Silver,

Thanks for the ideas.

Yes I run the "land and water" settings.  I already have changed the water textures............mainly for the LOOK of the water.   I have no idea WHY Microsoft made the water look so bad in this version.  Fs2002 was better.

As to the autogen "bug"... yes I know about it.  At some point I will try it and see what happens to the fps.   As to looking for restaurants..... hey....a guy has to eat, you know  .

Changing the water textures to the set here on SimV by  (lemoncat or something like that ?) made things look FAR better.....but that didn't buy me any FPS change that I could notice.

I have gone in to "settings" and changed the sliders/checkboxes all over the place to see how it impacts framerates for me.  I have found that the difference between a midrange setting and maxed makes almost no change in FPS no matter which effect I change.  At the most I see changes of 1-2 FPS.

And as I noted elsewhere....... when I maxed the AA and the AF on the 9800XT....... it got BETTER framerates by about 2-3 than when it was set at a lower setting.  Go figure.

best,

....................john