Better frame rates! Thank you everbody. I very much appreciate your assistance.
Results: I generally fly around with fps in high 40's to low 50's occasionally visiting the 60's. Most dogfights are played within the 30's range, with occassional drops into 20's and lower. So I get very dramatic differences, probably due to a lack of computing power as many of you mentioned, but overall I am doing MUCH better.
It's hard to tell what adjustments did what, since we got the patch yesterday. I did most of my testing OFFline prior to going online for the final test, and prior to downloading the patch.
I made one change at a time to better determine what was going to be effective. Fps continuously changed as I flew -- I basically looked for highs, lows, and tried to get a feel for average fps by simply watching them as I attacked the drones offline.
It seems that the largest single improvement came from dropping color depth to High Color 16 bit (down from True Color 32 bit). Other changes, including turning V-sync on/off, and adjusting screen resolution did not seem to make a difference. Although it occurs to me now as I write, that I did not delete the video7.cfg file in Aces High so that I could adjust the resolution used by the game. Wonder if that would've made any difference? Changing the Monitor Refresh Rate from "optimal" to 85, then 75, seemed to negatively affect fps, so I changed it back to "optimal" (fyi: Dell P991 monitor).
One thing that I find interesting; Regardless of what change was made, and even now after the patch, my fps always start at about 30 when I take off (offline) and gradually work their way to 35 by the time my wheels lift. At about 20 feet I am up to 40 fps. These numbers have always been the same. I presume that will change after I get a more powerful computer.
Summary: I am a happy camper. I'll upgrade eventually, but can play in the meantime without too much trouble. :-)
