Once the card was loaded (a fairly straightforward operation using the instruction card that came with the unit), I went into FS98 and performed the standard activation in the Hardware Acceleration window - Select 3D card, choose 600 X 800 x 16 resolution on my 15" monitor, click the enable hardware button on and choose Filter texturemapping and Mip mapping. It is not necessary to enable the Alt/Enter full screen option to engage the card, but I prefer that viewing option anyhow so went ahead and did it, using half screen with the instrument panel on.

Seated at Meigs with full scenery and dynamic density on, the frame rate display showed a disappointing average 7.7 fps. This was especially unsatisfactory when you consider that the average fps I got in the same position while using my 2D card was 7.4! A check of the eastern screen after selecting the Dawn option in the Time & Season window shows the brilliant orange sunrise sky typical of 3D generation. Using skew and ascending into and above the clouds, I saw the much fluffier cloud textures instead of the 2D undifferentiated blocks. Returning to earth, I made a standard takeoff and turned left into the downtown Chicage hi-rise area, where fps moved up into a more acceptable 9 - 12 range, compared to the 8 - 11 range I get with my 2D card.

I'm not a fan of the blurred ground texture technique you get in 3D, but the result was more pleasing to the eye with the Stealth card, as was the added crispness and detail the various default buildings and other structures revealed. Once through the Chicago buildings, fps soared dramatically, at times moving into the 25 - 30 range. Unfortunately, however, it was at this time that a rather annoying feature showed up - the ground tile textures were severely banded now, fairly accurate in the near distance, then beyond a rather sharp dividing border a band of much blander texture, and finally furthest out beyond another severe dividing line, flat gray to the horizon.

Furthermore, when looking back at the buildings a kilometer or more in the distance, the normal flickering and running of lines which is a reasonably acceptable visual by-product of current computer graphics displays seemed to be severely increased, to the point where entire buildings appeared at times to bend and waver and even break up.

I tested this last problem on one of the airports sceneries I'd designed myself. At this airport there is a Tim Dicken's created macro of a water tower visible from just about every takeoff and landing path. This macro is quite realistic, patterned with red and white checkers to give it a real-life appearance. With my 2D card the individual checkers in the pattern do tend to flicker and waver a bit at distances starting at a kilometer or so, while the tower's outlines themselves remain quite firm. But with the Stealth II I saw not only even more wavering to the pattern, but to the tower outlines themselves, until at times the tower appeared to lose much of its shape and identity.

To give the Stealth II card its due, after a few hours spent flying around the Chicago area, frequently back into the densest downtown buildings and making repeated touch and gos at both Meigs and O'Hare, I can report that there was never the hint of one of those pauses many 3D card users have reported. FPS was always continuous and reasonably smooth, falling only into the 8 - 9 fps area when approaching the downtown hi-rises from the southeast directly over Meigs itself. Still, this minimum fps continued to be only 10 - 15 percent better better than what I got with the my 2D card, and continued to be a disappointment. It's all very well to get 30 instead of 20 fps in non-dense areas - visual imaging the human eye can't take advantage of anyhow. But when the hoped for 50 percent improvement in fps doesn't materialize at those time when you need it most, I had to wonder whether the cost of the Stealth II is worth it.

Leaving Chicago, a few days later I moved east, to the notorious New York City fps landmine area. I started out at LaGuardia's default runway, where the fps averaged 8.5, or about .5 above what I get there with my S3 card. I took off and turned south, lining myself up with the East River. It was at this point, with Manhattan framed in the distance, that I experienced my first pause, of about a 1-2 seconds duration. These scenery loading pauses continued at odd, 1 to 2 minute intervals during my tour of the downtown Manhattan area, though they cleared up as soon as I moved beyond Manhattan. It was while flying along the East River, approaching Riker's Island with several of the East River bridges in the mid- and background, that I experienced the lowest fps I encountered in the testing - 6.4. Later, with my 2D card reinstalled, I experienced at the same point 5.8 fps, which again indicated around only a disappointing 10 - 15 percent improvement.

I headed out past the Verazzano Narrows Bridge, around Coney Island and toward Kennedy International, almost always in fps in the 14 to 16 range. I activated the dawn feature again, and used Spot to watch the default Cessna, admiring the sunrise glow on the wings and fuselage. As I descended for Kennedy approach I shifted to nighttime, and was rewarded with an excellent display of night lighting, including the full array of runway and taxiway lights, though I really did not notice that much of a discernible improvement there over 2D. I was pleased to land at Kennedy in 14 - 15 fps all the way, until after I removed the card and returned my 2D card I got a frame rate reading of no less than 2 fps lower with it, and realized that the default Kennedy doesn't really qualify as particularly dense scenery.

I spent another hour or two flying in other denser scenery areas like Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with approximately the same result as at Chicago, including no further pauses. I finally went to the Las Vegas photo-realistic scenery, and here got my first hint of the real potential of a good 3D card as now the wavering and object breakup were distinctly improved, though again fps in particularly dense views were still no more than 25 percent over what I got with the 2D card.

Finally I loaded some of my own scenery and tried it out extensively. This scenery was designed using the Abacus' A&SD commercial program, and followed fps enhancing hints offered by scenery guru Justin Tyme. Fps did improve, though rarely did they even approach the 20 percent increases I'd seen elsewhere. And visually I was totally unsatisfied - considerable breakup, shimmering, wavering, all worse, actually, than with my 2D card. I eventually left FS98 and went up to the Diamond site to see if they were perhaps offering a new driver for Stealth II, though the product had apparently come out after FS98 had and the box stated that it was optimized for DirectX 3D. I could not find a driver that seemed more recent than the product itself. But I later learned on Flightsim's FS98 forum that the company has apparently stated that the release of a new driver is "imminent," so perhaps they themselves recognize some of the problems the Stealth II has with FS98 in particular.

I fully admit that there may be many satisfied Stealth II users out there who either don't have the problems I've encountered with the card, or don't share my opinion of their severity. I loaded the card following the enclosed instructions, and do have a 166 Pentium with 64 megs of ram and plenty of space available on my 2.1 gig harddrive, so that should not have been a problem. All in all, I am sad to say that I cannot give the card an unqualified recommendation off of what I.

However, for 3D bargain card searchers, I can say that it does provide some fps increase, it rarely succumbs to the notorious 'pause' syndrome, and at $119 with a $20 mail in rebate (at least that was at my local Best Buy store), it is cheaper than most cards available now. For myself, even for an extra $70 - $80, I believe I'll look at one of the other new 3D cards which offer faster megahertz ramdac rates (several operate at at least 30 percent higher MHz - which could in part, I suppose, explain some of the problems I encoutered with the Stealth II), and pass on this Diamond product.

Larry Kinsley Hi-Image Airports Scenery paladin@gte.net

Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. 2880 Junction Avenue San Jose, CA 95134-1922 Tel: 408-325-7000  FAX:408-325-7070 Sales Info: 1-800-4MULTIMEDIA www.diamondmm.com

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