I got rFactor! [Archive] - NoGripRacing Forums

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boggyjr

27 April 07, 23:35

Slick1

28 April 07, 00:04

I finally got it, can't you decrease the detail of the game.

October

28 April 07, 00:15

Online, however, is too easy for me. So, I usually race offline.

You sound like a man looking for a challenge ;) My personal favorite mod is the GP79 cars and if you need traction control and ABS to find your groove this is NOT the mod for you. However a good online race of these beasties will leave your hands shaking and beads of cold sweat on your forehead, IF you actually finish it (and no unrealistic aids are used)!

You might also try the popular Renault Super Clio mod. They aren't fast and they corner like shopping carts but the challenge of racing them online is curiously enjoyable (and challenging).

Anyway, do the same blah-blah-blah that people recommend for every driving game... turn OFF the extra aids! I'm all for an aid, like limited traction control, IF the cars actually raced with that feature enabled. If it isn't a realistic setting I don't use it. Same thing with damage modifier. 100%! Anything less just drags you back down and you might as well be sitting in a quarter arcade bouncing cars off of guard rails with impunity playing Pole Position or something (damn, did I just tag my age or what?!?!)

Learn to check the Additional Information tabs when scoping a possible server. This will tell you what sort of chea.. ~cough~ DRIVING AIDS... the server has enabled and so on. Better yet get comfortable with a mod and then find the homepage for one of the popular (and usually password protected) league servers and join. You will find more challenge that way than you will know what to do with.

However, the frame rate isn't that good, and I would like to know how to get rFactor running better.

Same deal with any game although your results will vary with rFactor from one mod to the next. Generally I get higher FPS in rFactor than in GTR2 by doing the usual things... forcing vsync off, making sure you are running the game at the same resolution, refresh rate and color depth as your *desktop* (yes, this can help a lot!) and making sure that no extra crap is running in the background eating up your CPU cycles.

Anyway welcome to the world of rFactor! It's not for everyone but those of us that have found it's inner beauty rarely race anything else.

I occasionally host a server of GP79 called "Vic Chou's BALLS OF STEEL!" Try two laps in a row at Macau (see www.skro.de ) without hitting anything and then tell me this game is "too easy" ;)

boggyjr

28 April 07, 03:24

You sound like a man looking for a challenge ;) My personal favorite mod is the GP79 cars and if you need traction control and ABS to find your groove this is NOT the mod for you. However a good online race of these beasties will leave your hands shaking and beads of cold sweat on your forehead, IF you actually finish it (and no unrealistic aids are used)!

You might also try the popular Renault Super Clio mod. They aren't fast and they corner like shopping carts but the challenge of racing them online is curiously enjoyable (and challenging).

Anyway, do the same blah-blah-blah that people recommend for every driving game... turn OFF the extra aids! I'm all for an aid, like limited traction control, IF the cars actually raced with that feature enabled. If it isn't a realistic setting I don't use it. Same thing with damage modifier. 100%! Anything less just drags you back down and you might as well be sitting in a quarter arcade bouncing cars off of guard rails with impunity playing Pole Position or something (damn, did I just tag my age or what?!?!)

Learn to check the Additional Information tabs when scoping a possible server. This will tell you what sort of chea.. ~cough~ DRIVING AIDS... the server has enabled and so on. Better yet get comfortable with a mod and then find the homepage for one of the popular (and usually password protected) league servers and join. You will find more challenge that way than you will know what to do with.

Same deal with any game although your results will vary with rFactor from one mod to the next. Generally I get higher FPS in rFactor than in GTR2 by doing the usual things... forcing vsync off, making sure you are running the game at the same resolution, refresh rate and color depth as your *desktop* (yes, this can help a lot!) and making sure that no extra crap is running in the background eating up your CPU cycles.

Anyway welcome to the world of rFactor! It's not for everyone but those of us that have found it's inner beauty rarely race anything else.

I occasionally host a server of GP79 called "Vic Chou's BALLS OF STEEL!" Try two laps in a row at Macau (see www.skro.de ) without hitting anything and then tell me this game is "too easy" ;)

I have all of the aids turned off. Only one I have turned on is Auto Clutch, because I don't have any allowance money to buy a wheel with a clutch pedal...

And to explain "Easy", here's two online races (of the five I've had) that went extremely easy for me...

The first race I ever had online was with the GP79 mod at the 1979 layout of Dijon. There were about 20 people on the server. I took SimHQ's advice and chose the Lotus, since they said it was the easiest car for rookies. I had maybe 3-4 hours of experience with the game, and that was late night easter sunday. We got a day off school that monday, so I decided to try out online. Anyways, I qualified 13th out of 20 people, which I thought was pretty good, considering I never even tweaked the setup, and had never driven a GP79 car before. The race started, and already, I had found a technique of launching from a standing start, that simply requires putting the car in 1st gear and waiting for the lights to go out. I passed maybe 3 people off of the starting grid. I was in 10th going into turn 1, when everyone locked up their brakes and went into the sand. Within two seconds, I was in 3rd place. The caution came out almost immediately after.

Most cars were a lap down after going to the pits to get repaired, so there were about four of us on the lead lap, and the rest were just riding around. When the pace car pulled off, the guy in front of me tried to hang back to get a good run at 1st place. He locked up the brakes accidentally. I locked up the brakes to avoid him, but got nailed from behind by 4th place.

So, here I am, with 3 laps to go, facing backwards as the green flag came back out.

I managed to chase the guy down and finish third. Not bad from starting in the middle of the pack.

My other easy race was a few days ago.

There were eight of us running Panoz GTR-1's at Brianza's marathon event. The one where you run the oval track first, and then get transfered to the road course.

I simply love the Panoz, because it's like driving a GPL car with Aids turned all the way up. It slides around a lot, but it's extremely easy to control when doing almost anything.

I knew the strategy with Brianza was taking the chicanes properly. During practice and qualifying, I didn't care about setting hotlaps, I just wanted to get my driving line through the chicanes perfected, because I knew that those turns are critical in winning at Brianza.

However, I also am getting used to how the "BASIC" setup sliders work, so I tweaked those to get maximum speed on the oval part without sacrificing acceleration.

I was placed 3rd out of 8 drivers on the grid. Not bad for having little practice in the Panoz.

Anyways, the race started. Many people did burnouts on the grid, because they launched from too high of an RPM. This is why I launch from 1st gear, and never rev the car to 5000-6000 RPM as the lights go out. My car still had a bit of tire-shake at the start, but not nearly as much as the others.

I ran third through the first turn of the oval, and then used the draft to slingshot by 2nd place. After the oval part was finished, I was right on the bumper of the leader. My setup had worked perfectly, as I was running 3-5 MPH faster than everyone else on the Road Course front stretch. In fact, I caught a glimpse of my speedometer that read "198 MPH" as we were going past the grid on the Road Course part.

We by-passed the first chicane on the roadcourse section, and got into the long bend (Sorry, I don't know corner names). The guy right behind me forgot to let off the gas just a little bit, and hit the sand trap. Meanwhile, I was still trying to pass for 1st place.

I hit the brakes a full second before the guy in front of me did, and this turned out to be the move of the race. I saw the guy go flying into the gravel trap, while I slowly navigated the chicane near the northwest corner of the track.

He was the last I would see of my competition. I won the race by a margin of 26 seconds.

So, yes, online is a bit too easy for me. If anyone has any more framerate tips, please post them here!

Thanks for your help so far, guys!

eaglefan9727

28 April 07, 03:46

Congrats on your purchase of Rfactor. I gotta admit that since I bought the game about a week and a half ago. I am enjoying to its fullest.

Some of the tracks are amazing. Although, There are still a number of tracks (mainly street circuits) that I would like to see released for Rfactor. Hopefully down the road, Those tracks that I would love to see be done for Rfactor.

As for the framerates, I am not sure how to get better framerates to be honest with you. I get decent FPS on most tracks. Of course, It could always be better. Out of the 60 or so tracks I have tried, Ive really only had a problem with one track on the framerates and that track is called Macau until I found someone who did another cam file for the track which cut down the cam angles from 34 to 19. It wasnt much of a diffrence, But it did give me about 3 to 5 extra framerates per second on that track which made a big diffrence on my end. I think that might be a way of helping out on the FPS rate on some tracks. Of course, I dont know how to change CAM files as of yet, But if it works on the Macau track. I am guessing it would work on other tracks as well.

Once again, Congrats again and I have to say that I consider this to be one of the best racing sims out there these days.

snowy

28 April 07, 08:45

Could you post some system details and the settings you are using, with comparisoms to GTR2, as much detail as possible plus description of how and when your framerates drop off.

As a general rule reducing shadows and special effects is the most effective way to conserve fps and still maintain a good visual experience. Driving on the bonnet cam gives more fps as does reducing number of opponents or their detail.

If you have a dual processor enable dual processor by adding +fullproc to your shortcut command line. rFactor does have some issues with supporting dualprocessor but I haven't encountered any adverse effects only good ones.

boggyjr

29 April 07, 05:23

Okay, I have to go to bed right now, so I'll post system specs and that stuff in the morning...

Anyways, here's a clip of me driving at Monaco (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iNMucUNxvI). Yes, it has a few errors, and the quality is a bit bad, but oh well...

eaglefan9727

29 April 07, 06:16

Framerates look OK to me on the Monaco track. I even think you get a little better framerates than me to be real honest with you.

snowy

29 April 07, 11:12

That was Monaco, so it's going to be a bit of a hit on frame rates but as eaglefan says the frame rate actually looks acceptable. Correct me if I'm wrong but I guess you're probably having the big hit on frame rates at the start of the race. And if I'm not mistaken if or when you do a quick restart your system performs a lot better. I don't know what the solution to this problem is or what it is caused by, however restarting the race once or twice usually brings my system into a good fps bandwidth. It is sort of a mod specific problem, I hardly get it with any tintops only two or three F1 mods.

eaglefan9727

29 April 07, 14:33

Also, Another thing that needs to be noted that is when you record a movie from any game. The framerates are going to slighty go down.

For exsample, I could be watching a replay of Monaco in Rfactor without recording and I would get framerates at about 30 plus. If I was recording the movie with fraps, The framerates would drop down to about 20 FRPS or so.

I am posting my movie of a lap around Vancouver right now. You will be able to see that the FPS rate isnt that good when I recorded a movie at Vancouver and Vancouver is like Monaco. Pretty detailed track.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=BfaW4MJyB0I

Now, If I wasnt recording the movie. I wouldnt have that slight FPS problem that you can clearly see in the movie. This is why I stated that the framerates looked OK with me on your PC with Monaco.

boggyjr

29 April 07, 17:30

morning_wood

29 April 07, 17:42

Since your new, and are making video demos, you might like this tip
(and avoid fraps altogether ):

Replays may be exported in your favorite codec, XVID and DIVX.
As well you can pre-adjust a few other parameters.

look for this line in your .plr file
-------------------------------
[ Miscellaneous ]
Key Repeat Rate="1"
AVI export width="800"
AVI export height="600"
AVI export framerate="30.00000"
AVI export quality="95.00000"
AVI compressor fourcc="xvid" // <----------- Changes compression algorithm
---------------------------------------

use "xvid" or "divx" if you have these codecs installed on your system

eaglefan9727

29 April 07, 17:50

Well, I'm talking not when recording races, but when actually playing.

I always wanted to run the big fields of cars, such as the FIA Gt Pack with 70cars, and stuff like that. Heck, I can't even run a full 43 car NASCAR Grid....It gets really choppy at 16 cars....

OK, Here is one of my nascar videos that I did with a field of 43 at Daytona.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8CyDmqNWdV8

Are your framerates worse than this video?

boggyjr

29 April 07, 18:56

OK, Here is one of my nascar videos that I did with a field of 43 at Daytona.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8CyDmqNWdV8

Are your framerates worse than this video?

Way worse. Mine looks more like a powerpoint presentation rather than an actual game...

analogkid66

3 May 07, 03:01

...Well, a while ago, actually:)

I am enjoying it a lot more than GTR 2 and GT Legends. The amount of mods is unbelievable! I can race F1, NASCAR, and the FIA GT Championship all in the same game! Wow!

Online, however, is too easy for me. So, I usually race offline.

However, the frame rate isn't that good, and I would like to know how to get rFactor running better.

Any help is appreciated!

Online is too easy you say!?...Mmmmhh....have you raced in a League Race yet?...hehee, as im sure youll be in the minority when i tell you it NOT easy!, there's some Outstanding Sim Race Drivers out there that will make you eat dust! ;)

As for the Frame Rates, ive have no problems with rFactor, its much better on fps than other games!
Try turning Particles and Shadow Detail Down first, then maybe drop the Detail of the Cars down a notch...that should give a huge boost...

Hope that helps, cheers, analog. :cool:

frapp

3 May 07, 14:37

boggyjr

3 May 07, 22:35

Online is too easy you say!?...Mmmmhh....have you raced in a League Race yet?...hehee, as im sure youll be in the minority when i tell you it NOT easy!, there's some Outstanding Sim Race Drivers out there that will make you eat dust! ;)

As for the Frame Rates, ive have no problems with rFactor, its much better on fps than other games!
Try turning Particles and Shadow Detail Down first, then maybe drop the Detail of the Cars down a notch...that should give a huge boost...

Hope that helps, cheers, analog. :cool:

Well, i have the look behind button assigned to a button on my wheel, and I have shadows turned all the way off.

How do you turn down particles?

boggyjr

6 May 07, 05:28

Good News!

I've got rFactor working great now. I did some tweaking with an ATI utility, and it runs like a charm. Only thing is, I've got no shadows, and no special effects. Hopefully, I'll try to tweak those tomorrow to get where I like them.

I can finally run more than ten cars in a race! lol!

Thanks for all your help guys! I hope to sign up for a league soon!

NWRAP_Golly

6 May 07, 11:24

Hello All,

For a big boost turn mirrors off and assign one of your controller buttons for "Rear Look". But also, run your computer in diagnostic mode.
Start, run msconfig, choose services tab and make sure the following services are selected:

Windows Audio
DCOM Server Process
DHCP Client
Work Station
Plug and Play
Both Remote Procedure Calls
Universal Plug and Play
The first Windows Management Instrumentation

Make sure Diagnostic Startup is selected in the "Startup Selection" field, click
apply, click OK, restart your confuser and run game. If you use "rF Ignition" or some other launcher; you can start the launcher, open task manager and turn off explore. Now you are running with the minimum "horse power" drag on your system.

I hope this helps,

FraPP!!!

Mate I need some help!, I got a A100 Toshiba lappy, with the 7300Go 512mb nvidia card, I can run Rfactor no probs on DX7 at about 70+ frames per second on a server. But my main question is because I have only 1gb ram in the sucker, I notice in my Task manager there are 51+ programmes running in the background !!!!! that cant be helping my ram.

Now i know you can select the "Name" tab to see whats running under my name so I can disable, but I cannot see any names, no systems names, only the .exe or whatever on the left. Is there a list of .exe's that have definitions so I can cross reference them to disable without killing my lappy haha. Or will the obove setup that you posted work for a laptop too.
I use a mouse no the touchpad if that helps, I have my momo attached to it too. Any help would be great bud.
:up:

boggyjr

7 May 07, 02:23

Well, now I'm in a bit of a pickle...

rFactor is working better, a lot better, after using an ATI Catalyist Control center, and using the "Normal" display setup section....

Out of the four choices (Performance, Quality, Max. Quality, Max. Performance), I got the game to run well with the Max. Quality setting. I still have shadows off, but I personally don't need them...

However, when I load a race, everything is fine. The car looks extremely sharp, and you can read the driver names and all of the fine sponsorship decals. The track also looks very well done.

When I start to pan around the car, turn out of the pits, look around, etc, all of the textures get blurry. The cars go from being crystal sharp, to looking like a 6-year old made the cars. Same thing with every other texture in the game.

Is there a fix for this? I don't have auto detail FPS on, so It shouldn't be doing this...

snowy

7 May 07, 10:12

I don't actually have any idea what could cause this but I will hazard a guess that it has something to do with the fact that you have 51 processes/programmes running whilst your gaming, or have you shut them all down?

I know it's a little late to reply to your previous post but I clocked it yesterday and didn't reply because I was a bit busy and I thought someone would give you a better answer than I could. However if you haven't come up with a really ingenious way of cutting down on your processes you need to go to run > type in: msconfig and press return. Then you need to go to startup tab and uncheck all the boxes except the essential ones which are different for every system. You probably want to keep anything to do with graphics card, anti virus, privacy and modem, stuff. All the other stuff can be unchecked. If you get really bold you can go to the services and uncheck a few things there but you need to be a bit more careful under that tab. There is a box to check at the bottom which allows you to see only non microsoft services. Tick that box and that might keep you from disabling something critical. It's a good idea to get Process View or Process Explorer both are free and give you a really good view of what proocesses are running and who they are running for and what resources they are eating up.

I have a pretty well sorted system nowadays but there are still around 35 processes running at any one time. The good thing is that they don't actually do very much they just sit there waiting or threatening to annoy me rather than actually annoying me. It's the one's that actually do things whilst your doing other things are the annoying ones and the ones you need to root out. Unfortunately the most annoying program is likely to be your anti virus if you are using Norton, Macaffe or F Secure then I would seriously think about changing because I have had trouble with all three. They are made by mindless idiots who probably manufacture the virus' in the first place just to keep themselves busy. They certainly have no regard for the fact that you might actually want to use your computer! Sorry for the rant but I don't see why making my computer secure should mean that I can't use my computer for anything other than simple word processing!

NWRAP_Golly

7 May 07, 12:12

Haha! at your rant, nice. Thanks mate, will give it a go in the morning.

Cheers
;)

hoboholic

7 May 07, 12:21

lol, thats probobly the funniest thing ive heard today,
besides the line in my signature :P,(but ive heard that a few times anyway)

October

8 May 07, 02:37

Nice rant snowy!

I wish someone would design a shell plugin that let you have two (or more) settings... GAMING and whatever else! You could configure the gaming deal to cut back services, etc. and even specify which games. Then when the app detected a game startup it would automagically trim back all the stupid stuff until you quit playing.

Zoomie

8 May 07, 02:59

October

8 May 07, 12:24

fsautostart 1.1 (http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/System-Tweak/FSAutoStart.shtml)

:up:

Perfect! I haven't tried it yet but the description is right on. Thanks Zoomie! :)

analogkid66

8 May 07, 18:15

Well, now I'm in a bit of a pickle...

When I start to pan around the car, turn out of the pits, look around, etc, all of the textures get blurry. The cars go from being crystal sharp, to looking like a 6-year old made the cars. Same thing with every other texture in the game.

Is there a fix for this? I don't have auto detail FPS on, so It shouldn't be doing this...

Its the MIP Mapping used for the DDS Textures, when a Modder is building a track or car he or she can set the Point close to the player Camera, how far the distance will be drawn before it reverts to a smaller texture (The Mip Map).

I have found the same problem in a few mods, where the Map is reduced in size way to close to the Camera, and so you end up with a Horrible Blur, instead of a crisp clean Texture.

Maybe setting the Texture Detail to Max, this will Force the DDS Textures to only show the Hi-Rez one?....Give it a try..

Cheers, analog.

boggyjr

9 May 07, 03:01

Its the MIP Mapping used for the DDS Textures, when a Modder is building a track or car he or she can set the Point close to the player Camera, how far the distance will be drawn before it reverts to a smaller texture (The Mip Map).

I have found the same problem in a few mods, where the Map is reduced in size way to close to the Camera, and so you end up with a Horrible Blur, instead of a crisp clean Texture.

Maybe setting the Texture Detail to Max, this will Force the DDS Textures to only show the Hi-Rez one?....Give it a try..

Cheers, analog.

Thanks for the Mip Mapping suggestion. It worked well, and the textures don't go blurry anymore after I load the track.

However, the framerate is still choppy, paticuarly in the pits and when a lot of cars are shown. I tried changing the texture detail to High instead of Full and it worked a little bit. Is there any other change I could make with programs like ATI Catalyst that would improve the framerates?

Thanks!