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Optimizing your rFactor Connection for CMS events, Stutters, Freezes, Blinking Cars
Lately with the field sizes in our rFactor events reaching very large sizes, we have had some drivers experiecing issues with system stability, rFactor crashes, and warping/stuttering during our events. This guide is being posted to help members with recommended tips for optimizing your system to help alleviate problems. There is no guarantee that any or all of these tips will fix a specific system, but these are best practices to be used. Please make sure to test these wherever possible and make backups of any original files you may replace so that you can revert if needed.
General Recommendations for Racing
1. Make sure you have the most current Video Card Drivers for your system. http://www.nvidia.com and/or http://www.ati.com is the place to look in the downloads section.
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2. Please do the same for sound drivers. These are often overlooked and can be the cause of problems if not kept reasonably current. Contact your sound card or motherboard manufacturer for sound driver files.
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3. When racing disable or turn off all things on your system that could be scanning in the background. Examples include real-time anti-virus scanning, windows update, etc.
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4. Tweak your video card for gaming. This is typically done in the video Card Control Panel. Here is a guide for ATI cards http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html and here is a general guide for Nvidia Cards http://www.tweakguides.com/NVFORCE_1.html . Pay special attention to things like Anti-Aliasing and Antistrophic Filtering. For instance if you have these turned on and set to 4x in the control panel and then you ALSO have them set to 4x in the rFactor 3D Config you are essentially doubling the affect and therefore doubling the effect on your system performance. IT is recommended to have these set in one place or the other, either the video control panel or the rFactor 3D config, not both. Expirement with setting the control panel to Application Controlled for these settings and configuring it in rFactor 3D, and also try disabling it in rFactor 3D and going with the video control panel overrides to find the best mix of performance and visual quality for your system.
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5. Please see this thread for an excellent discussin on stuttering, screen freezes, and crashes to desktop in rFactor for large events. We have cut out of the thread some key findings that seem to indicate tweaking your in game graphics settings for rFactor are the best place to start when experiencing graphical and stability problems on race night.
http://cmsracing.com/champion/forums...or-Events-Tips!
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I did a little systematic testing today. I chose Brianza (Monza) from ISI to eliminate any issues with custom tracks. And I used an install without any custom cars/skins
My system: Intel quad CPU 2,8GHz, 4GB RAM; NVIDIA GTX260 2GB RAM (Newest driver); WIN7
Common settings for all tests: DX9 / 1680x1050 32bit / AA Level 6 / Vsync on
Results:
AI cars: 20 / GFX settings: All max / No of visible cars: 65 / Result: Freeze after 9 min race; Stutter during race
AI cars: 20 / GFX settings: All max / No of visible cars: 15 / Result: Freeze after 20 min race; Stutter during race
AI cars: 20 / GFX settings: All 1 click down / No of visible cars: 15 / Result: 45 min race complete. Stutter during race. Freeze when I hit ESC after race
AI cars: 40 / GFX settings: All 1 click down / No of visible cars: 15 / Result: Freeze after 2 min race; Stutter during race
AI cars: 40 / GFX settings: All 2 click down / No of visible cars: 15 / Result: Runs very nice (10 min test race)
AI cars: 40 / GFX settings: All 2 click down / No of visible cars: 65 / Result: Runs very nice (10 min test race)
SNL Le Mans:
AI cars: 40 / GFX settings: All 2 click down / No of visible cars: 65 / Result: Runs nicely for 9 min in race and then freezes
La Sarthe:
AI cars: 40 / GFX settings: All 2 click down / No of visible cars: 65 / Result: Runs very nice (30 min test race)
Conclusion: GFX setting is the only important factor. Track also has an influence. But can you differentiate between track and vehicle details?
6. For those with C++ runtime errors or other rFactor crashes to the desktop when large fields are present on the server, this patch is supposed to allocate more free memory in the rFactor.exe program, and is being used by several of our members. Note this only works on Windows 7 64-bit systems. It makes a 2 byte change in rfactor.exe. (Of course, back it up first, if you want to go back.)
http://www.ntcore.com/4gb_patch.php
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7. You can add some strings to the end of your rFactor.exe shortcut on the desktop to make sure the game is using the full processor (multi-cores) and also running at high priority. To do this right click on rfactor icon, hit properties,shortcut, and change Target: to
Besides using (+fullproc) as shown here (+fullproc +highprio) priority is also an option. This fix is best known to work with Windows XP, as Windows 7 already includes optimizations on threading for single core using applications, but you can try it to experiment on both systems (XP and 7).Windows XP
"C:\Program Files\rFactor\rFactor.exe" +fullproc
Windows 7
"C:\Program Files (x86)\rFactor\rFactor.exe" +fullproc
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8. There was a community path released for Nvidia Video Card users which makes some optimizations to the D3D files and has been used to better help with performance and graphics issues on some systems with Nvidia cards. Here is the link to the file and fix if you want to test this.
http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail...ia%20FPS%20Fix
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9. Additional Optimizations for rFactor to help tweak some general settings ... see this thread ...
http://cmsracing.com/champion/forums...ls-Heusinkveld
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10. At the start of races in rFactor there have always been (since 2005 when the game released) races where with large fields you will see cars disappear and re-appear for the first few turns or even the first lap of the race. This is not a problem with the race server as it affects many leagues with large fields, and has been present on many race servers supporting large fields over time. This is generally considered to be caused by two things.
A) the amount of visible cars you have set in your rFactor options. The game is trying to show you the proper cars and with lots of them together closely at the start, it is struggling to display the proper cars. You can turn this number up or down, but note that with it higher you could see more system strain and with it lower you could see more blinking in and out of cars until the field gets spread out more. A general recommendation is to have this set somewhere between 12 - 20 cars.
B) rFactor multiplayer while solid for the most part, does have some flaws; including game sync. At the beginning of races when everyone enters the grid there is some level of syncing that had to occur between the server and all the car and internet connections. With larger fields this becomes a more taxing process for all of the individual systems connected to the server, and until all the sync is completed and rendered to your individual system you will see blinking.
This is why we have an Orange Zone at CMS in our races. Everyone should expect when we have more than 20-25 people on the server we will see blinking at the start of the race, please hold your line and drive predictable until this sorts itself out which generally only takes a lap or two. DO NOT do these two things. #1 Slow down or stop ... #2 try to hurry past the blinking cars. Patience and working together to give as much room as possible on the start of the race is critical during this time.
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11. In races where we are racing in the dark and into the night, headlights are used. The headlights and reflections on cars and objects from them can cause serious graphics strain on your system. Please use these tips to reduce the strain and optimize rFactor for racing at night
rFactor stores your user options and settings in a file called (your username).plr. There are two lines in the (your username).plr file which allow you to adjust the graphical performance of rFactor when racing at night.
To access your .plr file:
Use windows explorer, or My Computer, and navigate to your rFactor folder.
Navigate down to the "Userdata" subfolder.
Within that folder, you will see another folder with the name you setup as your driver name in rFactor.
Click on thumbnails for larger pic.
Find the file named (your username).plr. You can open this file with any regular text editor. Notepad or Wordpad are both fine options.
Scroll down about 2/3rds of the way, until you see the following lines:
Max Headlights="8" // Max headlights visible relative to your car.
Headlights On Cars="0" // Headlights illuminate other cars.
The "Max Headlights" line determines how many headlights rFactor draws, in relative distance to your car. This number includes both cars in front and behind.
The "Headlights On Cars" line determines whether or not all headlights drawn will reflect off car bodies. This effect can put a great stress on your system. Not only does it have to draw realtime reflections when the headlights of your car illuminate your opponents, but it also draws realtime reflections from the headlights of all your opponents when they shine on other cars. Depending on how many headlights you have set in the "Max headlights" line, this can grow exponentially very fast, suddenly putting very high stress on your system.
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12. All the work in the world to optimize your system can only go so far if your system is showing age. If it's time to upgrade a great place to start to see what' the best of the best in high, medium and low end PC system builder categories is this link at Maximum PC.
http://www.maximumpc.com/best-of-the-best
13. For the Lemans Series here at CMS, we also offer a low resolution skin pack. This is an alternate paint skin pack for all the cars, that have been saved at half the size and will consume less memory from your video card. Here is a link to try these if you wish http://cmsracing.com/champion/forums...s-quot-version
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Originally Posted by smokee
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