the usual suspects : graphic card drivers. Or DX9 : which version ?
And also the AA and FSAA settings that may conflict in cfs3.
see this thread.

http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=cfs3;action=display;num=11...

Well I now have CFS3 running. And here's how....

I went onto the PACIFIC FIGHTERS board and asked if the new Patches needed a different nocd to save wear and tear on my disks. The moderator replied with a puzzling "bye bye", which took me quite a while to realise was their arrogant, up-their-own-rectum way of teling me I'd broached an unnacceptable subject and was being banned. I mean, why shouldn't I mention patches? - they're the ones who can't write a decent game first-time round without it being infested with bugs.

Anyway, that prompted me to clear that game off my hard-drive and attempt to get CFS3 running properly.
Using the Nvidia graphics tool, I set up a specific file for CFS3 and tried changing settings to see what would work, and the thing that made it all come to life was moving graphics settings from "Quality" to "High Quality". That cured everything, along with the CFS3 untick of "Dual Pass Render" and ticking Z buffer.

I'm now running at 58 fps on a 60HZ monitor, even with serious rainfall, and most graphics settings at 5, so thanks for all your advice in helping me choose a system that would do the job.

The difference between Quality and High Quality seemed to be that the former allowed you to specify "force mip-map", whereas the latter wouldn't let you. I'm thinking that it was the "force mip-map" that was causing the problem with CFS3's own mip-mapping setting.

I'm fooling around with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering to see how best to set the visual look, and wondered if anyone had any advice here of best setting.
The one thing I do notice is a sort of shimmering effect of pixels swimming around in the mid-distance, and it would be nice to fix this.
I'm also curious about the two terrain-type settings that CFS3 has. Which one controls those dreadful buildings? They look silly at Bomber-altitudes. I'd like to get rid of those but keep the trees.
I thought I'd ask before I experimented, because now that I've got things working, I'd hate to up-tip the apple-cart by messing around too much without knowing what I'm doing.