ATI Card Owners - Read This!

[ozhero]

As a long time flight simmer (from the very first flight sim) I am VERY fussy when it comes to graphics quality and the overall "immersion factor" when it comes to my obsession
(ie hobby :-) ).

In preparation for FS2004 I specially built a "bees knees" computer including what I thought (from reading FS2002 posts) would be THE best graphics card, an ATI 9800 Pro with 256Mb.

I had FS2002 on this machine a few weeks before FS2004 came out and I was super happy with it compared to my earlier machine that had a Geforce 4600 card.

Since installing FS2004 I have been going through the normal tweaking frenzy that happens with every new version of flightsim but have been getting increasingly despondent over the last few weeks that nothing fixed the unacceptable (to me) level of shimmering in the scenery that was ruining my "immersion" factor. There is hope that this will be fixed in a new driver release. ATI, if you read thism be aware I think that you may lose many flightsimmers back to Nvidia, including me, if you don't manage to fix it in a reasonable time frame.

For the last few hours I have been running with Autogen completely off and it has been a revelation to me that not only does the scenery look much more "realistic", the shimmer is also so slight that it does not ruin the "immersion" factor for me. In fact with the AA and AF cranked up on the ATI card I would say that it looks absolutely georgeous (including the wonderful cloud filled skies of FS2004).

I suggest you all give this an unbiased trial and see what you think. For now I am going to leave it off and when the fabled new driver release eventuates I will reconsider turning AutoGen on again.

P.S. There is also a very nice frame rate increase with it off.

[Bigshot]

Run the mipmap slider in settings/display/hardware at 4 and try the latest Omega drivers. If you still have any twinkling left in the trees, try Gerrish's Connifers in the avsim library. Also, set the terrain default value to =5 and the terrain extended texture value to =8 in the fs9 cfg file. You should have a quiet picture.

PS: forgot; Set your resolution at 1600x1200x32. That's where these cards are meant to be run.

[rstansbury]

I agree, set the mipmap slider to a max of 4. This completely fixed my shimmer with my ATI 9800pro.

[ozhero]

I am running the MipMap slider at 4, 1600x1200x32, and AF and AA cranked up, and the changes to FS9.cfg. (and have tried every combination of settings and resolutions)

There is still enough shimmer to be distracting (to me). Your tolerance level may be higher.

[Lenny]

>There is still enough shimmer to be distracting (to me). Your tolerance level may be higher.

Are you still using the 3.6 driver or its Omega clone (the latest Omega driver is simply the 3.6 with a control panel, some other features and optmized in the settings)? I used both the latest Omega and 3.6 and got the dreaded shimmmer plus some other weird anomalies. I switched back to the 3.2 and all is back to normal. I'm also running 1600x1200 32 bit with everything maxed except mip maps to 4, AA OFF (why use it if you're at such a high resolution) and cloud density to 70%, with a few other minor tweaks.

P4 2.8 ghz 533 FSB, 1 gig ddr ram, Radeon 9700TX 128 mb, 200 gig hd.

[DeanMc699]

For sure run the start up batch file
Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
start /high fs9.exe

and run the Omega Drivers

and run at 1600x1200

and run with anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering set high

And it runs FANTASTIC, beautiful aircraft rendering, beautiful scenery, no shimmering of trees.

Running
XP Home
ASUS A7V266 with the 1014 beta 002 bios drivers (agp aperture set to 128mb)
1024MB Pc2100 Ram
AMD 2400+ o/c to 2.12GHZ
ATI 9700 PRO 128MB
all latest drivers and settings
Downloaded the smaller graphic files for FS2004

Windows running on drive C:/
Games on Drive D:/
a Maxtor 200GB 8MB Cache Hard Drive for Games

GO FS

[ozhero]

Hi Lenny,

I am using the Omega 3.6 drivers.

I am very interested re you reverting back to the 3.2 drivers. Were they the ATI 3.2 drivers (ie not Omega) and also were there any negative effects (eg frame rate loss, scenery quality loss, etc) in reverting back to them.

I am sure a lot of people would be interested in your answers.

[ozhero]

Hi DeanMc699

I am already using "start /high fs9.exe" in a batch file but not
"Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks".

Can you elaborate a bit more on what this does?

Many thanks.

[DeanMc699]

I think it is forcing windows to finish up any tasks it was waiting for lull times to complete, When you run the batch file it will take up to a couple minutes to complete then it will start FS, Not really sure if it helps out much, I tried it out alittle last night. Graphics were really good. But I also switched back to the Omega drivers from the Cat 3.6 and those probably have the best effect on visual performance over anything.
Besides pushing up the graphics on your card.
1600x1200x32 really does give the best performance for the 9700/9800 cards.

[chasw]

ATi has already acknowledge that some of their cards have problems in FS and are working on it.

Have Nvidia done the same? No.

Seems like frying pan and fire to me.

Chas

[Lenny]

>I am very interested re you reverting back to the 3.2 drivers. Were they the ATI 3.2 drivers (ie not Omega) and also were there any negative effects (eg frame rate loss, scenery quality loss, etc) in reverting back to them.

There was no noticeable frame loss. And I'm using the stock ATI 3.2 drivers. Note that the Omega driver is not "really" a driver per se but it is whatever is put out by ATI and tweaked through the panel settings. When I used the Omega driver based on the 3.2, although I was getting nice frames I also noticed jaggies and other assorted things I didn't like in picture quality. I looked at the control panel and he had tweaked the settings in a fashion I was not at all pleased with (such as performance over quality). I simply reinstalled the stock 3.2 driver and tweaked the settings myself with the ATI control panel (I tend to choose quality over performance) and I am very satisfied. I could have used the Omega based on the 3.2 but decided that since the stock 3.2 was performing flawlessly in fs2002 why change a good thing. Now I will certainly try the new ATI drivers when they come out, after they've fixed the problems which they have admitted exist with FS9 and the 3.6. But in the meantime....

[Biff]

>ATi has already acknowledge that some of their cards have
>problems in FS and are working on it.
>
>Have Nvidia done the same? No.

Actually, they have. From the release notes on the 45.23 WHQL driver:

Flight Simulator 9: Running this application under Windows XP with antialiasing enabled causes corruption on the viewport. Workaround Solution: From the NVIDIA control panel, set the Antialiasing option to the Application setting, which controls antialiasing directly within the game. You can follow the steps below, if needed:
On your Windows desktop, right mouse click and select Properties.
Click the Settings tab and then click the Advanced option.
Click the tab that displays the name of your NVIDIA GPU.
Click the Performance and Compatibility Settings option from the menu on the left.
Locate the second slider, which is the Antialiasing slider.
Move the slider all the way to the left to the “Application” setting.
Click Apply for the change to take effect.

So they've documented it nicely and provide a temporary workaround. Not that this bug had affected me in the first place. I gotta say, while I had a number of problems with the ATI 9800 Pro I had before, switching to an Nvidia was a quick way to solve them all. :)

[kevinmac]

I can speak for experience, Nvidia isn't doing all that much..
That little excerpt in the post above didn't fix any of the shimmering problems... I have a Gforce4 4600 Ti and it doesn't get the job done when it comes to FS9. FS2002 worked great, but FS9 is a flickering/shimmering mess. I've tried it all people, I'm talking I've tried everything, with no real improvement in the shimmers.


Kevin

Alienware 2.8ghz
Nvidia GForce4 4600 Ti