rec.autos.simulators

   I just spent some time in the Reading Room and found a tip for Morrowind
users.  It seems the performance takes a huge hit when entering towns.  The
magazine writer stated that the quickest way to INcrease performance was to
use a no-cd hack and bypass the SAFE DISK copy protection.
    Now most folks here know I loathe CP.  But this really chapped my arse.
I had always assumed copy protection was limited to booting the title, but
if it intrudes into game-play that is almost criminal.
    Would somebody with some free time like to benchmark a few sims to see
if this applies to simmers as well?  I think the EA titles use safe disk,
and ....Papy/Sierra is saddled with (guessing now) Secure Rom?  Does the
Copy Protection really drag down the whole game?
dave henrie

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Wow..
I don't see how it'd mess with performance of a sim though, unless it does a
disk-check every time you do a lap at a track or something weird like that.
But, there's no harm looking into it.

I always use NoCD cracks for games anyways, but I can always recopy the old
.exe to check for differences.

I wonder why the Morrowind game checks every time you enter a town? Maybe so
people don't install it, and boot it up, and then pass the disk around at
LAN's or something? If so, then that'd be reason enough for Nascar games to
do the exact same loading the track every time.

Mike
http://mikebeauchamp.com

Not sure if there is a connection here, but for some reason when trying to
play N2k2, when starting with the CD in my older HP 4x4 CDRW drive, N2k2
would lock up after a few minutes within the sim.  The mouse would still
work, but I would have to reboot to get out.  So, I made a CDClone image of
the disk, fired it up with Dameon Tools, and walaa, no more problems.  I
assume this has something to do with the drive and Secure Rom, but either
way this shouldn't be the case.

Hmmm... once you're at the track, nothing loads after that for the duration
of the race. Therefore, I doubt that using a no-CD patch would increase
performance during a race.

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Philippe "Philster" Sergerie

I've never noticed a frame rate difference in the driving games. I always
play them a few times with the cd before I install a no cd patch. Of course,
if the difference was small enough, I may not have noticed.  It could be
that some games draw from the cd when heavy graphics come up, like a town,
and the cd slows overall game performance.
When you clone a disk, it rereads spots on the original cd that may be
troublesome until it gets it right or gives up, so I suppose it's possible
in that case that a cloned image would perform better than the original cd
where code was loaded slightly wrong. In this same case, I suppose the no cd
patch would have the same effect.

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Slot

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