How do I maximize FPS in FS9?

[Star Alliance]

Hey,
I work off FS9, and when I fly into my Imagine Sim KLGA scenery with my Feelthere 733, I get about 2 or 3 FPS, no exaggeration. I'd love to give system specs to help you out, but it's an off the shelf Acer 3690 laptop, and I have no idea how to get that info. What I really want to know is: what settings should I have to maintain reasonable quality, but also get reasonable frame rates (at least 10 or so)?
Thanks a bunch,
Mitch

[Bok269]

AI and autogen are big drainers of FPS. Also, if you have AA set in the game, that will slow you down. Instead turn on AA in your video card settings.

[brianw999]

Forgetting all about FS9 settings for a while....

Shut down all unnecessary programmes that are running in the background on your computer. These are a drain on your processor resources and will slow FS9 dramatically. To do this ( don't use the speech marks that I type ) go to "Start"..."Run".

Type "msconfig" and go to the "Startup" button.
Deselect all items that are unnecessary. You will need to keep anything to do with your internet connection if you intend to use real time weather. Deselect one item at a time and restart to ensure you have'n't closed down something important. You can always go back and reselect an item if you need to.

To find out what is in your computer go to "Start"...."Control Panel"...."System".

It will default to open on the "General" tab which will show what processor you have and how much RAM is installed.

Go to the "Hardware" tab. Click on "Device manager". Click on "display adaptors". This will show you what graphics card you have.

FS9 needs a fairly high end machine to run with all the bells and whistles selected. Choosing a low level rendering of water textures and simple clouds will speed things up.

Come back to us with your computer specs and we should be able to help further.

[Star Alliance]

Brian,
Ok, it says:
Processor: INTEL Celeron M (1.60 CHz)
RAM: 504mb
Graphics Card:Mobile Intel 945GM Express Chipset Family
Hope this helps!
Thanks,
Mitch

[brianw999]

Mitch,

I'm afraid to say that your laptop is very much in the mid to low range of power as far as FS9 is concerned. FS9, and latterly FSX, have always needed a high end processor, minimum 500 Mb RAM and a good to fast graphics card. If any one or more of those components fall into the lower end of performance then FS9 will suffer greatly.

Sadly the 1.6 Ghz processor and Intel graphics are letting you down.

To maximise what you can get with FS9 apply the following settings to start with and see how you go. If it seems OK/reasonable then increase items important to you by one increment and restart FS9 after each change.

The biggest hits on frame rates are clouds and water detail, closely followed by high AI traffic.

Scenery.....
Water effects....none
Scenery complexity....very sparse ( but you will lose airport details.)
Autogen density....sparse
Uncheck the ..."ground scenery casts shadows", "sun glare" and "lens flare" boxes.

Aircraft....
Global aircraft quality....low

Weather.
Simple clouds.
Sight distance 60 ml. / 96 km.
Cloud draw 30 ml. / 48 km.

Hardware...
Target frame rate 20 fps. ( certainly no more than 25 fps, the human eye can't distinguish rates higher than that.)
Display resolution...same as your monitor setting.
Mip mapping quality 4.
Hardware rendered lights 4.

Try those settings for a starting point.

Regards,

Brian.