What do you sacrifice?

[sonic]

For those of us that dont have a high end system. Which do you do.
Run at like 800x600 with full eyecandy.
medium resolution   medium eyecandy.
high resolution         forget   eyecandy.

[Gixer]

I would run minimum 1280x1024 what ever graphics card was installed.

First thing to do with slow g/cards is turn off anti-aliasing, it will kill them (That is if you have it turned on)

Set traffic to 50% or maybe lower, or if your not fussed make it so that there is only GA type traffic.

I would then try setting 3d clouds to minimum and low percentage.  If that didn't work turn autogen down to low.

Then last but not least turn off 3d clouds and put them onto 2d.

[Dan]

Well I agree with the resolution thing - My old machine copuld only manage 800*600*32 - On my new one im maxed out at 1024*1280*32. The difference is amazing!! As for what to turn down - My card couldnt do AA so i can't comment there, but AI killed it, so i turned it off. Clouds did too, but not as bad!
Dan

[Clipper]

Hey guys, don't forget about FS Autostart...that's a great way to shut down unnecessary programs and free up ram. Would make a significant difference on a slower or oldish pc!

[sonic]

Dang your right fs Autostart made big diffrence. Thanks.

[ChuckMajik]

Well seeing how it's a flight simulator and not scenery simulator.
All things to do with aircraft are turned up, and anything else is turned off.
When it comes to taking screenshots, everything goes to max.
It may stutter, but at least it looks good for shots.

[sonic]

LOL I hear ya. I'm fine running at 1024x68x32 and with that I can turn things up to high and AA on about 4x. Looks pretty good AI is a bear but fs autostart helped out with that alot.

[Dan]

I agree with the principal of FS Autostart, but I have never used it. I always try to minimise what gets run at boot - I had a utility like End It All, I dont recall the name though. Straight from boot I had 99% system resouces free, and on CTRL+ALT+DEL all I had was Systray and Explorer. Now that, and the newest GFX drivers where the best I ever found. Are you on XP or 98SE? I was on 98.
Dan

[sonic]

Xp I am going to setup a hardware profile though cuase when I turn off some the services I get a NAT error and then cant download knoppix from bittorrents.(freeware)
I'll set one profile with the barebones for gameing and the other main one for regular stuff I usually restart before playing games anyway so Its not a big prob.

[the_autopilot]

For those of us that dont have a high end system. Which do you do.
Run at like 800x600 with full eyecandy.
medium resolution   medium eyecandy.
high resolution         forget   eyecandy.

I want to point out that what kind of monitor you have also has a factor. If you have a CRT, you'll be ok at any res. However with TFT's (LCD's), its best to run in the native res solution of the LCD or else image quality will suffer noticiably.

I generally play with an CRT, so if I didn't have a high end system, I'd go for medium res with medium eye candy.