There once was a patch, AH20010T20011.EXE.
This patch was for older systems. And, it actually worked. Frame rates were up, game was playable. The latest patch, (patch 3) has become a nightmare of frame rates going from 26 while flying along to 3 when I first look at a base Im flying over at 10k, to complete white outs while all the textures decide to reload at a certain indefinable threshold. I'm really hurting here folks. Resolution is 1024x768, max pixel is 128. I've tried turning off horizon, (another sore point), texture mipmapping and transitions. No help. All sliders set to maximize performance. Nothing helps anymore. Each new patch just keeps getting progressively worse. I even tried going down to 800x600, but since windows wasn't in that resolution I actually lost frame rate trying that.