Hints and Tips

Here is a random collection of some of the most common hints and tip that I have collected from the Internet newsgroups and mailing lists. I hope you find them worthwhile.

Make sure you are in 3D mode: There are three settings in FS98 that must be set correctly to run in 3D mode; if any one of them is set wrong you will run in 2D only. All these settings are made in the Prefereces/Display/Display Options/Hardware Acceleration menu. First, select the Direct3D or the 3Dfx driver. With some cards you may see only a Primary Display Driver. Next, click on the Hardware Acceleration checkbox. Third, select the video display mode you wish, but make sure to select a 16-bit color mode (i.e. 800x600x16). If you have a 2D/3D card and want to run 3D in a window, you should use a 16-bit (32 or 64 thousand color) desktop. Other flight sims have a video options screen where you may select a 3D mode. If you are going to buy a 3D-accelerated program, make sure it is compatible with your video card: only 3Dfx cards will run anything programmed in Glide. All video card will run a Direct3D program. Oh, and make sure you type Alt-Enter if you are using a Voodoo or Voodoo2 card.

Test your frame rate: To see the current frame rate in FS98, press Shift-Z a couple times. By observing the frame rate with various settings you can optimize your system for highest frame rate, for optimally realistic images, or for a setting in between that best suits you. Consult the manual or the on-line help that came with other programs to learn how to display frame rates.

See-through clouds in FS98: Turn off cloud thickness.

Panel readability in FS98: Set Image Quality to high and Speed to slow. If you still can’t read the digits, switch to a higher-resolution mode, or modify your panel.cfg file.

Get the latest video card drivers: This applies to all cards, running all programs. For example, the drivers that come with a Voodoo card will give you very large runway lights. This is fixed with updated drivers from the card manufacturer. The latest drivers for the Riva128 chipset improved performance another 30%, even though the card has been out a year. Check for new drivers monthly to keep up.

FS98 multiplayer chat in full-screen: One of the new features of FS98 is multiplayer flying. During flight it’s necessary to talk with the other pilots, and FS98 uses a chat window for this communication. Unfortunately, this window is invisible when using a full-screen view, necessary for 3D rendering with a Voodoo card. Here is how to use multiplayer chat in full-screen mode: Initialize a multiplkayer session in 2D mode, with the chat box open. Next type Alt-Enter to switch to full-screen mode, then type Ctrl-Enter to close the chat window. This causes chat messages to scroll across your screen. To type a message for others:

Repeat these steps every time you want to send a message. Note that you loose the ability to scroll back to see old messages. Running FS98 in a 3D window is preferable.

Gray buildings and aircraft in FS98: If some buildings of aircraft are grey rather than textured, you have probably run out to texture memory. This sometimes happens with dense scenery on video cards with 4 MB memory. It is cured either by lowering the scenery complexity, or by using 8-bit textures. If you use 8-bit textures you may see some odd things, like the grass around airports turning to concrete, and buildings looking a little fuzzy.

Improve your frame-rate: This applies to all 3D-accelerated programs. Some 3D effects are free, and some are expensive. What I mean by free is that when enabled the frame rate is not affected, and enabling expensive effects will lower the frame rate. These effects are image smoothing (bilinear filtering), MIP-mapping, fog and haze, textured clouds, lens flare, explosion effects, etc. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you which effects come completely free because all cards are different. You will need to experiment to find the best balance between the look of the sim and the frame rate. Personally I need at least 20 FPS to control an aircraft smoothly, so I turn off all effects, then start adding them one by one until the frame rate drops to 20, and that’s the way I fly.

Configure your sound in FS98: What’s that? you say? What has sound to do with 3D video? A great deal, as it turns out. 3D video places a large load on the computer CPU and the data bus. Anything you do to remove load from the data bus helps, and configuring the sound can free up a lot of the data bus. If you add these lines to the fltsim98.cfg file (in your FS98 directory), the data requirements for sound will be only 12% of the default settings:

The defaults are 22050, 2, and 16, respectively. Any line you do not include in the fltsim98.cfg file will use the default setting. Each setting halves the data load from the sound system. Some of these settings can be added with no sound degradation. For example, if you are using a single speaker, or if you have two speakers placed close together, you will not notice that mono sound (channels=1) is any different than stereo (channels=2). The other two settings each lower the fidelity of the sound system. If you experience sound stuttering, you may want to try the lower-fidelity settings. You can test the influence the sound system has on performance by selecting a situation with no motion (sitting on a runway looking toward a city) and observing the frame rate (Shift-Z) until it has settled down. Then press Q to turn the sound off and see if the frame rate increases. If it increases by one or two FPS, you might want to add some of the setting above. Using non-rectangular panels sometimes eliminates sound stutter. Sound stutter in FS98 is mostly seen with ViRGE and Rush chipsets, and I’m afraid to say there isn’t a single cure-all for this. Just use a combination of the suggestions above and hope for the best. Other flight sims might also benefit from lowering the fidelity of the sound, but in my experience no other flight sim exhibits sound stutter.

Video pausing: There have been many long-running discussions about video pausing in the newsgroups, and this is somewhat controversial. It seems there are three types of pausing in FS98. Whenever new scenery is needed for your flight, FS98 will access the CD. While this happens, the program pauses. This type of pausing is identified as pausing that coincides with CD access, and is eliminated by installing more scenery on your hard drive, if you have the room. A second type of pausing looks the same as scenery-access pausing, but comes from other programs running in the background. Virus scanners, Internet access, and system utilities (like Fast Find and ODBC) may use the CPU for a moment. Removing or deactivating these utilities will eliminate these pauses. Both these causes will afflict both 2D- and 3D-mode. The third kind of pausing is seen only in 3D mode, and I’m afraid to report there is no cure. This type of pausing is seen mostly over cities, and gets worse with scenery density, and with add-on scenery. While there have been many fixes proposed for 3D-pausing, none work on all systems. It seems that faster systems are less susceptible to pausing, it will be up to Microsoft to eliminate it. You can minimize pausing by using normal to sparse scenery, and by using the suggestions in the sound stuttering paragraph above.

Free an IRQ: Did you know that with most video cards you don't need an IRQ?  The Riva128 and Riva128ZX need an IRQ to operate properly, but most others do not. In fact, most video drivers ignore the IRQ completely because using the IRQ only slows the card down. There are times when you'd want the IRQ, like with the Rush card, when you switch your drivers to that setting that helps prevent sound stutter. 

Here are the instructions for my system, Award BIOS v4.51PG.   Yours may be slightly different.  Some motherboards will not have an option for disabling the video IRQ:

When you boot up, while the memory is counting up, press the Del key, which puts you into the BIOS configuration.

Select the entry 'BIOS Features Setup'.

Towards the bottom of the screen is an entry 'Assign IRQ for VGA'. Set it to Disabled. Then press the ESC key to go back a screen.

Select 'Save settings and exit', tell it 'yes' when it asks if you are sure, and let it reboot. Win95 will probably automatically detect a change and adjust itself, requiring a reboot.

If your computer fails to boot, go back and re-enable the setting and all should be well.

Got a 3D hint or tip?  Send it to Bruce Wilson for inclusion on this page!