rec.autos.simulators

I downloaded it yesterday and it definitely improved my frame rate in
Indycar II. I currently use a Pentium 100 with an ATI Mach64 and
UniVBE 5.1a would not work at all. Now I can turn on all track objects
and car details.

download it at:
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Apparently, this driver still requires a fast CPU.  Mine is a 486DX280.
My video card is a Number Nine 9FX Motion 771.  Nice card, improvement
in Windows was astounding, but Papyrus probably didn't write the code to
take advantage of fast video cards.

For what it's worth this is what I get.  In practice, practice mind you,
I can get 18 frames/sec with all textures off except car textures.  I
display 10 cars ahead of me.  Sounds great, well it was short lived.
When you start a race from the back of the pack, like I usually do, it
immediately turns the car textures back off, indicating that it cannot
do 18 with them on.  I reduced the number of cars ahead of me down to 6,
same thing happened.  Reduced the minimum frame rate back to 16, same
thing happened.  At that point, I quit.  Because the most improvement I
would be getting is 1 frame/second since I was already used to getting
14.

It would be nice if Papyrus could tell us if we're wasting our time.  If
Papyrus doesn't let the video card do any of the work then we are
wasting our time.  Maybe NCR 2.0 will be different.

David Martin

                       Ken

Thanks for any help,

John

--
John C. McCanless
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of ***ia

Rick Genter
Technical Lead, IndyCar Racing II
Sierra On-Line, Inc.

|> >
|> > I downloaded it yesterday and it definitely improved my frame rate in
|> > Indycar II. I currently use a Pentium 100 with an ATI Mach64 and
|> > UniVBE 5.1a would not work at all. Now I can turn on all track objects
|> > and car details.
|> >
|> > download it at:
|> > http://www.racesimcentral.net/
|>
|> Do you mean the "Display Doctor 5.2". It just doesn't sound like what
|> you mean.
|> could you point me in the right direction?
|> thanks.

Display Doctor 5.2 ~is~ UniVBE 5.2.  Read the homepage carefully.

Regards.


Mail Station 4313,         On the Information SuperHighway, I'm the guy with a
POBox 64942                hat driving 50 in the fast lane with my blinker on
St Paul, MN 55164-0942     and my seatbelt*** out the door making sparks.

TKS

: >
: >Maybe this is a dumb question, but I'm not sure I'm using the new  
driver
: >correctly with ICR2.  Right now I have uninstalled the UNIVBE 5.1a that
: >came with ICR2, and before I run the game I install the new UNIVBE 5.2
: >from the prompt.  Is this the way to go, or am I supposed to be able to
: >use ICR2's "Install UNIVBE Driver" setup option with the new UNIVBE?  I
: >ask because I'm currently seeing no difference in framerate with the  
new
: >UNIVBE.  I have a Pentium Overdrive 83MHz and Diamond Viper VLB 2Meg.
: >
: >Thanks for any help,
: >
: >John
:
: I second that request...especially since I didn't notice any vast
: improvements, either, but that could be because 5.1a and 5.2 are
: similar in the way they run with ICR2.
:
: TKS

Well, from what I can make out, the massive improvement most of us saw  
with UNIVBE5.1a and the UNIVBE that came with IndycarII was due to their  
use of VBE2.0, which allows for 32-bit protected mode operation.  Most of  
our previous VBE BIOSes were VBE 1.x, so our games were having to "thunk"  
down to 16-bit every time they wanted to use a VBE routine.

It looks like the main difference between UNIVBE 5.2 (or, as SciTech call  
it now, Screen Doctor) and 5.1a is support for more cards and all the  
Windows things.  It also adds support for "accelerator functions" but at  
the moment I think it only supports those on the Mach64 card.

Those of us already using a VBE2.0 BIOS probably won't see such a huge  
improvement until 64-bit processors come along, along with a VBE standard  
that allows 64-bit protected mode operation ... maybe this is what's  
holding up GP2? ;-)

James

--
James Bevan

NeXTMail & MIME welcome

However, having finished whining, the 5.2 is a significant improvement
over the 5.1.  I'm able to turn on several more levels of detail now
with the same frame rate...

 >
 >However, having finished whining, the 5.2 is a significant improvement
 >over the 5.1.  I'm able to turn on several more levels of detail now
 >with the same frame rate...
 >

Well, I don't see how to upgrade to 5.2 for ICR2.  I copied the UNIVBE.DRV
file into the ICR2 directory and now I get library version mismatch errors
when I start ICR2.  How do you get ICR2 to use the new driver?

Clark

_________________________________
"Have you seen Yobi anywhere?"

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jwen/

I did as another individual recommended: Start setup in your IndycarII
directory and disable the univbe support. Then run the new univbe before
you start Indycar. I tried that and I do see some improvement over the
5.1 version.

Jeff