in GPL on some computers. Here's a summary of things to try which
should help with your frame rate:
1. In graphics, set Mirrors to Cars and turn off car textures. Drawing
all the polygons and painting all the textures in the mirrors is very
expensive, particularly on Voodoo cards, which have seperate frame and
texture buffers.
2. Turn off anti-aliasing and all lighting effects.
3. Set your resolution to 640x480 or below.
I always do all of the above on any machine less than a P2-350.
4. Run with no more than 5 to 8 AI cars.
5. Turn off special effects, particularly skid marks, which are very
expensive.
6. Move the detail bias slider to the left.
7. Turn off all***pit detail and beveled tires.
8. Start cutting other textures, starting with the least important, such
as clouds.
Note that none of this will help if you are running on a Pentium Classic
with no L2 cache. You've got to have L2 cache (or a Celeron) for GPL to
run well.
I believe that the most cost-effective hardware upgrades for Pentium
Classics and K6's are:
1. If you are running a 4 mb Rendition card or any Voodoo card, get an 8
mb Rendition 2200 card (i.e. a Hercules Thriller). At under $140, an 8
mb V2200 will almost certainly make a significant improvement because it
allows GPL to use CPU and texture memory more efficiently.
2. If your motherboard allows it, overclock the motherboard bus to 75
mhz or even higher if the machine will tolerate it. Reduce the clock
multiplier if necessary; a machine running at 75x3=225 will be more
efficient in GPL than the same machine running at 66x3.5=233 because it
will run the L2 cache faster.
3. Upgrade your CPU. Pentiums and AMD K-6's in the 233 to 266 range are
quite inexpensive these days.
On the other hand, if you can swing the $300-400 necessary to upgrade to
a Celeron and a Slot One motherboard (plus appropriate memory and case),
you will find that GPL is fantastic.
"What!!??" you say. "Spend $400 to play a $50 game!!??"
I don't look at it that way. GPL is not a game. It is not even a
racing simulation in the traditional sense. Instead, particularly when
you are racing against other humans, GPL is *real* racing, in simulated
cars, cars which are simulated so perfectly that, except for the lack of
G forces and tactile feedback, it's difficult to tell them apart from
the real thing.
I look at it like this: for a very small sum of money, I am getting
seven Grand Prix cars and unlimited access rights to eleven of the most
fabulous racing circuits ever built. For a third the cost of a single
weekend of racing 120 hp Formula cars in training series such as the
Skip Barber or Jim Russell series, I can race a 400 hp Grand Prix car
any time I want, at any of these fabulous circuits, for as long as I
want. Further, I can race with my friends, even if they live across the
continent or even on another continent.
That sounds like a really good deal to me!
See the Hardware FAQ on my new GPL site for more details on GPL and
hardware:
http://www.racesimcentral.net/~alison/gpl/
Alison