OK so I want higher FPS and good graphics with my very bad ATI Radeon Xpress 200. I did a little experiment on the settings for the in game and the card and here are my results.

I set the card on the Direct 3D for performance. The AA is 4x set at Performance. Anisotropic filtering is set at 4x. Texture preference at the maximum quality. MipMap detail level for the card is set to high quality. Vertical sync is set at Always on.

In game scenery and the environment were all maxed out.

FPS setting was for 28. Trilinear filtering and global texture size is set to massive. Mip is set to 4 and rendered lights are set to 6.

The aircraft settings are all maxed out.

Weather is set to sight distance 60mi. Cloud draw at 40mi. Cloud percentage is at 100%. all 3D clouds and is set to high.

I used this tweak from Nick N:
Quote:


Shut down all unused programs and anti virus.


Test conditions were: Flight over 2 cities Seattle and Los Angeles, At Day and dusk, weather was tested at clear at 30mi vis. and fogged in eventually all weather themes were tested. Flew default Cessna 172.

I flew out of seattle and had 18, 20, 22, and 24 FPS on clear weather with 30mi Vis. Very smooth gameplay. Graphics were screenshot worthy.

Flew out of LAX with clear weather 30mi Vis. Same results as Seattle test. With the weather at Fogged In i get 15 FPS. Graphics were still very good. With other weather themes i get 13, 15,18, 20 FPS.

Now this test is to pump out as much as possible from my system.  I don't know how I can make it better especially with the Fogged In theme. So all you computer people out there read through this and tell me what I should do. If you need more info just tell me and I'll give it to you.

Thank You

x200 uses very slow memory or your RAM. Reduce TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=100 to below 100. Resized cloud textures should also help.

As for me... I use 512x512 DXT3 cloud textures for my X850XTPE. Runs and looks awsome.