deanbrh

Hi Keiran, A couple months ago, I put together a similar system to you (i4790k/gtx980 TI/32gb/SSD) , and was also initially dissapointed in x-plane performance. I am now currently flying around certain *selected* places with pretty much everything maxed (except shadows) and maintaining 60fps, and it looks absolutely beautiful. The main advice I can give you is think carefully about where you are flying and how that correlates to the demand on the hardware. Major cities or really dense urban areas, you are not going to get better than 30fps, period. You can however probably ramp everything up and fly in less immensely packed areas and have a very enjoyable experience and framerate. I have found that over the months, I am getting better and better at tweaking the settings to the demands of the area and getting a feel of how to get the best performance and eye-candy for the place that I want to fly. Initially though, I was just trying to ramp everything up and fly in packed areas. I recently made a post over at the org about my settings, which you may find useful: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=88627&p=947739 I am not recommending the post as advice for your particular settings or hardware, it is just a note of the only way I seem to be able to manage max settings/60fps. I recommend keep toying with settings, mods, visibility, location etc. Couple of things which have definitely improved my performance: Sky Maxx Pro (Looks prettier, and better performance). HD Mesh Scenery V3 seems to improve my performance. Shadows kill my hardware. Avoid large cities or very packed dense areas.