rec.autos.simulators

Hello,

I've seen some fairly bad comments here in this ng regarding
performance of ICR2 for Win95.... most lead me to believe that
it's a problem with your setup, rather then the game itself.

Overall, the game will have a lower framerate then the DOS
version, but only by about 1-3fps... If you are getting worse
performance then this, then something else is up. Following are
possible reason/solutions:

1) Too much paging is taking place, which causes pauses in
the game. To reduce paging to it's minimum, DO NOT RUN
ANY OTHER APPS OTHER THEN ICR2. If you run other
apps, Win95 will give them some processing time which can
causes pauses and paging.

There is also a problem w/ performance for those systems which
have dial-up networking setup. Even if you are not connected to
a service, dial-up networking will poll your system every several
minutes (poll what, I don't know...) which will cause a slight delay
in game play.

Also, decreasing your replay size will help minimize your paging.
You should have your replay set somewhere in the green zone,
the smaller the better...

And I can not stress enough about closing all other apps before
running ICR2...

2) Frame rate is poor. It's possible that the microsoft DirectX
drivers installed are not the best for your video card. Check to see
if your video card manufacture produces their own DirectX drivers.
If so, use them. If performance is still poor, you can turn DirectDraw
off via the Options/Graphics/Adv Graphics dialog box. You can
also turn DirectSound off in a similar way via the Options/Sound
dialog box.

3) Make sure you have enough free disk space for your swap
file. If you don't, then you'll run out of virtual memory and Win95
doesn't run very well w/o it!!! I'd say you'd want at least 100MB
of free disk space available for your swap file.

4) There is a known pause in the game, about 1 minute or so
into racing. This is Win95 behavior and can't be helped. This
should be the only noticeable pause in the game.

Here at Papyrus, the Win95 version had a lot of testing. You should
expect a very playable game, with the only drawback of a slightly
slower frame rate (1-3fps) and that 1 pause mentioned above.
If you are getting worse performance, then something else is going
on...

For best performance, you should have a P60 min, 16MB ram min,
and DirectX drivers supplied by your video card manufacturer.

Most of the above hints can be found in the release notes file,
README.DOC, included with the CD. (which may also contain
other interesting things...)

Hope you have fun!

/scott

--
Scott Marison, Software Engineer
Sierra On-Line/Papyrus Division

Oh, one more thing... the Win95/Mac versions of ICR2 do
not have improved graphics/sounds/engine/etc...

This is ICR2, not ICR3. The Win95/Mac versions do have
a new UI and take advantage of features that Win95/Mac
have (printing, better paintshop, etc.) but the basic game
is still the same... just wanted to make this clear as there
seemed to be some confusion on this issue.

/scott
--
Scott Marison, Software Engineer
Sierra On-Line/Papyrus Division

[suggestions deleted]

Well, I don't have ICR2 yet, but I do run the Win95 versions of Mech2 and
Warbirds, and have played around a (very) little with the SDK, so I have
some experience with DirectDraw apps.  For me, the biggest cause of delays
during a DDraw game (every 2-3 seconds), are CD-Rom reads.  I have 2
CD-Roms, and I'm often playing an Audio CD in one of them.  Any time my
system hits the CD (reading at the hardware interrupt level, it seems),
DirectDraw freezes for just a moment.

Two possible fixes:
1) make sure you're not running any CD audio apps like CD-Player or FlexiCD

2) disable Auto-Insert notifications for CD-Roms from the "System" applet
in the control panel

I've gotten away without doing #2, but others have had to.

Hope this helps,
John

     <<There is also a problem w/ performance for those systems which
have dial-up networking setup. Even if you are not connected to a
service, dial-up networking will poll your system every several minutes
(poll what, I don't know...) which will cause a slight delay in game
play.>>

     Uhhhh... wouldn't that be pretty much all of us here? Except for
those here posting from Online Services, those of us using ISP's do just
that... dial into a network. Why weren't we made aware of this issue
before? After all... it's one thing we almost *all* have in common. This
is just getting from bad to worse...
     Nick
____________________________________________________________________

#6 (will he be #28 in '97?) and #94 in the *real* quest for the Cup!
My home away from home...  http://www.mindspring.com/~ntotoro/
____________________________________________________________________

Thanks for the tips.  I re-installed WIn95 from scratch read not over
an existing installation on a P133 with 24 Meg of RAM, a PCI Diamond
Stealth Video 2 Meg VRAM, a Thrusty ACM card, a T2 and a Soundblaster
AWE32.  All pretty standard equipment.  I feel pretty hopeful that you
guys tested this same combination because again, these are VERY common
boards.  I tried the S3 drivers, the default ones that came with
DirectX and the Diamond GT drivers, as well as the latest SB drivers.
The Win95 version is STILL unacceptably choppy, beyond even what the
frame rate counter shows, but worse yet is the lags in the control.
Rick Genter suggested to me that the DirectInput stuff is less than
optimal.  Can you shed any light on this and what might be done about
it?  

Would it be fair to say there will really be no relief until the
Rendition version comes out?

Randy

I'm running a 7200/90, 32 Megs RAM, 256K L2 cache, 1 Meg VRAM and the sim
runs pretty smooth in low res with all details on, but slows down
considerably in high res unless I turn everything off, and I like watching
the trees whip by at Road America.:->

mario.

/scott
--
Scott Marison, Software Engineer
Sierra On-Line/Papyrus Division

: Oh, one more thing... the Win95/Mac versions of ICR2 do
: not have improved graphics/sounds/engine/etc...

Did the problem ATI Mach64 video card owners ever get fixed with univbe?
Does the DOS version still need to load univbe itself or can it benefit
from one loaded outside of the game?

The one reason I was looking foward to the Win96 version was that my
frame rate problems (I have an ATI Mach64) would get better.

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

:      Uhhhh... wouldn't that be pretty much all of us here? Except for
: those here posting from Online Services, those of us using ISP's do just
: that... dial into a network. Why weren't we made aware of this issue
: before? After all... it's one thing we almost *all* have in common. This
: is just getting from bad to worse...
:      Nick

I haven't looked into it yet, and am not sure it's possible...  Can one
setup Win95 with multiple users where on setup doesn't load the network
stuff?  I am afraid that this may not be possible, since this stuff
loads before the user logs in.

--
**************************** Michael E. Carver *************************
     Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./.  [-  < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

For your choppiness... how often? and is it going to the hard disk
during these events? set the replay size to the min... make sure no
other apps are running... I don't know what else to say. I have a P133
in work, 32 MB, and with all details on I get around 15fps avg. and I
feel it's very playable... Perhaps some of this is a matter of you
being use to the DOS version, while I started playing the Win95
version first... so some of the choppiness you describe just isn't
very noticible to me.

The delay in control input, I'm not sure about... We've never had a
comment like that from testing, either. (don't get me wrong, I'm not
saying you aren't experiencing it, rather I just don't have any idea
on that...) Rick's thoughts may be correct... i dunno.

well - i dunno... it seems most of the complaints are related to
choppiness due to paging or other Win95 activities... I don't
honestly know how the renditiion version would improve upon
that...

/scott

--
Scott Marison, Software Engineer
Sierra On-Line/Papyrus Division

If I have 24 Megs of RAM and Indy is the only app running, how much
paging should there be on Lap 1 of a Preseason Test?!

Not that I've noticed....Its hard to quantify...it just doesn't *look*
like its running at the indicated frame rate...just choppy...

What video board are you using? What sound card?

Well, at long beach I have to brake earlier everywhere and steer
'ahead of time'.   It was very frustrating because I *WANTED* to use
the Win95 interface.  I keep thinking I'm just a driver away from
happiness, but perhaps I'm just a Rendition away from Happiness.

Is the Rendition version going to have a DOS-based Rendition version
or Win95 only?

Randy

this is actually a good idea... I think hitting F8 when the message
"window 95 starting..." (or whatever it is) when intiallay booting
will bring up that boot menu where you can boot safe mode,
command line mode, etc. One of the options is boot w/o network.
I don't know if there is a way to make that process easier, but
you can try it that way to see if things improve...

(i know I'll be testing it...)

/scott

Sure - go into "Control Panel", choose "System" then peruse the
"Hardware Profiles" menu. This allows you to create several different
hardware configurations which you can select between.

As usual - have fun. I am NOT responsible for any damage anyone does
screwing around with Win95's hardware profiles. It often doesn't like
it.... :)

Cheers!
John

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Given the current architecture of Win95, I think it's a mistake to try
and do a simulation on it. Now I have no complaints about IncycarII,
because the current version is available on both Win95 and DOS.

What really worries my is Nascar 2 and the NRL. It is a DOS game, so
it will work fine as a standalone game, but the Hawaii/NRL multi-user
service required you to run the game under Win95 ... which of course
means you'll get the same choppiness and uneven frame and I/O rates
people are now experienceing with ICR2/Win95 ... which of course for a
simulation, especially a multi-player simulation, will almost
certainly make the game unplayable.

If Papyrus is wise they will seriously reconsider hosting the NRL
software on Win95. They'd be far better off sticking with DOS until a
real-time OS suitable for simulations is available.

Joe

Ok, I think I have some good news for people who experience jerky
behavior w/ ICR2...

As you might know from a previous post of mine, Dial-up networking
can causes pauses in the game (which might be causing the jerkiness).
There is also a known pause about 1 minute into the game, it was
even noted in the README file.

Using a suggestion here, I created a new hardware config that
doesn't load the dial-up networking driver (which I think most Win95
systems load by default, so this will pretty much apply to all Win95
users.) What I found is that I didn't experience any jerkyiness or
pause in the game! Not even the 1 minute pause... so, this might
help a lot of those who complain about the Win95 version's
performance...

First, determine if you even need to do this... Goto the control panel
and double-click on the System icon. Select the Device Manger tab,
and check under Network apapters. If "Dial-Up Adapter" appears
listed, then you will need to do the following... otherwise, stop here
and read another news article.  ;-)

To create a non-network config:

1)  Goto control panel and double-click on system icon.
2) Click on "Hardware Profiles" tab.
3) Press "Copy" button and name the new profile to something
like "No Network" or "No Dial-Up Networking"
4) Click on the "Device Manger" tab
5) Click on "Network adapters" and then select "Dial-Up Adaptor"
6) Press the "Properties" button.
7) In the section titled "Device usage", you should now have 2 configs
listed. One called "Original Configuration" and the other "No Dial-Up
Networking" (or whatever you called the copy you made in step 3 above)
8) Make sure the "Original config" has a checkmark next to it, and
then make sure "No Dial-Up networking"  is NOT checked.
9) Hit OK.
10) Hit OK again.
11) Reboot. Windows, upon bootup, will ask which config to use. If you
are going to play ICR2/Win95 then select "No Dial-Up networking"...
otherwise select the "original config"

I hope this works for you!!! It seems to work better for me at least!

/scott

--
Scott Marison, Software Engineer
Sierra On-Line/Papyrus Division