mod.
- Turn 'Other Vehicles Detail' down to 'Low'.
This doesn't actually make the cars look any worse when they're close to
you. It just makes them look a little less detailed when they're in the
distance. It's a very small sacrifice for the large leap in performance.
- Leave 'Image Quality' on 'High'.
Turning this down makes the textures look very ugly indeed and should be
considered a last resort for people running on oldish video hardware.
- Turn 'Shadow Detail' to 'High'. This is on 'Medium' by default.
On medium detail, you won't see any shadows for the AI vehicles and it will
look like they're floating above the track. Doesn't seem to have a big
impact on performance either.
- Turn 'Special Effects' to 'Low' or 'Off'
A little less smoke and dirt shouldn't matter too much. A lot of smoke and
dust in a large field can be a real frame-rate killer.
- Turn 'Vehicle Lighting' to 'Low'
This doesn't make a huge difference to the look of the game, but then again
it won't improve the frame rate that much either.
This is just a few of the options but these ones are the most important I
feel. Things like reducing the circuit detail can help on slow CPUs too but
that's self-explanatory.
Have fun!