Use the Global Scenery Quality to adjust the overall quality of the scenery in Flight Simulator. Higher settings offer better-looking graphics, but may affect performance.

The hills, valleys, mountains, and canyons in the Flight Simulator world are drawn using real-world digital elevation data. The mesh includes a map of points at different elevations. The more points that get drawn at any time, the more detail in the terrain, and the more computing power required.

Higher settings include more points; lower settings drop less-significant points. In the two pictures above, note the difference between the Terrain Mesh Complexity settings of 80 (left) and zero (right). Regardless of your computer's power, Terrain Mesh Complexity settings above 80 may impact performance.

Textures on the ground include roads, rivers, farm fields, shorelines, and the textures underlying cities. Fly at high altitudes and the difference between high and low Terrain Texture Size settings becomes unnoticeable. High settings will make flights at low altitude more interesting.

Notice how sharp and detailed the roads, fields, and shorelines are in the picture on the left, using a high Terrain Texture Size setting. Even on a modestly powered computer, high settings will have little effect on performance.

The water reflections slider offers five values: None, Detail, Reflection, and Detail and Reflection and 3-D waves. The Detail creates animated textures that simulate the appearance of breaking waves. The Reflection setting adds the appearance of sunlight reflecting on water. The 3-D waves setting further adds textures that create a rolling wave visual effect. Higher settings may affect simulator performance on some computers.

Note: You must have the Terrain detail slider set above None in order to see any water reflection effects.

Note: Not all video cards support water reflection effects. If your video card does not support these effects, you will not see water reflection effects in the simulator even when this slider is moved to the right.

This slider increases or decreases the level of terrain object detail. You must have this slider above the None setting to see water reflection effects.

This setting smoothes the transition between textures at dawn and dusk.

Selecting extended terrain textures creates more detail in distant.

In the two pictures above, note that the mountain in the picture on the left includes more detail than the mountain in the picture on the right. Selecting this setting may affect simulator performance on some computers.

Global Effects Detail manages special effects in Flight Simulator like smoke, fountains, and fireworks that are created using units called sprites. The more sprites displayed, the better the effect looks. Higher settings may affect simulator performance on some computers.

Scenery complexity affects the density of "non-autogen" buildings and scenery objects; that is, monuments, custom buildings in cities and airports, or any object that requires nongeneric models or nongeneric textures. Higher settings may affect simulator performance on some computers.

The picture above at left shows a city with extremely dense scenery complexity. Notice the difference in the picture on the right, which has very sparse scenery complexity. Higher settings may affect simulator performance on some computers.

Autogen creates generic scenery objects, such as trees and buildings. The objects appear in the distance as you approach them.

The picture above on the left shows the maximum autogen setting; the picture on the right displays the normal autogen setting. Note the greater number of trees and buildings in the picture on the left. Higher settings may affect simulator performance on some computers.

Flight Simulator has replaced its older dynamic scenery objects with objects that use artificial intelligence, although some compatible third-party scenery packages still use dynamic scenery. Dynamic scenery includes moving aircraft, boats, and ground vehicles. The Dynamic Scenery slider controls the objects included in third-party scenery software; this control is unavailable if no dynamic scenery has been added to Flight Simulator.

Buildings and other ground objects can cast shadows. Selecting this setting may affect simulator performance on some computers.

• Global Aircraft Quality
• Virtual Cockpit Gauge Quality
• Reflections
• Aircraft Cast Shadows
• Landing lights
• Resize panel with main window

This setting adjusts the overall quality of the appearance of aircraft and aircraft effects. A higher setting will provide better-looking graphics, but may affect performance on some computers.

This setting affects the sharpness of the cockpit instruments in virtual cockpit view.

When you select this setting, sunlight and ground features will reflect on the skin of the aircraft.

When you select this setting, the aircraft cast shadows onto ground objects and terrain.

When you select this setting, aircraft landing lights will illuminate ground objects.

When running the simulator in a window, you can resize the window. When Resize panel with main window is selected, the panel stretches to fill up the window when the window is resized.