Tennozan:
Beautiful post...thank you!
You hit the nail on the hat.
Tallyman4:
Your sound issue is in fact new to me. Never heard of it before. The CFS3 sound engine is .wav based. You can use any sound you want.
Check the sound folder in the main CFS3 directory. Play the sounds with mediaplayer or whatever and listen to how they sound.
Maybe there is something wrong in the settings of the driver or player.
Firepower does not enhance scenery.
Since you are running with such high fps, there is no need at all to look at crappy terrain.
CFS3 is highly configurable in this aspect. From total crap to photorealistic.
For good terrain you'll have to be prepared to go from 60 to 20 or below fps.
Head over to the SoH, register and get MaxClouds. A high-res set of textures that still looks good at a setting of 1.
Also get WM's senery manager (v.4.6). Follow the instructions in the readme for high-res terrain.