Is my system too weak?

[FLAPS_DOWN]

My system is a couple of years old, but still I would have thought it would be able to perform better than it is.  That is when I thought I may be missing something.  I have tweaked the system and the settings for the game and it still seems to perform poorly.  Help!!!  Here is my system:

PIII 800
256 MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 32 MB
IBM 30G HD

All the latest drivers, etc. are downloaded.  It seems since I added some AI from AI Project and some scenery add ons some views from the plane turn out to be like a slide show.  Any ideas or is it just time for an upgrade?

Thanks for your help!

[Craig.]

turn down the AI settings a little that will help, so will turning off reflections, it should run ok with your setup, i believe

[Fozzer]

I agree with Craig...
Looks reasonable to me.
Go into Menu > Options > Settings > Display > Hardware, and try turning off some of the settings,. especially anti-alaising.
What sort of frame rates are you getting?
Caps and Z a few times while the program is running, look at the FPS number...anything over 10 is not too bad... ...!

Cheers...
Paul.
(England).

[ozzy72]

It could be the latest nVidia drivers that are the problem.
If you go back to some of the 30.xx series you'll find that the MX2 card should run a bit faster, the 40.xx series seem to slow them right down, and no-one knows why!
The only other suggestion is to beef up your RAM a little, that always seems to help with M$ FSs.

Ozzy

[Hagar]

FLAPS_DOWN. You don't mention your OS & this could be important. I'm running WinMe. My system is similar to yours although I have a 64 Mb video card & 512 Mb RAM. Some 3rd party scenery can be very graphics intensive which will have a dramatic effect on frame rates. Add some increased AI traffic activity (even the special Project AI aircraft) & I think that's your answer. To start with, try systematically deactivating the 3rd party scenery areas from the Scenery Library.

If you haven't already done so you might like to install DirectX 9 from the M$ site. I found this made a big difference to my own FS2002.

[Dan Brasoveanu]

I have a 2.4 Ghz Athlon, a Radeon 9700 Pro card, 512 MB of memory, Windows ME, yet when I fly in regions covered by add-ons providing enhanced terrain mesh, or photographic scenery, I run somtimes into trouble.  If I crank scenery quality way up and select a wide-angle view (zoom 0.5 or less) the frame rate drops below 10 fps.  In fact, I am surprised that FS2002 runs on your machine at all.  

[fisharno]

Contrary to Dan's input, I think your system should run FS2K2 fairly well, if you don't push the setting too high.
2K2 is much easier on framerates than FS2000 was. It almost has to be your new addons.

Like the guys said, try turning down the settings a little, do a defrag and scan disk, and a disk clean.

Make sure you turn off as many of the programs that are running in the background, including, any virus scanners and screensavers as you can. That should free up some resources to help the situation.

Good luck.

[codered]

What everyone else said.  I thought I had a beefy machine, but I don't know anyone that can run their settings on full and get 30FPS.

Turning down the AI traffic, turning off shadows, keeping the water to detail, turn down the precentage of the clouds, keeping the scenery to a reasonable level.  All these things and more will make FS run better.  It is just a matter of turning the things down or off that are the least important to you, and work up from there.

[FSTipster]

This is just how it relates to my system but here it is for what it's worth:

Athlon XP1800+
512mb 333mhz DDR RAM
GF4 MMX 440 graphics card

Bearing in mind that the graphics card is something of a bottleneck, I get smooth flight everywhere. This doesn't mean I get 30fps everywhere - by no means. But fps isn't a direct translation to a smooth sim.

The only slider I don't have maxed is Autogen because for me, it's way over the top. I run that at "dense".

In the bad old days of FS2000 you needed gargantuan fps to get a semblance of smooth flight and even then it wasn't guarenteed.

With add-on scenery and LAGO stuff (major frame hog despite their best efforts) I can be down to around 8fps at Meigs. But it still runs smooth, it's not a slideshow. Meigs is actually the worst area in FS2002 for me because of everything I have loaded in for it. A fair assesment of fps in a normal high density area would be around the 18 mark. The point is it doesn't matter. Turn the fps counter off - it's just a number. Look at what you see on your screen and decide if it works from your visual point of view.

[_526th_Fireman]

Should be just enough to fly with most of your settings turned down.
More RAM would be good. A better Graphics card would help too.
And let me ask, how much room do you have left on that hard drive? Might need some room for the game to "breath".
One more thing, prior to installing FS2k2, did you scan disk and defrag? This can tremendously as it installs all the game files together. Try a defrag if you haven't already. I now do the "clean" install for any program, espicially games. Sure makes a difference.

[FLAPS_DOWN]

I'm running Win98, with about 9G hard disk space.  I am going to reinstall the Nvidia drivers, going back to 30.xx and see if that helps.  I will let you all know.  Thanks for your input.

[phil509]

I guess Im not alone out there with these troubles.How much free space on HD is recomended? I have a 20gb with about 30%still free,is that to full?,and how can M$ expect customer satisfaction when their programs only run on high end machines-or is that the GOTCHYA!

[Liam]

Your systems should be fine, i'm running it with...

850MHZ Celeron
128 MB RAM
20 gig HDD

And the grpahic card is only like 8mb

So a really poor system, the game is a little slow but can handle it well.

[phil509]

Your systems should be fine, i'm running it with...

850MHZ Celeron
128 MB RAM
20 gig HDD

And the grpahic card is only like 8mb

So a really poor system, the game is a little slow but can handle it well.

You have my machine.It wouldent happen to be an Emachines T1090,would it?I can fly ok,just run into trouble on takeoffs & landings-during times of high ram demand-see my recent earlier thread "Im disgusted",a wealth of info there for us not so hot simmers

[Liam]

Nah i have a packard Bell thingy...rather rubbish, i need an upgrade but i don't wanna spend all my money.