rec.autos.simulators

This one could be listed under the "seen this before but I am ***ed
if I can find it again" department....

SVGA, all details but sky, everything non-textured in mirrors = 25.6fps.

occupancy about 70-80%.  I decided it was time to load up my saved
championship and do some practising with other cars in the track, ready
for some qualifying.  Went to Friday Practice, drove out of the pits
and....what's this.....occupancy still 70-80% but now the graphics
'look' choppy, the silky-smoothness has gone.  Left championship mode,
went to single race and practice to see if was just the other cars being
simulated and loo and behold - silky smooth graphics are back.

What gives ?  Why does my saved game 'look' choppy but running the race
outside of the saved game the graphics are smooth again ?

Now, not last week I read a post or something on a website (can't
remember which) that mentioned about GP2 doing funny things like this -
the actual frame rate displayed is sometimes not the one you have
selected - but I can't find it again.  Am I imagining that I saw this ?

It is difficult to describe the difference in frame rate, the occupancy
stays about the same (so the game time it is not slowed down) but it
looks like it's chucking out less frames than it was before.  Is there
something in the saved gamestate that could be affecting the frame rate
?  Is this the much rumoured (from MPS anyway) "using illegal game
modifiers can affect the performance of the simulator" problem ? ;-)

Please help me out of my insanity !

Thanks for any help/advice.

John

It's been a while since I spent those 800 hours in GP2 :o), but if I'm not
remembering this wrong GP2 saves the frame rate in saved games. Then when you
load the game you get the same frame rate as you had when you saved it no matter
what your current setting are. It's probably because the way the replay works in
GP2. GP2 resimulates a replay and it is implemented so that it saves the frame
rate at which it was simulated in the first place and when resimulated it has to
do it at the same frame rate. Try driving a hotlap at 8 fps and save it. Change
the fps to 25.6 and then view the hotlap, you'll see it will be resimulated at 8
fps. When you save a race and then load it you can resimulate the last 10
seconds, I guess that's why the fps is also saved and used again when you load
the game.

/Christer, hope this helps :o)