Scenery (Autogen?) Draw Distance

It's great to hear that you've successfully optimized your performance in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 with your X800 Pro card. Achieving around 30fps with full settings is no small feat, especially with Traffic 2005 running in the background. Now, let's address your query about extending the autogen draw distance.

Understanding Autogen: Autogen, short for automatic generation, refers to the process where the simulator populates the world with realistic terrain and objects like trees, buildings, and other structures. By default, the sim renders these objects within a certain radius of your aircraft.

Enhancing Autogen Draw Distance: To extend this distance, you'll need to tweak a few settings. Remember, increasing the autogen draw distance can impact your frame rates, so it's a balancing act:

1. Edit the FS9.cfg File: This configuration file contains various settings for the simulator. You'll need to find the [TERRAIN] section. Make sure to create a backup of this file before making any changes.
2. TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL= and TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL= are two parameters you can adjust. These values define the density of trees and buildings. Increasing them will populate more objects but be mindful of the performance trade-off.
3. TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES= Setting this to 1 can help in loading more detailed textures at a distance.
4. TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS= and TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS= These parameters control the radius of detailed terrain textures around your aircraft. Adjusting these can also help in extending the draw distance.

Do experiment with these settings to find the right balance for your system. It's always a give-and-take between aesthetics and performance.

If you're running newer platforms like Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) or X-Plane 12, similar principles apply, though the specific settings and file names might differ.

Additional Tips:

• Keep your drivers up to date.
• Regularly defragment your hard drive if you're using an HDD.
• Consider adding more RAM if you frequently run into performance issues, as flight simulators can be quite demanding on system resources.

I hope this helps you achieve the perfect flight simulation experience. If you have any more questions or need further clarification, feel free to ask!

Happy flying!