hi, help with frames!

Hi, do u guys now which is the best fps config in flight simulator 2004?, because i don´t, is it better having fps at 100 or more; or at 20-30 fps?.
Help if any can help me with this is to much for me, i just wsnt to play, and i dont have a really good pc, so Intel Pentium III 850 Mhz, 32 video, and many hard drive space

Your not going to get 100 FPS with a 32mb card.
In settings set it for 27-30, shut off water, terrain, shadows, reflections and turn down traffic and clouds as low as you can stand it.
Keep autogen and scenery below medium, the default setting for sound is medium, put it on low.

Let us know how you do.

Hi RadarMan, it's been a while but we have been through two major hurricanes (lots of work) in the last year plus having tried everything I read here and on the Microsoft site I continued to have problems with COF. In spite of everything I tried the program would crash. I could get good frame rates and decent levels of settings but I could not keep the program from crashing.

Here was my cure and maybe it will work for others, I don't know.

My computer is not a top of the line computer. I am running an AMD 1600 Athlon CPU with 640 meg of memory and a ATI Radeon 9200 video card. Until the 64 bit stuff comes down in price I don't plan an upgrade.

It wasn't just COF I was having some problems with but it was the worst. I am running WindowsXP and running software I liked would not run properly under XP even in Compatibility mode.

I needed and installed a larger hard drive. I set it up with two partitions and installed Windows98 on one partition and WindowsXP on the other. The software I was having problems with I installed in Windows98. Without even updating to the latest DirectX and video drivers COF runs perfectly for me under Windows98. I get much higher settings while still getting good frame rates than I ever did under XP and no problems. The same applies to all other programs I was having some problems with under XP.

My problems seemed to have all been with XP. Currently I use XP mostly for online work since it does have better protection features than earlier versions of Windows.

Maybe this will help someone else. Making a dual boot computer is not that difficult to do.

WarHawk,
Glad to see you survived the hurricanes, we have earthquakes and fires.

W98 isn't as stable a OS as XP but it does use less memory. Your computer is similar to mine in CPU and ram but I have the edge with my video card, not the best now but a very good card.
I've only installed FS9 twice, when I first bought it and after my h/d died. I'm ultra careful about loading unknown mesh, scenery and demo programs into it. I also dislike self installing aircraft, they always seem to have something old like ssound.dll.

I'm doing the same as you, sitting and waiting for the new hardware that will work with Windows Vista, it wont be out for a long while but the hardware should be available and lower in price the first half of next year. Just in time for FSX.

By the way, I read that WVista will want (get this) 512mb of ram, that's just for the OS.
It looks like 3 gig machines will be the norm for FSX.

If it works for you, use it and it may work for others also.
It was good of you to post this for others with the same problems.

I know 98 had some problems, but I have had a lot more problems with XP than I ever had with 98. I don't know if I got a buggy copy of it or what, but it has been a pain in the rear from the start. I install it as new, not upgrade. When I installed it the first time I did install it as upgrade and it was awful.

If it were not for the better security online with XP I would completely remove it. That is how bad it has been for me.

We stayed through both Hurricane Ivan and Dennis. We didn't have any serious problems where we live but there was an awful lot of damage done to the area.

It may have to do with hardware, I can't say for sure.

I was champing at the bit for XP so I could dump that memory sucking 98.
We all have different experiences I guess, to me if WVista is as good a change from XP as XP was from 98 I'll be very happy. It will of course be 64 bit, I hope they (MS) makes FSX in 64 bit, 32 bit backward.

I would think it would have to be backward compatible, but then with MS who knows. XP eliminated Dos.

You could be right about the hardware thing. I upgraded my Bios and all that but I do wonder if there is a conflict between my motherboard and XP.

With all the drivers that I installed stepping up from 98 to XP I still use the same BIOS drivers.

There was and still is a test for 98 to see if any hardware or software won't make the transition without an upgrade.
My mouse was the only thing. www.pcpitstop.com , a great safe site for any test, especially a full one.

Dos, take a look at this.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314106

I ran the full test and the only yellow flag I got was for increasing the IE cache. I don't normally use IE so it's not a problem for me. I only ran IE for the test in order to not have to download their program for other browsers.

So according to their tests I got a clean bill of health.

They always tell me that also, but with broadband cache isn't really necessary so I keep it at a minimum also.

Glad that you came out clean, it's a great site for testing.