Flickering buildings and stuff

[hurricane3]

I know this has been talked about before in the forum but couldn't find it, whats the main cause of flickering buildings and things like mountains in the distance? Is it antialising?
I know in the past before my latest crash and rebuild that I solved the problem by changing a setting in the ATI control panel but can't remember which setting I changed.
Right now I leave the in game anti-alising box unchecked and use temporal anti-aliasing at 4 in the ATI control panel. Maybe I should use let application decide and check the box in the sim ,but seems I read in the forum once not to do that, then again maybe it;s not anti-alising at all, I just don't remember.

[jhefner]

If someone has the answer I would like to know; I have the same problem with my machine with the ATI video card; and have just been putting up with the problem till now.

[Navtech]

Anisotropic ( no confuse with anti-aliasing filter) filter set to 4 don't help ?

[johnh_049]

try decreasing the mipmaps in the display setting of the sim

[pfflyers]

I know that anytime I have the mipmap setting above '4' I get flickering or shimmering autogen objects, maybe that is your problem too.

As far as the mountains in the distance filling in in a jumpy way, I think that is a seperate issue which I wish I had a fix for.

[hurricane3]

I'll try Anisotropic filtering to 4 ,not sure what it is now, and if that doesn't work I'll decrease mipmaps in sim. I'll let you guys know if that helps.thanks

[hurricane3]

I changed the Anistropic filtering to 2 and the mipmap in game to 3 and the shimmering almost totally went away. But if I tried to set the mipmap in game to see if I could still use 4 ( the anistropic filtering was already set at 4 when I changed it to 2 and saved it in the ATI control panel)the shimmering came back,although not as bad ,and wouldn't go away even if I rebooted the sim.
It's like the settings lost ther save and the shimmering wouldn't go away,after the first time I changed them.I'am still going to leave them at 2 for anistropic filtering and 3 for in sim mipmaps.
Maybe if I reset them again and save, the shimmering might go away. I think the big problem might just be my older computer and older ATI card.Hope this all makes sense.

[jhefner]

I changed the Anistropic filtering to 2 and the mipmap in game to 3 and the shimmering almost totally went away. But if I tried to set the mipmap in game to see if I could still use 4 ( the anistropic filtering was already set at 4 when I changed it to 2 and saved it in the ATI control panel)the shimmering came back,although not as bad ,and wouldn't go away even if I rebooted the sim.
It's like the settings lost ther save and the shimmering wouldn't go away,after the first time I changed them.I'am still going to leave them at 2 for anistropic filtering and 3 for in sim mipmaps.
Maybe if I reset them again and save, the shimmering might go away. I think the big problem might just be my older computer and older ATI card.Hope this all makes sense.

FYI; same outcome here. Some have recommended installing the Omega ATI drivers; but when I tried, Windows would not boot.

I also had an older ATI card installed that I unknowingly bought new old stock (thanks Best Buy.) I finally switched video cards last night between that machine and another that had a Viewsonic card with the newer ATI X1550 chipset (the hard drive died in it, and it is now running Linux on a small HD.) I installed the drivers that came with it, and no more shimmering. Both are also older machines; the now Linux box is an AMD 1.2 GHz machine, the XP one a 2 GHz AMD machine. (I was running FS2002 on the slower machine before the HD failed, and FS2004 on the faster one.)

I take it yours is also a PCI card; you might be able to find a newer ATI PCI card for next to nothing. Installing it should fix the problem.

-James

[hurricane3]

I have a new ( never been used Navidia GeForce256Mb 7600 Gs card which I keep in reserve for when the ATI dies. Last time I flew,if you can , it that, all I really do is make test fights, the fickering was gone. It seems if you try to either reboot the sim or make changes to the settings after having flown ,it doesn't remember what they are and you lose them ,although it still might say 3 for mipmap and 2 for anistropic filtering they seem to lose those settings in the sim.Then after the computer reboots the settings are back.

[rich12545]

The problem is antialiasing. Anisotropic allows you to see further into the distance. If you have nvidia which imo is better for fs9 than ati you can get a free program called the inspector. Then go over to the flight 1 forum and NickN(eedham) has posted the correct settings to use. They're mostly into fsx but for the shimmering it's pretty much the same.

[hurricane3]

When I switch to the Navidia I'll go to that site ,meanwhile I'll switch settings and see what happens.

[hurricane3]

By reducing anti -aliasing to 3 in the ATI control panel and going to 3 bipmap in the sim It seemed to do away with the flickering,thanks.

[hurricane3]

I ment mipmap not bipmaps , sorry.