATI control panel showed I was using about 18MB in a farly complex area.I tried renaming the render.ini file and letting FlyII write a new one when it detected the Radeon. No joy. The new file had only the last two entries of a "normal" file, and I had blue fog no matter how I set the visibility sliders. Even the aircraft shadows were sky blue.I reverted to the old render.ini and things are normal but I think some tweaking is in order. I once downloaded the Render Tweak kit but I don't have Excel installed on my home computer.

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Allan,I hope your Radeon is working well. I bought the 7000 Mac Edition several weeks ago and had major problems with it. Everything crashed under OS X and 9.2.2. I finally flashed the card with the latest updater and that seemed to fix all of the problems. Wonder why ATI didn't include that on the CD. Fly II is smoother with the visuals kept to a minimum. I wish I could go higher than 32 mb of video RAM, but I'm happy with it now. I had a freeze in Fly II last night after about 30 minutes. Had to restart everything.I ordered a Sonnet ZIF G4 500 upgrade that should be here tomorrow. I'm hoping this will give new life to my G-3 B&W. Did you get a better render.ini file?Barry Williams

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Guest Allan Jones

>Did you get a better render.ini file?Not yet. Tried some changes someone posted for a 32MB card on the other forum but I'm still not convinced I using the available VRAM. The ATI control panel says I using 18MB counting the normal system demand. I have "greater than 32MB VRAM" (or whatever we call the max setting) checked in the startup dialog.Good hearing from you, Barry. How's it going?A

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Allan,It is good hearing from you too.The Sonnet G-4 500 ZIF arrived this morning. Installation was a breeze. The only problem was the hardware patch was a bit stubborn, but it installed under OS 8.6 for that, and 9.2.2 and 10.2.4. That was the only hitch and it was minor.Fly II rocks now! I set the clouds to overcast & below field elevation because I like the ground fog effects. With that burden it runs as fast as no weather effects on the G-3 chip. Without weather effects it is super smooth and fast. It is really a nice simulation. The G-3 400 was just underpowered compared to the G-4 500 and the Radeon 7000.I am using the 32mb settings, but I may use the "more than 32mb" and see what happens.I think I flew for almost an hour with the G-4 chip without a freeze. That was the big test for my computer. I'll be flying the Bell 407 more often now that I'm not chasing the helicopter AND lagging frame rates. BarryB&W with 384mb RAM, Radeon 7000, Sonnet G-4 chip, and Microswindle Sidewinder Precision 2

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Allan,There is more news to add. I took your suggestion and used the "more than 32mb" option for VRAM. I also clicked the "detailed textures" box. It runs just fine this way and the details are stunning. I've run Fly II for many hours under OS 9.2.2 and OS X this way without a single problem, which was impossible before installing the Radeon 7000 and Sonnet G4/500 ZIP upgrade.Now, the best news and the biggest mystery. Fly II under OS X 10.2.4 is blazing fast! There is no way I would run Fly II under OS 9 again. I thought it was fast before trying OS X, but I was wrong. Before upgrading to the Sonnet G4 it literally crawled at a 1 frame per 3-4 second rate under OS X. It was totally unusable. Now, it is almost too fast. The planes respond instantly and mouse clicking is instantaneous. Frame rates make everything very smooth. I'm still finding it hard to believe Fly II will run this fast, much less being the fastest under OS X. The only problems I'm having is to get Fly II to accept joystick hatswitch assignments. It seems to be stubborn in accepting them, but it does after many attempts.Fly II is so good under 10.2.4 that I'm not going to run the 10.2.6 updater. I've never enjoyed Fly II this much before.Barry WilliamsB&W G3 384 mb RAMSonnet G4/500 ZIFRadeon 7000Microswindle Sidewinder Precision 2

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Hi Barry and Allan,I've been away from the sim scene for so long, due to a huge workload, that I had to register again with AVSIM. Reading Barry's recent post is very encouraging for upgrading my system to OS X. My wife just got a 17" iMAC (very slick) with a lot of RAM and a 64meg graphics card. I know she's runnning the same OS version as Barry and I'm really tempted to download my FLY!II onto her machine - just to see this new speed.Unfortunately, the workload is still pretty large and getting on her machine to fly may create some computer tension. If anyone else has upgraded to OS 10.2.6 I'd been interested in hearing if they're having the same success.Thanks,Peter

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Peter,That iMac should be plenty good enough to run it fine.I don't know about 10.2.6. I'm still on 10.2.4. Everything works fine and I'm not tinkering right now. I've never had Fly II run so smoothly without crashes. I go for hours without any problems except for the Kodiak crashing when I switch aircraft. It did that under OS 9.2.2 too.Barry

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Barry,I just installed Fly!II (2.240) on my system (beige G3 DT, Encore ZIF 500 MHz G4, 384 MB RAM, Radeon 7000, OS 10.2.6). Fly!II does not "rock", however - I get frame rates of between 4 and 10 at generic airports/scenery. Get a slightly better count with minimal settings.I am considering reverting to 10.2.4, what you are running. So, I'd like to ask you:Did you upgrade to 10.2.4 BEFORE you installed the updated ATI drivers or afterwards? In other words: did 10.2.4 overwrite the ATI update?If not: which ATI updates did you apply?What frame rates are you getting with generic scenery/at detailed airports?Thanks for helping!Jorg

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