Those frame rates are normal and your system is more than capable of running CFS2. Heck, I ran it just fine on an old Campaq Presario, Celeron 800Mhz with 768 PC100 Ram and an ATI 8500 card, and I ran it on high settings.

Frame rates drop with more acft. in the picture, even the default acft. If you have any weather, drops even more. How close you are to the ground, airfields and their complexity all drop your frame rates. As long as you can maintain 18 - 20, you will still have smooth flight.

Now if you start throwing in downloaded acft. then this is a different story. Some of these acft. have very big texture files and this will really zap frame rates. In the past, many of us would use DXT Bitmap by Martin Wright and reduce the size of the textures on these acft. Would many but not all.

Some acft. designers are aware of this and try to use the most frame rate friendly textures and sizes as possible.

Complex panels can zap your frame rates too.

So what can you do?

Well, for one try adjusting your settings in game. Uncheck "acft. casts shadows". Adds very little but is a hog.

Download some cloud textures from FSSky World, they are more frame rate friendly. Or don't use clouds.

Make sure you have the latest drivers for your Vid card.
If you have your resolution set high, reduce it a tad and see if it helps.

As far as your crashes go, try to zero in on when it does it. With certain acft.? Certain scenery or in a certain area? Flying for a general amount of time? etc.

Make sure all other programs are shut down. Using FSAuto Start can really help with XPs resources. It safely will shut them down and restart them when you are done flying.

Hope the info helped. Good luck pilot.

Thanks Fireman, for the reply. I haven't gotten back to my
computer at home to try out your suggestions...but I will!

Hagar - how steep is the learning curve in gmax? I'm
wondering how difficult it would be to take an existing
a/c, where all the difficult/complex modeling work is done,
and then add several LODs to it. At least it might be a good
way to learn gmax before diving into a full blown model.

Does this sound like a reasonable solution?

Also, where can I get FSSky World? I found only one
download location so far, and it's links were dead.

p.s. Totally loving "Ocean Fury"!

Okay, if you already have the model file from the
completed aircraft, can gmax or fsds2 be used to
"decompile" the model file so you can edit it? Or do you
need the original source code?

Ocean Fury really is a terrific piece of work. When I saw
the spectacular quality of the ships, I bruised my chin.
My jaw dropped so hard it hit the table! I knew for sure
my cfs2 would crash, but it never has. I'm just diggin'
carrier ops with one of my favorite planes.

I gotta stop listening to that bloody LSO! When I just
eyeball it, I land the Sea Fury no problem - otherwise
things like the following happen...hehehe.

whoopsee!

Quote:

You need the source file. I suggest you try one of the Gmax source files posted here at SimV http://www.simviation.com/adoptfsc.htm & at FFDS. http://www.freeflightdesign.com/
This is how I & I suspect most people got started.

Quote:

Glad you're having fun with it. That's what it's all about. Collin's ships are the most detailed & accurate I've seen for CFS2. They were originally even more detailed but obviously very graphics intensive. He put in a lot of hard work reducing the poly count before creating the finished multi-LOD models. Check out his Shipyard for more of his fine ships. http://www.simviation.com/lair/cfs2shipyard.htm

Quote:

Nice shot. LOL Take no notice of the LSO. He's new at the job.

Here is the link to FSW, FS Sky World. Here you can get cloud textures for CFS2 that really improve frame rates if you are having problems.

Use the FS2000 cloud textures.

All their texture work for the sims is great stuff.

http://fsw.simflight.com/