i also like to find that tweak topic

I'm right with you guys on this & am going to look into this right away.

I wondered what happened to those tweaks....

cool
hope it works thanks for taking time to do that

In response to those of you who asked me how to set-up Cfs3.

This will be quite a long post so get ready to read.

First I want everybody to understand that this post applies to people who use Nvidia video cards and Windows and will be of no use to others. 

Second everything you do should be done carefully and those of you with Win XP or Me should set restore points so that you can roll back if you have problems.

1) Do a complete scandisk and defrag before any work that you do.

2) Go to the Nvidia site and download the newest drivers 30.82

3) Download Riva Tuner from www.guru3d.com

4) Uninstall all your old Nvidia drivers. If you have XP do it from add-remove programs for all others do it from add remove programs than use detonator destroyer, also from guru3d, which will get rid of all your old drivers. If you don't know how to do this than study how at guru3d.

5) Install the new video drivers than install Riva tuner.

6) You don't need to do anything with Riva other than to install it. The default settings are fine and are what you need.

7) Install Cfs3 and make sure to do a custom and complete install.

Once Cfs3 is installed. Go to start, programs and find the Cfs3 folder in it you will see a utility called cfs3config.exe make a shortcut to your desktop.

9) open cfs3config.exe and go to file and than change display options set this as high as you can for your monitor. You don't need to use 32 bit color just 16 bit.

10) than go to custom settings and do the following:

1. Run cfs3config.exe
2. Click 'File', then 'Custom settings'
3. Make sure your terrain is set to 3, 4 or yes, even FIVE!
(in other words, change it back from 1 or 2 if that's what you had previously set)
4. Click 'Window', then 'Texture info'
5. Under 'Composite Terrain Texture Pool', select 'D3Dpool_systemmem'
6. Under 'Composite Aircraft Texture Pool', select 'D3Dpool_systemmem'
7. Load the game, play a bit, and see what happens.

From now on never change display settings inside the game always do it from your cfs3config.exe. This is very important!!!!!

11) Cfs3 installs Directx 8.2 which will be an extra bonus for those of you who use Fs2k2. From now on all you will need to do in Fs2k2 will be to check anti-aliasing in the sim and you will have better frame rates and textures. No more special tweaks like GTU are needed.

12) Here are some little extra tweaks which you can try if you feel like it.

<ZBiasBitsResolution val="15"/>
<ZBiasTerrainDecal val="0"/>
<ZBiasWaterPolyNear val="1"/>
<ZBiasWaterPolyFar val="28"/>
<ZBiasWaterLineNear val="1"/>
<ZBiasWaterLineFar val="32"/>
<ZBiasFlatEffects val="25"/>
<ZBiasShadow val="0"/>
<ZBiasTerrainAlphaNear val="0"/>
<ZBiasTerrainAlphaFar val="12"/>
<ZBiasObject val="0"/>
<ZBiasObjectFar val="18"/>
<ZBiasEffects val="1"/>
<ZBiasClouds val="1"/>
These are all done in cfs3config.exe.

Right on guys, good job coming through with the stuff, now lets hope it doesn't go away like the last one did, well done boys

it should

try it anyways.. you gonna see a big difference.

THANKS SO MUCH. One more question can I have the No cd witht he update? ???

Hey Buddye 1;

Where did you get your tweak info from? Meaning what technical source?

in windows of  cfs3 config i disabled rain and clouds helped alot cause i have shared mem.

it still stutters some time when lots of thing sare going on sound like sound is hanging it up.

the first couple of missions are fine then strobe city
i am installing more ram today hope it fixes problem
if not i'm sending this back to micro soft for money back

i really want it to work tho.

how come when i play multi play i have no problem
except constaly getting shot down.
AUFWIEDRSIEN

Here are two tweaks that MS Support sent to me. That help with some of the stutter problem with CFS3.

1. Go to CFS3 Config/Custom Settings/ Window/Texture Info, then click on D3DPool_Managed (4 places)

2. Set up Hard Swap File size:
Go to Start/Control Panel/System/Advanced/ click Settings Button in Performance Section/click Advanced/ click Change in the Virtual Memory section. Write down the Initial Size (MB) and Maximum Size (MB) settings in case you want to go back to them.
Next, calculate your settings as follows:
(Your RAM in MB times 1.5) + 2 MB = your setting.
Type this value in both Initial Size (MB) and Maximum Size (MB). They must be the same. This will keep your swap file from fragmenting and eventually crawling.

And some other tweeks if found that help my game run smooth.
Issue: Improving Performance by Turning off In-Game Animations
Response: If you experience performance problems when using the game interface, quit the game and disable pre-flight animations. Note that this will disable your ability to preview aircraft before you fly. To disable pre-flight animations: but also loads faster and uses less resources.

Open Notepad. (Click Start on the Windows taskbar, click Programs, click Accessories, and then Notepad.)
On the File menu, click Open.
In the Open dialog box, navigate to game.xml and open the file.
NOTE: The location of this file depends on where you've installed the CFS3. The default location (and most likely it will be here) is C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\CFS3\game.xml.
In game.xml, change "ShowUIWorld=true" to "ShowUIWorld=false".
Save game.xml, and then run CFS3.
Turn off Scenery and Terrain Lighting
Lower Terrain Detail and/or Scenery Detail but turn up Resolution
Turn down Clouds
Turn off Shadows
Turn off Dual Pass Rendering
Turn on High Resolution Z-Buffer

To all who are looking to improve performance on CFS3;

1) at least have 256Mb of RAM

2) you don't have to turn anything down; all you need to do is add a small HD to your system. I recommend at least a 4 gig. Thats nothing today. What it does is if you install that and only run CFS3 off that aux HD it increases your swap file by 17x.

3) processor has to be at least a 850 Mhz

4) you need the right video card. I suggest nothing more than a 64Mb processor.Anything under 64Mb will run slow.

If you are running CFS3 then your system should be set for a slave HD

No disrespect to Ramsa, but all the tweaking is useless if the system fails at some level.

Hi, this is my first visit to this forum. My PC runs the game fine except for the intermittent stutter (hard drive lights up).

Question for big_guns about the slave drive:

Do you mean install CFS3 on the slave drive or put the swap file on the slave drive?

Thanks, big_guns.

I'll give that a try. I really have my doubts about this game being worth the trouble, at least for stand alone play. I haven't tried multiplayer yet, I imagine that is a whole new level of gameplay.

My setup is pretty decent, a 2.4GHz P4 with 512 MB PC2700 RAM, but I think the Intel MB is holding me back, as it only supports up to 4AGP. My video card is a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro and is capable of more.

I get framerates of 60-100 fps just cruising along, but these can plummet down to 15fps in heavy action. Very disappointing.

Canoe U grad, huh?

I was in NROTC at Ga Tech for 2 years way back when, then I dropped out and joined the Army National Guard. I did go to the first 2 summer "camps", so I did get to make the indoctrination flights at Corpus Christi.  The Scooter was a blast. 

That sounds like some computer setup. While I won't go quite that far, I'll keep plugging away.

I think if you update the drivers and catalyst on that ATI card ya will be mighty happy. Know i am. new drivers came out a few days ago  http://mirror.ati.com/products/catalyst/dx9demos.html

CFS3 is a disappointment in terms of rendering more interesting and diverse objects.  MS had a vision of more and better but it wasn't realized. Despite using advanced graphics techniques. Don't know why we should disable and scale down many of the CFS3 display categories such as the HUD so the program will run without stutter.  The "fixes" recommended by MS are an admission of poor programming. Either MS failed or ATI/NVIDIA have not provided adequate drivers.  I tend to lean toward ATI/NVIDIA not providing drivers for, in their view, a smaller community than the gamer community.  I don't think we have seen a driver effort from either of them for CFS3.
BTW: ATI cards 8500 or less should review ATI recommendations on Graphics Aperture.  Not a solution to the basic problem but may help. Marginal stuff.

Over at Sim-outhouse.com they have a section for all the CFS3 tweaks that have been found. That would be a good place to start.

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for but i found it on another site and thought i'd post it just in case.
http://www.com-central.net/nphpbb/phpBB2new/viewtopic.php?t=7219