Simviation Forums

Without  going for better hardware are there any tweaks one can do to increase frame rates? it would be nice to have a nice steady 25fps instead of bouncing between 2 and 30 fps.

1. shut down all un-need processes using cont/alt/del
2. Set your page file high as windows will allow.
3. If you have XP, tone it down.  Select the classic plain grey windows 95/98 appearence.
4.  Shut down your screen saver before starting FS.
5. Always re-boot before starting an FS session.
6. Set all your vid card settings to high performance.
7. Run with the lowest possible screen resolution you can and still be able to read your gauges and panel labeling. In other words, if you can read your panel clearly in 800x600x16, use it, and so on.
8. Set your frame lock to unlimited.  Works for me at least.
9. Lower you airtraffic percentage.  If 50% is real enough for you, then use it.
10. Lower your max visibility to 60 miles.  It's more realistic anyway unless you do all your flying over Arizona for instance.
11.  Turn off your water detail.  That shade of blue with water detail enabled is only realistic if you do most of your flying in the carribean.
12.  If flying heavies at 25k or higher turn down your terrain mesh detail and texture size.  Cut down your autogen and density also.  At that altitude scenic detail doesn't matter a lot.  With Ga planes you can turn your terrain and autogen etc. back up because those planes are usually less resource demanding than heavies are and you fly lower so you would want more detail then.
13. Turn off shadows.  They don't matter unless you spend most of your sim time in spot view or flying lower than an A-10 does.
14. Back in the sky again, lower your 3D cloud draw percentage and distance to most minimal.  You can't really tell if a cloud is 3D anyway till your in it and at that setting it will render 3D by the time you get near it anyway.
15. Defrag your hard drive at least monthly, more if you change the contents of your hard drive more frequently.  I do mine weekly for instance because I tinker with panels a lot and download freeware often.
16.  Reformat your hard drive every six months or so.  A few days worth of data entry afterward pays off in performance pleasure dividends for months after that.
17.  Just mess around with any of these suggestions or any that anyone else may give you.  But, by all  means use your own taste.  Set up your sim to whatever is YOUR acceptable balance between detail and performance and most of all, have fun

Not to sound sarcastic, because I really don't mean it that way, but if you google "FS9 Tweaks", and run through all of the pages you come up with (there are TONS), you'll find some awesome info....there's just too much to post here.

I tried and it didn't come up with anything!

Try this link out, I'm thinking that you won't be disapointed.

http://www.fs2004.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=28865

Thanks all. Will try as many sugestions as possible.