antialiasing???

Try 4x AA and 16x AF (card control panel) and uncheck AA in the sim.
Use Mip Map in the settings at 4.
Turn down the scenery to default, and the water off, the clouds as low as possible and still have some. Set your traffic at 50%.
Let us know how you do.

with 4x AA the picture is still flickering, if i turn on 8x AA, the system becomes much slower. I remember when i first started FS2002 with a 1.0 GHz P3 512 MB RAM 64 MB video, the pictures were so fine and smooth. Now I have 3 GHz P4 1.5 GB RAM 256MB Video, the image quality becomes so shitty.......dont know whats going on!!!!

Maybe I can help. Firstly, FS2004 is a HUGE improvement over 2002. So some drop in performance can be expected. Also, not all 256MB cards are the same. What card do you have? If it's not ATI, it's not in my leage, sorry. You can go into the hardware tab on flightsimulator, and make sure that there is NO filtering selected. also, if the card controlls anti-alaising, you can uncheck the box for it in there as well. Finally, make sure the frame rate slider is up at around 30. I keep mine at 70, but i wouldnt recommed that you do that, it saps system resources, and I am aware that you have plenty, but untill you get the problem ironed out, you should keep it at 30

I use GeForce5500 AGP, not nearly as good as ATI but i think its enough for the simulation. Looks like I totally lost AA capability. I did what you suggested, except the filter. Without the filter, you only see the mosaics..

Its just hopeless. I formatted my harddrive, reinstall the OS, drivers, FS2004, DirectX9, and so on.....its still the same, coarse images, shimmering pictures. can't help it!!! Does anybody have a clue whats going on?

Turn down or off the AA and AF and slowly bring it up checking the sim every time.
It's strictly your video card. Set all the sim settings at default when you do this, don't max any out.
Get the latest drivers for your card and don't forget to delete the old drivers first.

thanks for the suggestions, but nothing works. doesn anybody use GeForce 5500 here? maybe the video card is not compatible...

I too, developed a bad case of shimering. After reading your post I was motivated to fix it. I had Mip Mapping (whatever that is) all the way up. I put the slider in the middle, and the problem went away. The setting is in the settings, display, then select the hardware tab. By the way, I have an ATI card. Hope this helps.