NetKar server

[obsolum]

I'm running the game offline at 25 - 30 fps. It's just enough to have a decent experience, but I wouldn't mind a few extra fps. I run the game at 1680*1050, no AA, shadows off, LOD at about 50% and high quality textures. My graphics card is a Geforce 8400 GS, the cheapest card I could find. I had a 7800 GTX before but that one died.

Haven't been able to really test it online yet as I was having issues with the server connection yesterday evening. I don't know if the fps will take a big hit from that, but if they do I won't be playing online. I could ask around if anyone I know has a "old" graphics card lying around. That's bound to be better than what I have now

LFS definitely runs better, but I must say that nKPro looks better than LFS, so it's only normal that it's heavier on the GPU.

[Doorman]

.....(new one eats it up and spits it out, going hurr hurr hurr while it does so)....

:roflmao::roflmao:

[obsolum]

I just fiddled with the video settings a bit more and I got a gain of about 5 to 10 FPS. It's above 30 most of the time now, with peaks of 40 sometimes. Here's a screenshot of my settings for reference, Mille. The thing that helped most was setting the shadow to simple. Turning the steering wheel off seemed to help a tiny bit as well. I know most of you never have the steering wheel on in driving games, but it just feels weird to me to be driving a car without a steering wheel, lol. Yes I know, I've got my actual steering wheel right in front of me on my desk but... whatever, I usually have it on in the game

[The Moose]

I'm not sure why an 8400 GS should perform so badly compared to a 6800 GS which is years older, but then again i haven't kept up with GPU's for years. (bad shader handling again i would guess if its a really cheap card)

 There is no way you will get good performance online with fps that low

Anything under 30fps and the physics engine starts to under perform and you start getting terrible steering lag as well.

 Really, if you can find a second hand 6800GS/GT on ebay or something similar then i would grab one, they must be dirt cheap.   If your processor is halfway decent then you should have no problem.

 i have an Athlon 64 3200+, 6800GS and a 1GB ram. all running on a £20 motherboard.
 
 I run nKPro at 1280x1024, Full textures, all shadows, max LOD, draw distance 1000.  4xAA 16xAF.  I have it locked at 50FPS where it stays always except for on the grid. At the back of a full grid it will drop under 30FPS (track dependant of course) but is back to 50 by the first corner usually.

[Doorman]

Take the tick out of 'Full screen'. It will still be full screen but you can alt-tab out with no black screen. Won't make any difference to your frame fate but I thought I'd mention it.

[Mille Sabords]

Thanks for the tips and the racing, I like the feel of this game.

I found a way to get decent FPS besides the above: 1650x1050@16 bits instead of 32 gives me a 20-25FPS boost for barely noticeable quality change.
It makes the games playable at 40-50FPS stable and does not hurt my eyes so much.
First experience ever with the full mode: excellent, makes cautious driver. Cost me the race though, 25 minutes to repair that little scratch (right after Doorman comments on keeping concentrated and so on;))... just could not wait that long, or I would have gotten drunk.
I will try some more of that, but at lower sound volume...

[Gnomie]

Seeing as it appears that there will be a long race every week (provided the issues get sorted out -- see the other thread), would it make sense to set the server to that week's combo a few days before the long race? Might be good to get some practice in online.

[obsolum]

I'm not sure why an 8400 GS should perform so badly compared to a 6800 GS which is years older, but then again i haven't kept up with GPU's for years. (bad shader handling again i would guess if its a really cheap card)

Yeah like I said, it was the absolute cheapest I could find. At the time I bought it I didn't have any way to set up my G25 so I couldn't play LFS anyway (which is the only thing I play on my pc) so I just needed a card for the very basic stuff.

There is no way you will get good performance online with fps that low

That's what I feared :sad:

Anything under 30fps and the physics engine starts to under perform and you start getting terrible steering lag as well.

Aha, so it's the low fps that's causing this? That was the very first thing I noticed: the steering lag. I was going to ask about that. I don't know if it really affects the actual steering (ie. the movement of the front wheels), though, I just noticed it because there was delay in the movement of the virtual steering wheel. I do feel that the low fps are hindering me somewhat in the last tight chicane on Spa, for example, where they suffer a significant drop. I feel I could that one a lot faster if the FPS would be at say a constant 40 - 50.

Really, if you can find a second hand 6800GS/GT on ebay or something similar then i would grab one, they must be dirt cheap.   If your processor is halfway decent then you should have no problem.

My processor should be more than decent enough; it's a E6600 Core 2 Duo (2.4 ghz I believe it runs?) and I've got 2 GB of RAM so I'm not worried about those.

I run nKPro at 1280x1024, Full textures, all shadows, max LOD, draw distance 1000.  4xAA 16xAF.

I could try running the game at that resolution, but I don't know how it will look. I've got a widescreen monitor and I'm used to 1680*1050. I've got it set to no AA but funnily enough I find that everything looks very good. Then again, only thing I'm used to playing is LFS, not exactly revolutionary graphics there

[Mille Sabords]

Go try the same resolution 16 bits instead of 32 bits, it gave me an incredible boost for no noticeable loss. Worth a go!

[lovretta]

I'm running the game offline at 25 - 30 fps. It's just enough to have a decent experience, but I wouldn't mind a few extra fps. I run the game at 1680*1050, no AA, shadows off, LOD at about 50% and high quality textures. My graphics card is a Geforce 8400 GS, the cheapest card I could find. I had a 7800 GTX before but that one died.

Haven't been able to really test it online yet as I was having issues with the server connection yesterday evening. I don't know if the fps will take a big hit from that, but if they do I won't be playing online. I could ask around if anyone I know has a "old" graphics card lying around. That's bound to be better than what I have now

LFS definitely runs better, but I must say that nKPro looks better than LFS, so it's only normal that it's heavier on the GPU.

Hmm according to what I have found out, that card BIG limitation is narrow 64bit memory bus. And because of it, running it at 1024*768 gives great results, while increasing over 1024 resolution it fps goes down really fast.
I suppose you have widescreen LCD with 1650 as native resolution, so you probably don't want to decrease resolution, because things won't look nice (lcd).
 
You can try overclocking it a bit, seems pretty "good" oc stuff:
http://vr-zone.com/articles/point-of-view-geforce-8400gs-overclocking-/5133-4.html?doc=5133

You may go extreme:
http://www.madshrimps.be/printhow.php?howtoID=76

[obsolum]

Go try the same resolution 16 bits instead of 32 bits, it gave me an incredible boost for no noticeable loss. Worth a go!

Just tried it. I didn't notice any real "loss" in quality, but it didn't improve my framerates at all either. They were exactly the same as when I run it on 32 bits

Thanks for the tip, though

[obsolum]

I see the track was changed to Aviano Intermediate 2, so I did a few test laps with the base setup. The FPS on this track are significantly higher than on Spa. Easily 50+ fps for the most part of the track, whereas on Spa I'd only get about 38-39 maximum, and below 30 on certain parts of the track. So good news for me. I'll attempt joining the server when I see some people on to see how well it runs then.

Oh btw, if anyone has a setup for this track I'd be very grateful if I could try it The Wagenvoort setup site doesn't seem to have any sets for this combo.

[Doorman]

You could do worse than visiting HERE. LastPlace Racing. El Moose and his team mates turn out some very usable sets.
A tip for what it's worth, nKP setups include the personal preferences of the view (seat height etc.) and FF feel. For example The Moose seems to like a low ff gain(0.900) whereas I prefer an ff gain of 1.700 and ff damping and friction set to 0%. Other sets I've tried had the virtual mirror on! When I first saw that I wondered , how the hell did I turn that on?
2c spent.

[obsolum]

Thanks. Yeah I noticed that the setups include the FOV and such. Those are the first things I change. I don't really have a "fixed" value for ff gain, though. Haven't really played around with that, either. Am I right in thinking that that just changes the "strength" of the FFB? I.e. with a higher value you'll have to use more force to turn and hold the wheel than with a lower value?

[Doorman]

Haven't really played around with that, either. Am I right in thinking that that just changes the "strength" of the FFB? I.e. with a higher value you'll have to use more force to turn and hold the wheel than with a lower value?

Yep.