Hi,
I decided to write this little tutorial to give a few hints about improving visual rendering in ship simulator (this concerns every versions of the game : 2006, 2008 and Extremes), because I believe many players don't know what will be described here.
This tutorial only concerns ATI video cards owners, since I do not have a Nvidia card, I'm unable to write the same thing for Nvidia users - but it should be quite similar.In many current games, you can setup the visual 3D rendering directly from within the game (those anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering settings you can see in the Options menu).
Ship Simulator totally relies on the hardware settings, and doesn't not offer those setting within the game, which means you have to manually setup your graphic card drivers to do so. Please note that it's anyway prefered to set your 3D render manually with your video card driver, which is much more optimized than the settings you have in some games, as it totally relies on your hardware.
This is quite simple :
Please note that, by doing this tweaking, you'll see great improvements in the visual rendering of the game, but you might notice a drastic reduction of your FPS (frame per second) rate. You'll have to play with the different settings by yourself to find the best compromise between quality and performance ... Those settings will be different for each player, it depends on your hardware configuration, your wishes, and so on. I only indicate here the settings I use on my personnal PC (i5 750, 6gb ram, Ati Radeon HD 5770, Windows 7 64 bits).
So, here we go :
1. just right-click on the little red ATI icon in your task bar, and launch "Catalyst Control Center"
2. On the main Catalyst control center screen, click on the Graphics Menu, and choose "3D" option
Let's check the different tabs !
3.
Standard Tab
Check the "Use Custom Settings" option, then set the level you want. Then hit Apply.
4.
AA Tab
This is where you set the Anti Aliasing.
Uncheck the "Use application Settings" option, then set the level you want. Then hit Apply.
Note : Once you have unchecked this option, the Anti Aliasing option within other games wont override your manual setting any more.
5.
AAA Tab
Check the "Enable Adaptive Anti-Aliasing" option to enable this feature, then set the level you want. Then hit Apply.
6.
AF Tab
Uncheck the "Use application Settings" option to enable Anisotropic Filtering, then set the level you want. Then hit Apply.
Note : Once you have unchecked this option, the Anistotropic Filtering option within other games wont override your manual setting any more.
7.
AI Tab
Uncheck the "Disable Catalyst AI" option to enable ATI specific optimizations, then set the level you want. Then hit Apply.
8.
Mipmap Tab
Here you just have to set the level of mimap you want to use. Then hit Apply.
That's all, just click on "OK" now to save your settings, close the Catalyst Control Center, Launch Ship Simulator ... And enjoy ! Please don't hesitate to come back to this control panel to adjust your settings ...
Example : Before/After crops (those screenshots have been taken from SS2008, full details activated in the game, on the left with no ATI tweaking, on the right with full ATI tweaking activated)
And you will find two full-size screenshots attached below : one with no tweaking, one with tweakings activated.
You may find details about those different settings on this link :
http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_7.html (http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_7.html)
Special Thanks to Mad_Fred for his help writing this topic, and for the in-game screenshots 
