Let's face it: There's not much one can do with a
700MHz Duron and a 32MB NVidia TNT Pro. If your like me, with a 5 year old system that should have been either put down and buried, or reincarnated with an upgrade, your system flat down sucks and you can never get great shot's from it...

Or can you?

Well I say yes you can. And juts like Jakemaster said maxing out your settings does not always work unless you've got a super-high end PC. You've got to take whats best for your system. And, even on my system (Which averages about 7FPS), that doesnt work sometimes. So this little post shall concentrate on applying settings based on the theme for your screenshot.

It is all about what I like to call "Limited Focus". Essentially, based on the idea on which you want to take your shots, you apply your FS settings.

I shall attempt to give you a couple scenarios to give you an idea.

Scenario number 1:
High Altitude Flying.

When flying high (presumably 20,000 above ground) my focus is mainly on a great sky and a realistic ground. Flying up there, no ones going to be counting the number or trees on the field below you or the number of houses on Elm Street. With a low end system, full autogen even at these heights will affect your frames (beleive it or not, I've learnt). Hence, I would apply 100% 3D clouds, max density and almost full sight and cloud draw distance if looking horizontally out, and the lowest distance if looking downwards at an angle. If the ground is in sight through your clouds, High texture quality should be applied, else set them low.

Take this pic into consideration.
     
High detail ground, max 3D clouds, lowest draw and sight distance, AA, and since there is some concentration on the A/Cs, massive texture sizes. The area below me is flat so no terrain detail and 0% mesh complexity. And at that angle and altitude you may not make out mesh anyway.
If I had even tried to max out my settings I would be stuck with grey planes and 1 frame every 10 minutes. Since this shot is so "limted" all the textures fit nicely into 32MBs of VRAM.

Scenario number 2:
Bush Flying.


In this pic (taken on a slighty better pc ) the theme is obviously flying low around mounatinous forested ares.

Million bucks for who can tell me what I'll be concentrating on...

That's right... autogen...

Max autogen, High ground textures, 100% mesh complexity. Slightly lower 3D clouds, an obscured horizon so about 80 mile visibility. The plane is not really zoomed in, in order to take in more environment,so High or maybe even Medium global texture sizes will suffice.

Scenario number 3:
Static Ground Shot.

When on the ground, your view may almost always be horizontal. When around airports and buildings, a great shot with have great looking buildings and trees. This may also apply to flying low in a city like New York. High ground textures would not be my priority since most of the view would be obscured by buildings and trees and the ground would not be highly visible at such angles. Massive or High textures should be used along with Dense autogen to obscure the view.


At horizontal levels even Normal autogen and scenery levels will look dense, such as in this pic. 60  mile visibitly or less, probably with some clouds to obscure distant objects. In cities like new york where the focus may be skyscrapers, Extremely Dense Scenery would obviously be used, with some autogen, and little or no focus on everything else.




These are just a few examples. On a low end PC, ensure that your FS options bring out the most on what you want to concentrate on, based on your theme, angle and position in the sim world. A little bit of everything may not always work. And too much of everything never does. Hope this helped.