According to a recent press release, "ATI has announced that they are aware of problems using their Radeon 9800 and 9700 series video cards with FS2004 and are working on solving the problem. Well, you could grow old and pass your next birthday waiting for ATI's technoid life forms to come up with a solution. Or, you can read on, see how I solved the problem, and get back to flightsimming with FS2004.

The Problem

As far as I know, these graphics issues only show up with the ATI RADEON 9700 and 9800 Pro 128MB video cards. They appear as scrambled text and images in the FS2004 Learning Center screens. They also manifest as flickering scenery and a barber-pole or moiré pattern on buildings and a tiny checkerboard pattern that shimmers and flickers on distant scenery. Basically, these video glitches are a colossal annoyance. Fear not, intrepid flightsimmers, the solution is at hand, doesn't cost you a dime, and you don't have to await a driver update from ATI.

My Hunt for a  Simple Solution

I spent nearly an entire day last week working out the myriad of combinations for both FS2004 display and ATI Catalyst driver settings required to fix the problem. The important concept that you need to understand is that instead of down-rating FS2004 display settings, as we all normally do when trying to get it to run with a cranky video card -- you need to go 180-degrees in the opposite direction. Max them out. The key inflection points are not the individual FS2004 settings but the ATI filtering and Direct 3D settings in the ATI Catalyst 3.6 driver. I have thoroughly tested this fix both with FS2004 stock scenery and the amazing, high resolution MegaScenery payware add-on. It is 100% guaranteed to work, at least on the following systems:

• Dell Dimension XPS and the Dimension 8300 using an ultra-fast 3 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor with Hyper-Threading Technology, 800 MHz front side bus and the Intel® 875P chipset. 8X AGP port (with full 8X bandwidth)

• WinXP Pro and DirectX 9

• Dual channel DDR 400 MHz SDRAM memory, 1024MB

• 128MB ATI Radeon 9800 Pro video card. Catalyst 3.6 drivers, version 6.14.10.6368

• The Sound Blaster Audigy 2 card

• 18� Dell UltraSharp Flat Panel Display set to 1280x1024 resolution and 32-bit color depth 

• 7200 RPM Ultra ATA 120GB hard drive 

The Settings

As far as I can see, these settings changes will not harm your PC, monitor, video card or FS2004 installation. However, as with all configuration changes, this requires a moderate level of PC operations skill. Do this at your own risk. If you run into unexpectedly negative results, just reset to the defaults and re-boot.

Start with your ATI Catalyst 3.6 display driver settings. To get to this screen in Windows XP Pro, click on START>CONTROL PANEL>DISPLAY>SETTINGS

• If you are using an 18-inch flat panel display, set the screen resolution to 1280 by 1024.

• Set it to 1024 by 768 for a 17-inch flat panel display. 

• For analog CRT monitors, set it to the highest setting for the size of your screen and the resolution capability of your monitor.

• Color quality should be set to 32-bit.

Next, click on the ADVANCED and then the DIRECT3D tab to bring up the configuration screen shown below. 

Set the Direct3D configuration to match the settings shown in the screen shot above. 

• Check CUSTOM SETTINGS.

• Uncheck ANTI-ALIASING APPLICATION PREFERENCE.

• Move the SAMPLES slider to the maximum of 6X.

• Check PERFORMANCE.

• Uncheck ANISOTROPIC FILTERING APPLICATION PREFERENCE.

• Move the SAMPLES slider to the maximum of 6X.

• Move the TEXTURE PREFERENCE slider to the maximum for QUALITY.

• Move the MIPMAP DETAIL LEVEL slider to the maximum for QUALITY.

• Select APPLICATION PREFERENCE for both the WAIT FOR VERTICAL SYNC and TRUFORM(tm) sliders.

• Click OK.

• Reset your system if required.

Launch FS2004 and click on the SETTINGS link. Select DISPLAYS, then the SCENERY tab to bring up the screen below.

Set the scenery configuration to match the settings shown in the screen shot above. 

Under TERRAIN:

• Move the SPECIAL EFFECTS DETAIL slider to MEDIUM.

• Move the TERRAIN MESH COMPLEXITY slider to 100.

• Move the TERRAIN TEXTURE SIZE slider to HIGH.

• Move the TERRAIN DETAIL slider to LAND ONLY.

• Move the WATER EFFECTS slider to NONE. The water effects looked just horrible with this graphics card so I turned them off. Things went much better when I  did. I'm running the this system completely maxxed-out and getting outstanding frame rates of 50-80 fps. Your results will vary depending on your system.

• Check both DAWN/DUSK TEXTURE BLENDING and EXTENDED TERRAIN TEXTURES. Note that Extended Terrain Textures is optional. It will give you spectacular scenery detail with stock FS2004 scenery and it will blow your mind with MegaScenery. But, with Extended Terrain Textures, your flight will take much longer to load. Patience definitely has its rewards!

Under SCENERY OBJECTS:

• Move the SCENERY COMPLEXITY slider to EXTREMELY DENSE.

• Move the AUTOGEN DENSITY slider to EXTREMELY DENSE..

• Check ADD-ON DYNAMIC SCENERY.

• Move the ADD-ON DYNAMIC SCENERY slider to EXTREMELY DENSE.

• Check GROUND SCENERY CASTS SHADOWS, SUN GLARE and LENS FLARE. These are optional. If you don't like these effects, uncheck them.

Click on the AIRCRAFT tab to access the screen below.

Set the aircraft configuration to match the settings shown in the screen shot above. These are optional settings based on your personal preferences. Aircraft display settings will not affect the ATI scenery flickering and Learning Center image corruption issues at all. On a high-powered system, I recommend maximum aircraft detail settings as shown here. 

Click on the WEATHER  tab to access the screen below.

Set the weather configuration to match the settings shown in the screen shot above. These are optional settings based on your personal preferences and your system's performance capabilities. Weather settings can consume vast amounts of system resources. On a low-powered system, you might want to dial down the weather settings since they also will have no affect on the ATI scenery flickering and Learning Center image corruption issues. On a high-powered system, I recommend the moderate weather settings shown here as a good starting point. Once you get your system stable, you can adjust these up or down to suit your flying needs.

Click on the HARDWARE  tab to access the screen below.

Set the hardware configuration to match the settings shown in the screen shot above.

• Move the TARGET FRAME RATE slider to UNLIMITED.

• Choose the appropriate display resolution based on your monitor's capabilities. The setting above is for an 18-inch Dell UltraSharp flat panel display.

Under HARDWARE RENDERING OPTIONS:

• Check RENDER TO TEXTURE, TRANSFORM AND LIGHTING, ANTI-ALIASING.

• Select TRILINEAR FILTERING.

• Move the MIP MAPPING QUALITY slider to 8.

• Move the HARDWARE RENDERED LIGHTS slider to 8

• Move the GLOBAL MAX TEXTURE SIZE slider to MASSIVE.

Click OK. Your will not need to re-start FS2004. 

Now kick the tires, light the fires and go flying. 

You should see gorgeous, eye-popping scenery, smooth image transitions and all the former issues will have disappeared. You should not have any scrambled text and images in The Learning Center.

Remember, these settings work best with a high-performance PC and a flat panel display. Adjust as required for your specific system configuration.

Cap Mason, Flight Simulation Editor
capmason@flightsim.com