I have just installed a Geforce 6600 graphics card and subsequently created a new LFS installation. However, when running patch W the graphic options page shows that Hardware Vertex Shading can be turned on or off, but when running patches X & Y, the option seems to have been removed. Does anybody know why this is?

Because it doesn't ever make sense to turn HVS off, and many users did without knowing what it does only to come to the forums and wonder about bad performance

Because HVS is supported by all modern graphics cards, so there's no need to turn support for it off.

Yeah. If your card supports it there is no reason to turn it off and if it doesn't LFS can automatically recognize that and turn it off.

Ok, thanks for the replies. My previous graphics card was a matrox g400 (anybody remember those? ) and this didn't have HVS, so I just wanted to make sure my new card had it.

The new card shows only the z-buffer depth - should there be any other options, eg AA and AF? The simple track option seems to have disappeared as well.

I think simple track had similar problems to HVS, as in actually causing worse performance on modern graphics cards (or it only removed all shadows or something, don't know exactly anymore).

AA and AF settings would be nice, but they never were in LFS to begin with. You'll have to use your graphics driver settings for that (or one of the countless third party GFX adjustment tools, like RivaTuner for example).