FSX Defaults is 4500 and it puts wayyyy too many trees on the grounds as far as I'm concerned, so although 6000 works, it must transform rural areas into amazon-like forest

Thanks for the advice MacClean. Some good tips, but I have to disagree with you about DX10. Checking DX10 yields far superior results FOR ME. My frame rate is DOUBLED with DX10. Literally. Same graphics settings under both DX9 and DX10 yields superior graphics detail and clarity and frame rates TWICE as high. Everything looks and plays better with DX10. And I select trilinear and anti-aliasing in-game. Everything is beautiful and smooth at 19 x 12 x 32. It's not even close between DX9 and DX10. Also, I no longer have any runway flickering (the only place I had any flickering at all) since I installed REX2 and REX Overdrive. Those programs must've done something to eliminate it. I didn't expect it, but that's been the result. And REX2/Overdrive are amazing enhancements! DX10 is the only way to go.

I wonder if DX10 only works for NVidia cards? I have an ATI 5850.

That's a good question. Some are reporting Il2 Cliffs of Dover seems to yield better results with ATI cards, although I don't own that sim, so I don't have first-hand experience. I do know I get significantly better frame rates with NASCAR Racing 2003 Season with Nvidia than with an equivalent ATI card. I know because I've tried it with both. The DX10 question at least with FSX might be a similar situation. Some games run noticeably with one technology vs. the other. It's too bad. I wish there was more consistency. But I find DX9 virtually unacceptable for FSX after trying it with DX10 preview checked. I can't go back. The difference is that significant.

Both ATI and Nvidia both support DX and OpenGL equally but somes older cards won't support the latest version of DX (ie 10 & 11) which is more hardware dependent. However, historically Nvidia have always been associated more with OpenGL and ATI more with DX although these days differences in performance is more down to how a games code suits a particular card and driver etc.

I just bought FSX Gold today. It runs pretty terrible unless i turn stuff down and then it doesnt look very good anymore.
I can play FS9 maxed so im really disappointed.
I guess its back to FS9...and a loss of 30 bucks.

My specs
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
6gb Ram
Intel Core i7 Q 740 @ 1.73GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 1gig

It's because your computer isn't a games computer. Things have moved on a lot since FS9.

Well, ill admit its not a purpose built gaming pc, it is a Sony Vaio laptop.
But its from last year and it runs most games ive played on it on high settings smoothly. So its definitely not lacking.
It just seems like to me that FSX needed more time of development to optimize it more. I mean for god sakes the game came out in 2006! Just rushed programming. IMO.
Any game from that era runs just fine on this. IL-2 Sturmovik 1946 for instance. Its rather graphically pretty in my opinion and that runs completely maxed with 60+ fps.

Sorry if it sounds like im venting. Im just rather frustrated.

Yep I can understand your frustration and Cliffs Of Dover is having the same problems FSX had when it came out.

FSX has had 2 patches and lots of tweaks guides and with the latest hardware it's now running well. But you do still need a fast pc to get it running properly.

I have an average pc with a Intel Quad core @ 2.8GHz, 4 GB RAM and an 8800GT and with the tweaks I now have it runing very nicely on a 1080P 32" tv. But I well remember when I first installed FSX it both looked at ran horribly.

But to be honest I don't think you will do any good with it on your laptop sadly.

I've used the online tweaker mentioned at the start of this topic and fair dinkum it has reduced load times by more than 66% on my i5/Win7.32/4g/Radeon 5770 system.