New graphics card - what a thrill! And a few questions.

Just wanted to share my brand new experience - flying! Not jumping through
the air, but actually flying!

I had no separate graphics card - just the on-board with shared memory.
Finally I decided to install a graphics card with 128 MB memory. What a
thrill! Should have done that ages ago.

Now I am flying through the air with 26 fps (locked at 26 fps) instead of
8-10 fps! By the way - what is the purpose of locking the fps? And what
should it be locked at?

Approaching a busy airport like EKCH (anyway, busy with all my AI planes) is
slightly more realistic than with 3-5 fps - and much easier, since the plane
now responds to my corrections in real-time. I can highly recommend
investing in a decent graphics card - makes flying so much more fun!

I experimented with the APP button in autopilot mode. Am I right in assuming
that clicking the APP button, the flight computer will take over the
approach once the ILS is "captured"? So during descent you click APP while
the HDG and other autopilot settings are still on, and when the ILS is
captured (if you tuned to the right frequency!), the computer will try to
make the plane follow the glide-slope, both heading and descent rate? But
what about IAS? (I crashed the landing gear of my MD-80 when landing, and
earned a big bill from the airline - due to a landing speed of 200 mph!).
That didn't work!

Best wishes
Drus

"Drus" <drusATmail.dk> wrote:

> ... By the way - what is the purpose of locking the fps?
It limits the frame rate to the value you specify. Thus allowing the
CPU to spend any time otherwise spent on pushing the frame rate higher
on other tasks like loading the next mesh or calculating AI acft
positions.

> And what should it be locked at?
Whatever you feel comfortable at.
Many of us feel that anything over 20 (some go as low as 15) is just
wasted and the difference can't really be noticed by the average
player. But many disagree and there have been tons of posts on this
subject, both pro and con
The average TV in Europe refreshes at 25fps. In the US it's 30 or 1/2
the powerline frequency.

> I can highly recommend
>investing in a decent graphics card - makes flying so much more fun!
So far you haven't mentioned which card you got.
One concern for many is: how noisy is it? Many high powered cards have
fans on them that really make a racket.

-=tom=-