I forgot to mention he had me turn AA off in the sim and set to trillinear filtering. He also had me make a change to the terrain.cfg to make the power easements look more realistic:
Misc vector types - utility
[Texture.201]
StripWidthMeters=40
[Texture.202]
StripWidthMeters=40
Depending on monitor and resolution, higher/lower may look better.
He referenced the tweaks he gave me from this guide:
http://members.cox.net/spambait/FSXTweakGuide.pdf but also said some of those items, especially the reduced textures and disabling shaders, were not good to do. He said it was all about finding the levels the hardware will work with and still give the user a good visual show. He also mentioned over clocking the CPU, video card and memory a bit was essential to getting more out of FS10. Over clocking was what really put it all together in smooth running for me and I will be getting another gig of memory next week too.
I found that having the Level of Detail radius at 4.5 (high) Mesh Complexity to 90% and Scenery complexity at Very Dense gave me very sharp and realistic visuals when looking down at roof tops and streets from above.