rec.autos.simulators

In an article for the Danish simracing site, simracing.dk, I have previously
explored the possibilities of making my Hercules Prophet 4500 work with GPL and
VROC. I did make it work, but there were a number of issues, notably:
* Transparent chat window (lap times et al visible at the same time)
* Missing buttons in replay window
* Occasional extreme stuttering in "In car view" in replay.
* Extreme stuttering using Latrency/Quality meters online.

Old article:
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Using Kyro Tools XP 1.0.2.86 (found at
http://www.racesimcentral.net/) I have
been fooling around with additional settings and have come up with fixes for
most. Until I have time to update the article completely, I have decided to post
the fixes here. Please let me know if they work for you as well as they did for
me.

To implement you should start by creating a "default" D3D game specific GPL
setting. Then copy the contents listed below to a new file called gpl.reg .  You
can run this file by  double-clicking it,- don't worry about the warning, it is
quite safe. (If you trust me that is. :-)  )

When you next run GPL, you should find that all but one of the issues mentioned
above have been fixed. I still haven't been able to completely fix the Online
Meters, but instead of running at 0.5 fps you can run GPL at 25 (or so) fps with
the meters enabled. I still leave them off. ;-) And incidentally as far as I can
tell, the sim runs a little bit faster, which I attribute to using compressed
textures and fast trilinear filtering.

I have 36 fps everywhere (*) running at 1024*768 with 80% detail bias using
jc-carste with show-off wheels.
(*) At the rear of a full Monaco AI grid the fps will drop to 32 for a couple of
second right after the start.

Cheers,
Jens

-----[ gpl.reg begins here]-----
REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\PowerVR\KYRO\Game Settings\D3D\GPL.EXE]
"UISettingType0"="0"
"UIDummySSControl"="2"
"EnableSceneSS"="1"
"DisableXSS"="1"
"DisableYSS"="0"
"NoVSYNCLock"="1"
"DoNotDisableFastTLF"="1"
"ISPHalfOffset"="0"
"DisableMidSceneRender"="1"
"ForceLargeTexToDXT1"="1"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\PowerVR\KYRO\Game Settings\D3D\GPL.EXE\defaults]
"UISettingType0"="0"
-----[ gpl.reg ends here]-----

My relevant core.ini settings:
[ Direct3D7 ]
D3DDevice = 0
TossHighestMip = 0
DoubleMirrorResWidth = 1
DoubleMirrorResHeight = 1
DirectMirrorRendering = 1
DisableZBuffer = 0
AlphaThreshold = 1
TransparentMipsDrawOrder = 1
TrilinearFiltering = 1
AnisotropicFiltering = 0
LODBias = -50

Thanks for posting Jens.  I'll update you on what it did for me :)

Jason.

--
Jason Monds
http://www.proracingclub.com - Pro Racing Club! (N4, GPL, Fun Run Sims)
http://www.racersdomain.com  - Race hosting.
(Please remove 'no extra spork' when replying)

OMG, your settings made a difference like night and day on my machine!
Just using the REGEDIT4 stuff I went from 36 to 18 fps but using the
core.ini changes put it back to 36 fps at 1024x768 2xFSAA.  It does drop to
~30 fps at the start when your deep in the pack, but it reaches 36 very
quickly -- certainly drivable AND I can read the font and see the replay
buttons!  Online should be maxed all the time because you can't see that
many other drivers.

Thank you, Jens.

Jason.

--
Jason Monds                             theCLAPPER in Kali
http://www.proracingclub.com - Pro Racing Club! (N4, GPL, Fun Run Sims)
http://www.racersdomain.com  - Race hosting.
(Remove 'no spork' when replying)

Yep, I replied to him via email that indeed it's a great fix.  I wouldn't
say a fix, it's more an unlocked door to the real secret of that video card
;-)

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