IndyRC - Updates....

[Rob Lowe]

Here is a pic of my sky after last update.

[Paul]

Yup Rob! That's Indiana alright!!!!

[TimCollier]

Rob, try the files in the post prior to your screenshot...

Now, I have an SCN file update...this should hopefully kick the framerates up a bit. John, I definitely want to hear from you on this update.

Take the file in the attached ZIP file, and drop it in your "GameData/Locations/Indy/IndyRoadBeta11" folder

Let me know if it helps or hurts framerates guys....

And still more to come

[davidan]

Tim, I havent tried the SCN update yet. Will do that next. But I too had the same issue as Rob with the black skys. I fixed it by going back to the ones you suggested and posted.

Overall the track looks really good and my framerates are good. I am in the 65-72 range on FPS; with nobody else on the track. I just took a few laps around and the brake markers really help now in turn 1 and the cones look good.

At this point the biggest issues as I see them are

1. the horizon which you are already aware of and working on
2. the signage -- is it all current/up to date? some of it seems a bit low res, but I wouldnt want to replace it with higher res stuff if it means taking a big frame rate hit ...

you've done a great job Tim. the track looks really good and the track surface looks great to me ...


David

[davidan]

Just tried with the new SCN file and it seems about the same, perhaps a very small amount better on FPS. Still in the 60-70'ish range.

[jrowland96]

What kind of beast machine are you running, David?

Tim, I'll try the updated SCN later today when I get home. I know David didn't see much improvement, but it may be a more noticeable difference for a mid-level machine.

Seriously, I haven't upgraded my CPU/motherboard/RAM combo in quite a while. I did the vid card up to Radeon 9800 Pro last year... I'm not going to ever spend $400 on a video card, and generally with CPU upgrade, I usually buy the "not the latest and greatest, most bang for the buck" CPU. Where the price has dropped to the apex of the price/quality curve.

I haven't upgraded that stuff in the past few years, so I guess I better do some research. I only keep up with that stuff when I'm in the upgrade process. I don't even know what the various Intel Chipsets are these days, and what's good/not good, What's a comparable AMD chip, what are compatible motherboards, what kind of RAM I'd have to get...

[davidan]

John, I am running a Pentium 3.0Ghz processor (Prescott Core), and 1 GB of System RAM. My video card is an ATI x800 pro (256 MB). I would expect you to be able to get in the 45-50 FPS range though with your Radeon 9800 Pro. We just need to continue to tweak. Make sure you have most current ATI device drivers, and can you share with us your Anti Aliasing, Anistrophic Filtering, etc ... ? Want to know how it's configured in both Windows and the rFactor 3d tool and sim ...


David

[jrowland96]

OK David... I'll shoot over the info and how I have it configured in Windows, the rFactor config tool, and also the ingame settings. I updated my catalyst drivers last night (6.2 I think is the catalyst, and forgot the actual driver version off-hand)

I don't know why they have you set up the anti-alias settings for instance in the config tool (the one that runs the first time you run the game), but then let you change it from the Display settings screen in-game. Let's say I have the AA set at 8x in the Catalyst manager, 4x in the rF config tool, and 2x in the game display settings... which overrides which? lol

I spoke with a buddy here at work who I've always bought my PC parts through, and talked about upgrade stuff (he's got a sweet setup at home with about 10-12 PCs all networked together in his basement where his kids have LAN parties... PC geek to the extreme). If I go with a newer CPU/MB, I guess I'll have to get a new video card too, as mine is AGP, and 99% of the current motherboards are PCI Express.

Here's what I'm looking at possibly doing... I've always had Intel, but I think I'm leaning towards AMD now (all of Tim's advertising has worn off on me! lol)

AMD 64 4000 (socket 939, 1600mhz FSB, 1 MB cache) ~$330
Gigabyte GA-K8N-SLI motherboard (NF4-SLI) ~$90
1 Gig of RAM (2x512 to take advantage of Dual DDR.... 400/3200) ~$95 ($46 each) Can upgrade this to 2 Gig anytime down the road.

Since I'll have SLI capability, I might go with 1 GeForce NX6600 with 256 Meg DDR (add a 2nd card in a few months to keep costs down for now). They're just over $100 each, so I could put one in now, and run it solo, and then get a 2nd when I have some spare $$ and run in SLI mode. ~$110-115 for each card