help with settings - scenery looks flashy

[skysurfer2010]

I just got my new PC set up and running. After getting FSX running, I installed FS9 and maxed out every single setting. It runs amazingly well and looks awesome! My one problem though is that the trees and ground scenery are too complex. Since the trees have gaps in the leaves and you can see whatever is behind the trees in the gaps, when you're flying it makes the trees look like they're blinking as the gaps in the leaves change with their backgrounds because of your point of view. I hope that makes sense.

Do i have a certain setting too high? I don't want to turn down the scenery complexity and loose some of the scenery, but the blinking is going to give me a seizure!

[AuMaV]

Hi
Lower your mipmap settings in fs9 to 4  (display~hardware)
you could also try switching on adaptive AA in your video card control panel (if the option is aval),what this will do is apply AA to the alpha channel for transparent textures this will cost you FPS but the trees will look better
Wozza  

[skysurfer2010]

i'm going to try the mipmap setting soon. one question about your other suggestion... what exactly is AA?

[_526th_Fireman]

AA is Anit Aliasing. On newer cards there is an added feature called "Adaptive Anit Aliasing" or "Adaptive AA" for ATI cards and it's called "Transparency Anit Aliasing" on Nvidia cards.

Both manufacturers use different techniques to accomplish the same thing.  This just takes the standard AA feature to a higher level
with higher sampling rates allowing for even better smoothing of edges.

Not all cards support this feature. When Adaptive AA is enabled and set, it can cause a slight hit to performance.

If you want further details, you can do a Google search for Adaptive Antialiasing.

[skysurfer2010]

thanks for the explanation. i have an nvidia 8800gtx video card so i will look into it.

lowering the mipmap setting to 4 made a big difference though. thanks for the help guys!

[FridayChild]

I am affected by the same problem. My graphics card does not support adaptive anti aliasing, and lowering the mip map setting has almost no effect on this problem in my case. Trees and fences, no matter how distant they are from the point of view, always seem to blink. Any suggestion?

[Formula_1]

Hi
I have had this shimmering look show up a couple times before. I was able to fix it by changing video drivers. I am almost 100% sure once I simply reinstalled the same driver version I was using and it went away.
I am not saying this will fix yours, but it did cure mine at least twice in the past.
Hope this helps

[FridayChild]

What video card are you using and which drivers release?

[Formula_1]

Sorry, I should have said in my above.
6800GT with 81.98

[RAF_OldBuzzard]

IF you haven't already done so, you might try setting the screen resolution to 1600x1200x32.  I found that most, if not all of the 'shimmering/barber pole' effects go away at that setting, and I really don't lose enough FPS to matter on my puter, which is:

Athlon64 3400+
1 Gig mem
ATI X800XT AIW

[FridayChild]

The thing is, I have a TFT monitor and its native resolution is 1280x1024.  ;)