LET'S GET TWEAKIN'

PRELOG

My dear fellow simmers,

Born yesterday was a brand new baby with a lot of potential. Some things will depend on pedigree, some on how we nurture it. Some will depend on environment. If you expect it to grow to it's full potential on a dual core i5 with integrated graphics, then your expectations are too high. My rig is an i7 3.1 ghz with nvidia 940m graphics. This is middle of the road to possibly minimal for this sim. Trust me when I tell you that if I expect to get more serious about this sim, and I DO, then I will be at micro-center to upgrade our baby's environment. My guess is that an i7 at 4.2 ghz with nvidia 980 gtx graphics and a solid state drive is what I need. I WILL START SAVING NOW I RECKON.

Now I know I have some frame rate watchers out there reading this. You know who you are! For those of you new here...first of all welcome...secondly, don't let anyone deter you....third, a framerate watcher is a simmer who can't fly without having frame rates on the screen. Hey folks, these tweaks have me hovering around 15fps. I never would have tolerated that with fsx. But on Flight School that seems quite fluid. Rather I concentrated on good visuals and decent fluidity while I tweaked. I found this setup to give me an enjoyable experience. SO TURN THE FPS METER OOOFFFFFFFFFFF !!!!!!!

Don't expect miracles, especially if your rig is under my par. Ok, here they are. Go step by step. Check your spelling in the cfg files....it is very important. Any questions, please ask here. I will try to keep up in between my work, kids, and flying.

FSC.CFG TWEAKING :

1. browse to your FSc.CFG file. The path is local disc/users/your
name/appdata/roaming/dovetail games/FSc.
2. copy and paste your FSc.CFG onto your desktop as a backup.
3. delete your FSc.CFG from where you found it.
4. run flight school.
5. close flight school. This will build a new cfg.
6. browse to the FSc.CFG and open it in notepad.
NOW THE FSC.CFG TWEAKS
7. add the following lines to the very top of yourcfg:
[BUFFERPOOLS]
PoolSize=0
RejectThreshold=131072
8. under the [GRAPHICS] heading make the following changes:
NUM_LIGHTS=3
EFFECTS_QUALITY=1
9. under the [Display] heading make the following changes:
UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=30
WideViewAspect=1
10. under the [Weather] heading make the following changes :
CLOUD_DRAW_DISTANCE=2
CLOUD_COVERAGE_DENSITY=2
WEATHER_INDEX_TEST=2
11. under the [DISPLAY.device....] heading delete the line TriLinear=0.
12. under the [SCENERY] heading add the following lines :
MAX_ASYNC_BATCHING_JOBS=3
SmallPartRejectRadius=4.0
13. under that same [SCENERY] heading make the following changes :
LENSFLARE=0
IMAGE_COMPLEXITY=1
14. under the [TrafficManager] heading make the following changes :
AirlineDensity=100
GADensity=100
FreewayDensity=10
ShipsAndFerriesDensity=40
LeisureBoatsDensity=40
15. under the [TERRAIN] heading make the following changes :
MESH_COMPLEXITY=70
MESH_RESOLUTION=23
SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT=2 (as you can see this line has to be added)
TEXTURE_RESOLUTION=25
AUTOGEN_DENSITY=1
16. under the [JobScheduler] heading make the following change :
AffinityMask=84 (for quad core computer users only...i7 is quad...
..i5 is NOT, it is dual core)

NVIDIA INSPECTOR SETTINGS :
PLEASE NOTE: NVIDIA INSPECTOR ONLY WORKS WITH NVIDIA GRAPHICS CARDS.
HOWEVER YOU MAY BE ABLE TO GET SIMILIAR SETTINGS WITH YOUR GRAPHICS
CARD'S CONTROLLING SOFTWARE.

1. download Nvidia Inspector free. I downloaded mine from the softpedia site that was one of my choices when I searched "nvidia inspector
download" in my browser. I user the eu mirror, not the author mirror.
It is a rar file so you will need 7 zip to extract it. It is also
free.
2. open Nvidia Inspector.
3. click on the crossed wrench icon and a profile window will open up.
4. in the Profiles: box begin to type Microsoft and choose Microsoft
Flight simulator 10.
IF YOU HAVE ALREADY MADE CHANGES TO THIS PROFILE FOR FSX, THEN I SUGGEST
YOU WRITE THEM DOWN OR TAKE A SCREENSHOT BECAUSE YOU ARE ABOUT TO RESET THEM. THIS IS SO YOU CAN CHANGE THEM BACK IF YOU EVENTUALLY CHOOSE TO RETURN TO FSX. IF THIS APPLIES TO YOU, AFTER RECORDING THEM, RESET THE SETTINGS BY CLICKING THE GREEN NVIDIA ICON AT THE TOP OF NVIDIA INSPECTOR.

IF THE ABOVE NOTE DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU, DISREGARD IT.

5. click on the icon with a small green plus sign in the bottom right
hand corner of a small blue and white square. This will allow you to
add flight school to this nvidia profile. A window will open. browse to the following path : local disk/program files(x86)/steam/steamapps/
common/FlightSchool and click on the FSc.exe file. Click open. The window will close.

TO CHANGE A SETTING IN THE NVIDIA INSPECTOR PROFILE, CLICK ON THE SETTING
TO BE CHANGED, A DROP DOWN MENU WILL APPEAR, CLICK ON YOUR SETTING CHOICE. BE CAREFUL TO USE THE SLIDER ON THE RIGHT OF THE PAGE TO SCROLL
DOWN THE PAGE. DO THIS BY CLICKING AND DRAGGING IT. DO NOT SCROLL THE MOUSE WHEEL AS THIS MAY INADVERTENTLY CHANGE YOUR SETTINGS.

6. change Frame Rate Limiter to 30fps.
7. change Triple buffering to on.
8. change Antialiasing-Gamma correction to off.
9. change Antialiasing-Mode to Enhance the application setting.
10. change Antialiasing-Setting to 2x [2x multisampling]
11. change Antialiasing-Transparency Supersampling to off/multisampling.
12. change Toggle FXAA on or off to On.
13. change Anisotropic filtering setting to 16x.
14. change Texture filtering-Anisotropic filter optimization to On.
15. change Texture filtering-Anisotropic sample optimization to On.
16. change Texture filtering-Negative LOD bias to Clamp.
17. change Texture filtering-Quality to High quality.
18. change Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration to Single display
performance mode. (let's learn to walk before we learn to fly)
19. change Power management mode to Prefer maximum performance.
20. change threaded optimization to On. Unless you don't have hyper
threading. If in doubt, leave it on auto.
21. click applychanges on the top right of nvidia inspector and wait for
it to take. click it a couple of times just to be sure.
22. close nvidia inspector.

OPTIONAL PA28 TWEAKS :

BEING A REAL WORLD PILOT WHO FLIES A PIPER ARROW AMONG OTHER THINGS, I CAN SAY THAT I FOUND THE CHEROKEE IN NEED OF A FEW TWEAKS THAT MADE IT FEEL "REAL" TO ME. HERE THEY ARE :

1. browse to the location of the aircraft.cfg for the Piper_PA28, NOT the Pa28_180 folder. The path is local disk/program files(x86)/steam/
steamapps/common/flightschool/simobjects/airplanes/Piper_PA28.
2. open aircraft.cfg in notepad.
3. under [flight_tuning] make the following changes :
pitch_stability=2.0
roll_stability=2.0
4. under [piston_engine] make the following changes :
power_scalar=1.3
5. under [flaps.0] make the following changes :
pitch_scalar=0.0

POSTLOG

Last of all my fellow simmers. Have fun but please watch those expectations. It's a brand new baby. Let's nurture it. When it grows up, if it is still misbehaving and being disobedient, THEN we'll discipline it.