Distracting Video Artifacts with FS2004 scenery

[Jackpot]

I'm running on a 3.0G XP machine using a radeon X800 pro board with a Viewsonic 20.3" LCD monitor.  I'm runing at 1600x1200 resolution and the maximum refresh rate is 60Hz.  There is no apparant flicker.  

When running the sim, I get flashes of shapes and lines in the scenery.  They are never visible in the cockpit instrumentation.  

I swapped out a GeForce 5950 Ultra board for the ATI X800 pro about a month ago with the same result.  Of course I've used the most current drivers for both... and now have an extra video card.  

I've tried lower resolutions with higher refresh rates but the problem still exists.  Someone told me that if one sets the refresh rate using the advanced settings and also set it at the board level to be the same, that would get rid of them.  It did not.  

Has anyone experienced a problem with Artifacts in the scenery with this sim?  If so, what did you do to fix the issue?  

Any help would be appreciated ... I've been searching months for an answer to this.  

Thanks, Steve

[jordonj]

Is this the only game you get this with?

[Jackpot]

Thank you very much for your inquiry.

It's the only game I have that really taxes the CPU and video card... 50% of CPU (typical for a HT processor) and sustained high frame rates. I have a war game called Rome but it doesn't really stetch the video, and I've noticed no artifacts with it.  

In the sim, If I run without heavy 3D clouds I can get sustained frame rates well over 50 and I'm running unlimited on frame rates.  Have tried locking in to lower limits though, and still have the problem.  

[Tom_M]

On NVIDIA cards, play with the High Quality/Performance, Ansiotropic filter levels and FSAA levels to see if there's a difference.

[dave3cu]

Not quite sure of what 'artifacts' you speak, but if they are 'sparkles and hashing', most noticible in the distance, then your Mip Mapping level may be set to high.

Options/Settings/Display/Harware>mip mapping level.

Try reducing to 4 or 5.

Cheers,
Dave

[Jackpot]

I've tried lowering the mipmaping settings both in the hardware options in the sim, and directly on the board.  

These "artifacts" are most visible when at altitude looking at the ground and horizon.  They are random shapes sometimes spanning the width of the screen and then gone in just a flash.  I see several of theaw in just a second or two and the are continuous.  Usually they are dark (black), and if looking at water, silver flashes.  On this AtI board I have anti-aliasing set to 4X (6X max) and Arisotropic filtering set to 8X (16X max).  

The problem persists, but thank you for your help.

[Lethal.Ambition]

It's really hard for me to draw a picture of the "artifacts" is it possible for you to take a screenshot?

[Jackpot]

Thanks....

I have tried to take about 20 screen shots of this phenomenon and they do not show up in any of them.  What is interesting is that when the  flight is paused the junk still appears and disappears just as if the flight is not paused.

I asked my wife to look earlier tonight thinking it just might be an over-reaction to my goal of visual perfection but she could clearly see them too and they are distracting.

Not sure where to go from here.  

Steve