Detail texturing. A detail texture is a very small, fine pattern which is faded in as you approach a surface, for example wood grain, or imperfections in stone. Tick this setting for improved visual quality, although it may cause a severe performance hit on some graphics cards, particularly with older, graphics cards. Untick this for increased performance.

High detail virtual cockpit. If you intend to use the Virtual cockpit a lot while playing CFS 2 then you should Tick this setting for an increased LOD (Level Of Detail) in the cockpit. If you don’t use the virtual cockpit then leave this Unticked for optimal performance. The shots below show the differences in appearance with Ticked/Unticked.

Effects quality. The setting controls the LOD of effects used in CFS 2, e.g. fire damage on planes. Moving this slider to the Left will reduce the LOD, which can improve performance, but reduce graphical quality (Less detailed effects). Moving this slider to the Right will increase the LOD, which can improve graphical quality, but reduce performance.

LOD target frame rate. This setting is available for adjustment if you Ticked the Auto-performance adjustment setting. Set this to equal to whatever you feel is the minimum for a playable game. 25 should be the ideal minimum frame rate for most users. This specifies the frame rate threshold below which CFS 2 will start dropping detail - reducing model detail & not drawing optional effects. If this is set higher than your normal frame rate, then you will never see reduced graphics almost always, but get the best possible performance. This setting should be about 10 frames below your average frame rate.

NOTE – Do not set this too high, otherwise performance could potentially suffer as a result of the continuous effort to change LOD to maintain the target frame rate.

Make sure to take a look at the TNT\GeForce, Voodoo 3 or Voodoo 4/5 Tweaking guide for information on how to optimize the performance of those cards. That may help you improve image quality/performance even further than the in-game settings can.

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