rec.autos.simulators

Last night I installed XP.  Today I installed N4, carset, wheel, etc.
Configured graphics, as before with Win2K, for D3D T&L at 800x600x16.  These
are my results.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, as I would
*prefer* to run it in D3D.

- Steering wheel randomly flashes (in the car)
- Mirror is solid black, only occasionally does it quickly flash the actual
image
- Most of the time, after about 5 laps, it will either: (1) "strobe" the
***pit on and off at a very high rate, (2) freeze the image, but keep the
sound going, or (3) go into "stoned" color mode (lol), showing an orange
"static-like" image of the textures.  All the above usually result in being
thrown back to the desktop with an "unexpectedly quit" message.

Now that I have my Internet access back, while I'm waiting for any
suggestions, I'll see about getting an XP OpenGL refresh rate fix.  Hmm.

Please help!

Athlon 1GHz
Asus A7V
256MB PC133
3D Prophet II MX (NVIDIA GeForce2 MX) with NVIDIA Detonator4 Reference
drivers
Sound Blaster Live! with Creative XP drivers

- John P. Wilson

  Doesn't N4/Nvidia perform better in opengl rather than D3d?  Does XP not
run opengl?  Curious now..
dave henrie

your problem expresses it self in so many symptoms that it is difficult to
guess what's actually happening. Some of the symptoms indicate reasons that
have nothing to do with the other symptoms shown. But since it all happens
after installing XP, I'd assume the graphics card is not defective.

It often helps to just use another driver for the GF. 22.80 is the currently
highest number available. Other good ones in my experience are 21.81, 21.83
or 21.85. Very compatible ones are the 12.90, but I don't know how the run
under XP.

N4 supports OpenGL and looks better and runs faster under OpenGL than under
D3D. Nvidia drivers all come with OpenGL support, so you should be able to
immediately switch to OpenGL. To do so, just call N4's Configuration tool
again.

Other reasons for these screen antics you're seeing apart from some
mechanical problem in the computer - some cable or other connection not
being ok - could be the AGP driving values set in your motherboard's BIOS
(worst case) or simply with a setting in your Graphics card drivers.

Try disabling Anisotrophy for example. This for a friend of mine cured a
problem with black blocks instead of lights in FS2002.

If the image freezes but the sound keeps going, that is IMHO a clear
indication that the graphics card has crashed or the CPU is***. If you
can still hear acceleration when hitting the throttle or braking sounds when
braking, it's the graphics card only.

In this case, it could be that either your card is defective, or you're
overclocking it too much, or it's again the AGP driving values in the BIOS.
Raising the AGP voltage might help also, against a crashing graphics card.

But, considering consequences and how difficult it is to make some of the
changes possible, I'd suggest you first switch to OpenGL, and then play with
the settings of your drivers if you still have probs in OGL. Then, try
different drivers.

Good luck!

Achim

Not all the time. it seems system dependant. With my AMD 950 Athlon classic
D3D was much better than openGL with my GF2 GTS. Now that I have gone to a
AMD 1.4 with the same video card openGL is  better.

As far as the original problem goes I have heard that the new Creative
drivers have caused problems with some systems in the video department. I
have no idea what those problems are since I don't run a Creative card. I
just remeber reading that some where over the weekend.

MadDAWG

that's very interesting. Do you by any chance remember where you read that?

Because, after switching to an Audigy with of course latest drivers, I had a
strange prob during _startup_ of games, in that they seemed to hang forever
in the startup screen. The system in that state didn't even bring up the
tast manager with ctrl-alt-del. After an inordinate amount of time with a
lot of erratic key hitting trying to open up some requestor window or
something, the switch was often made and I got into the main menu of the
game.

I have experimented with AGP driving values (currently on F9FF on an A7M266
BIOS 1005) , but I've also re-installed the default installation state in
which the Audigy left the system, i.e. I'm starting for example their disk
detection utility and also their Creative logo at startup. The reasoning
being, maybe the Audigy or latest drivers need to be initialized in some way
to work properly, or they need some information from the disk detector
before they work properly and if they don't get that, they wait for it
forever.

Unfortunately, I made the changes to the driving values and re-implementing
the default startup behaviour at the same time, so I don't know for sure
which one did the trick, but apparently, currently it's working fine - Knock
on wood - and since I've had to experiment for so long to get it to run well
I am now reluctant to continue experimenting. I'll maybe take another image
and then continue next weekend.

I'd really like to see if others have similar experiences as myself.

Achim

MadDAWG

thanks for the info anyway!

BTW, don't be too glad you got the Philips - the Audigy is truly and
honestly a new dimension of soundcards when it comes to sound quality. It's
unbelievable how much better the Audigy sounds over my old SBLive 5.1 ;-)

Achim

--

Fester

MadDAWG

Apparently, it's a D3D bug in the newest sets of NVIDIA drivers.  I
installed the refresh rate fix (no 60Hz for me...) and am running it in
OpenGL, which *does* look better and *does* run better than D3D on my
system.  Same framerates in 32-bit OGL versus 16-bit D3D...wow.

Thanks for the suggestions!

- John P. Wilson

A buddy of mine crashes in d3d in everything he tries now that he has went
to XP. And he has tried both ATI 8500 and GF3 Ti500.

MadDAWG

So what will the Audigy give me that my Santa Cruz doesn't have?

I really don't know that STP, as I don't have a Santa Cruz.

The reason why _I_ am so impressed with the Audigy is the sound quality,
which is on a level with the best HiFi stereo equipment I've heard. It's
amazing what this card even makes out of my home-produced Nascar 4 engine
sounds. And recordings of my old practice room tapes also sound much better
than with the SBLive.

As for games, the Audigy seems for example to have a noise reduction circuit
that kicks in when the volume reduces. I.e., when the throttle is reduced
and you compare the sound closely to what it sounds like under full
throttle, I am sure there's a noise reduction circuit at work.

Another strong point is apparently the very low CPU load it creates. A
review I read said that the Audigy produces even considerably less CPU load
under EAX than the SBLive which already was pretty good in this department,
according to what I know.

If you understand German, you may want to have a look at
http://www.heise.de/ct

This mag did the review. But I don't know if they have the review online, or
only in their printed mag.

Achim

I don't understand German. But, I have heard it's a pretty good card. My SC
sounds better than the SB Live! too so was just wondering if it's better
than the SC or not.