Well Ric, I tried all your suggestions and I can say is WOW! 

It has really helped in the pic quality now!

Take a look at some pics I posted in the raw screenshots forum..
http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=screen;action=display;num=...

Thanks again for all your help!!!

Sounds like you have solved your problem but another thing you could try (don't know if the card supports it) is Anisotropic Filtering. It imporoves the quality of the picture alot but may have a bad impact on the frame rates.

I am awaiting the spec in my signature and with the radeon I will enable all the features 6xAA 16xAF

Paul2k12

Quincunx sampling is complicated to explain without getting into unessary detail. I'll do my best.

Quincunx is a matematical term used to describe a method of sampling in an "X" pattern.

In the simplest terms, aliasing is caused by the "grid" of pixels in a computer display. Virtually every computer display is what is called a "raster" display, meaning that pixels are located in exact rows and columns. Aliasing occurs when a line crosses those rows and columns at a slight angle to either the row or the column. The result is that a specific point on a line that should be 1-pixel wide might be half on one row and half on a neighboring row. 

The Quincunx antialiasing (AA) mode works so well because it uses data samples from neighboring pixels instead of requiring the GPU to create additional samples for each pixel in the initial rendering step.

Because the Quincunx AA mode uses samples from neighboring pixels, it balances the image quality benefit of using more input data to reconstruct the final pixel versus the performance degradation of writing more samples per pixel out to the frame buffer. In addition, because the Quincunx method is twice as efficient as traditional 4x, Quincunx AA only requires the smaller memory footprint that 2x modes require, allowing for higher native resolutions without bumping into the limits of graphics card memory.

Hope that helps.

Ric B.

If you are reffering to the menu screen, it's always set to 800x600. MS have done this so if you actually run your computer at 800x600 (as per minimum specs) you can see all of the menu, and parts aren't "hidden" off-screen.

Ric B.

Ah, I see what you mean now.

Let me explain.

Imagine, for a moment, that your screen resoloution is set to 800x600. In this case the menu would take up 100% of the screen, as the menu itself is also 800x600 pixels. Now lets imagine you have your screen resoloution set to 1280x1024. Now the menu "appears" to take up just 37.5% of the screen, and hence looks smaller, ans is surrounded by a black area.

This principal also applies to the menu at the top of the screen.

Try to think of it this way. When you incease your screen resoloution, you are effectivly increasing the "Size" of your screen, but the size of your monitor stays the same. This is why, the higher the resoloution, the smaller things of a set size (like menus) look.

To see this in action for yourself, right-click on the desktop and go to display properties. Here you will find a slider where you can visually seen the size of the desktop change.

I hope that helped answer your question.

Ric B.

Thanks Ric!

I changed the anti-aliasing to Quincunx and turned it off in FS2002, and the improvement is incredible!

Thanks!

I flew a meljet 777 into Logan at those settings, did a view on the wing and its nacelle with the great reflections -- wow! It's better than the real thing!