Why is NASCAR such a resource hog?

I'm playing NASCAR Racing (in VGA) on a 486DX-33 with 8 MB RAM and a Paradise VL3000 true color local bus video card and the performance is nowhere near as good as I got with Indycar Racing when my machine only had 4 MB RAM and a Trident 8900C ISA bus video card. I have to turn almost all the graphics details to "Auto" just to get a decent frame rate and this is with 6 ahead/3 behind/2 heard which is about the least detail I want to run. How come Indycar could draw all the cars in the field (i.e., during the pace lap) and still get excellent frame rates with everything except grass and asphalt textures? It seems to have something to do with the sound (I'm using an SB16) - when I run NASCAR with the -f (FM sound) switch, the performance improves dramatically. I just don't understand it. And, how come the replays can show all the cars in the field and almost all of the graphics details smoothly and the same thing can't be done while driving? If anyone has any ideas on how I can change my computer/game setup to get better performance (short of buying a Pentium) or if anyone has an explanation for the difference between NASCAR and Indycar, please let me know. Thanks for the help, Kevin -- <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<*>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Kevin R. Patrick * Biochemical Measurements * RRRRRRR TTTTTTTT OOOOOO XX XX NIEHS Respiratory Toxicology Program * RR RR TT OO OO XX XX * RRRRRRR TT OO OO XXXX Opinions expressed above are mine only * <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<*>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

>I'm playing NASCAR Racing (in VGA) on a 486DX-33 with 8 MB RAM and a Paradise >VL3000 true color local bus video card and the performance is nowhere near as >good as I got with Indycar Racing when my machine only had 4 MB RAM and a >Trident 8900C ISA bus video card. I have to turn almost all the graphics >details to "Auto" just to get a decent frame rate and this is with 6 ahead/3 >behind/2 heard which is about the least detail I want to run. How come Indycar Make sure you don't turn the maximum frame rate higher than your CPU/video can actually handle - otherwise it'll really suck (even on my P90 PCI system) It Indycar never could draw teh entire field. It only had a short range in front of you, and performance was horrible i tight multi-car situations. cars in I have a SB AWE 32 - no difference if I turn it on or off. Pentium) or if don't waste your money on a Pentium to play NASCAR - you'll boot up the SVGA version adn wonder again: how on earth could they release such a slow game? The answer is simple: the stuff is written in a hurry and optimization of the code comes long after the bug fixes - too bad we haven't even started fixing the bugs, and once it runs ok, they don't care about performance anymore, because it'll run just fine on a P175... Peter

I dunno about you, but if I try this at Indy with grandstand texture turned on (even with a DX2-66) it's pretty hard to control the car even with a setup that turns out to be rock-solid otherwise. I don't call that "being able to do it". By the way, I'm talking about running by my self; if I try this with 32 other cars I'm *hosed*. FM sound is relatively simple to compute. The wavetable sound is, frankly, considerably more computationally complex. I think NASCAR is using some more sophsiticated and computationally complex texture mapping algorithms, and it may also be that the NASCAR shapes are computed with more meshpoints. I suspect this might be true because the stock cars have more visible smooth curves. Finally, I don't own NASCAR, but I'm pretty sure that it runs in 640x480 mode when you run VGA. IndyCar runs in 320x200 mode - that's less than 20% of the pixels to be computed every frame. It's true that there is less moving scenery visible out of the NASCAR windows than IndyCar, which is why the difference isn't 5x. One more difference is that NASCAR has about twice as much setup information on the car. The effect of all that setup inforamtion has to be recomputed every frame, or else it wouldn't be woth much. I don't know what the actual code looks like, but a reasonable rule of thumb is that 2x additional features means 3-4x additional computation, since a lot of the parameters can have interactions. All in all, it boils down to this: NASCAR is a much more sophisticated piece of software internally and externally. It is depending on the hardware price curve just like virtually all advanced softawre today. Try running Windows 3.1 on a 16 MHz 286 (good heavens consider NT on a 286). Peter and I don't see eye to eye on this, but I think Papyrus did an amazing job squeezing a lot of new stuff into the new package. On the other hand, I haven't spent my $$$ on it yet since it is WAY too buggy for my time - yet. -- Brian Wong Product Marketing Engineering 415-336-0082 Palo Alto, CA 94303

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> >I'm playing NASCAR Racing (in VGA) on a 486DX-33 with 8 MB RAM and a > don't waste your money on a Pentium to play NASCAR - you'll boot up the > SVGA > version adn wonder again: how on earth could they release such a slow > game? > The answer is simple: the stuff is written in a hurry and optimization of > the > code comes long after the bug fixes - too bad we haven't even started > fixing the bugs, and once it runs ok, they don't care about performance > anymore, because it'll run just fine on a P175... > Peter

The answer is not as simple as you make it. The Nascar cars have more polygons and bit mapped surfaces to draw, the digital sound mixing takes up to 20% of the processing power. This does not take into account the more complex AI, and one does not know if the algorithms used for car modelling are more involved than Indycar. I find your quick dismissal of performance to "don't care about per- formance" is not fair or accurate. There was great concern about per- formance, attempts were made to use the windows accelerator cards and windows low level graphic calls but it didn't prove to be effective. I think more time should have been taken prior to release, but I don't understand the business constraints Papyrus was under. Their commitment level seems high and I don't anticipate the "we know and we won't fix it" attitude taken with Indycar. I bought a Pentium to run Nascar and actually run the VGA version since frame rate is everything. The problem of these simulations is the fact that the main cpu has to do all the intense graphics processing rather than being able to off-load it to another processor, such as was done with the Atari 800 in 1981. The basic pc design was never conceived as a graphical/multimedia machine and we pay the price now.... Regards, Jeff Haas Beta tester of Nascar racing

writes: The thing is - WHY do they do that, if it is not possible to run it on any existing computer? Maybe they thought they could get it to work and just didn't have the time to finish it up properly? If you betatested NASCAR you will remember how crude the late betas were, and that they were far from the actual release - at that point, I highly doubt ANY optimization for fast performace was in the foreground of their efforts - heck, the cars crashed every other lap! It didn't prove effective - great - I only hope other software developers know a little more about what they are doing before they start a project like NASCAR! Why don't you anticipate it? Thy got your and my money already. They didn't even care about fixing Indycace once they heard many people would PAY them for a decent upgrade (no rewrite - just a massive fix). They just said NASCAR is mor flexible, and Indycar code is to inflexible. So I bought NASCAR hoping to see some progress. Yup - lots of new gizmos, but the thing pisses me off at least once or twice in a longer race with its idiotic pace car, bozo AI drivers doing impossible stunts, and as always the low performance of the SVGA version on a computer that clocks 83.3 on 3D-Bench! Don't blame it on the design of the machine - just don't have marketing people sell you a product based on false claims! I do too run the VGA version, and actually enjoy the game that way even with its bugs. What bothers me is the attitude of Papyrus to realse unfinished products. The bug in the Indianapolis track was the peak in that history - i still cannot believe they NEVER tested this thing, not even for a few minutes, and shipped the track withthe yellow flag bug! Compared to that, NASCAR is actually an improvement, but it just bugs me that I have to download fix after fix for something that could have been done right in only 4 more weeks (judging by the progress from last beta to final product) In the meantime I stick to Indycar, because it's up to version 1.05, giving me hours of bug free racing pleasure. NASCAR is still growing up, and in a few months I may pay more attention to it. you should have known better... Regards, Peter Burke Owner of an ftp site that logs downloads of 100MB+ of Papyrus bug fixes each month! With NASCAR I am hitting new utilization peaks ;-)

NASCAR is slower than IndyCar for 3 reasons: SVGA graphics, multichannel digitized sound, and a higher polygon count on the car. All but the last feature is optional. The code for the routines taking 90% of the time is written in optimized assembly. Windows accelerators will not help us transform points, determine drawing order, texture map polygons, or blit to the screen (at least faster then REP MOVSD). Rich Garcia

> pisses me off at least once or twice in a longer race with its idiotic > pace car, bozo AI drivers doing impossible stunts, and as always the > low performance of the SVGA version on a computer that clocks 83.3 on > 3D-Bench! 3dbench has absolutely nothing to do with SVGA performance. I bought a new video card that gave a 9% 3dbench preformance increase (41.6 to 45.4). Now... In WingCommander3 I got aprox 40% SVGA performance increase. From 13-15 SVGA fps up to 20-24 fps. Which brings up my problem. :-) Perhaps someone can help me decide on NASCAR? While I really enjoy INDYCAR, I am still very undecided on NASCAR. I only have a DX2, but I wanted to run NASCAR in SVGA. I also wanted car decals, skidmarks, & stuff like that. I can live without textured tracks, & grass. I didn't want plain looking vanilla cars running around either. It seems like EVERYONE has problems running SVGA on a DX2/66. Let alone with any type of detail. THe thing that REALLY bothers me, is that I'm sure someone has tried NASCAR on a lightning fast SVGA card. I still get the impression that SVGA performance sucks. And what does PAPYRUS say about this? We know they read this newsgroup. At least they have posted here in the past. Perhaps World Circuit 2 is the one I should wait for?

>In WingCommander3 I got aprox 40% SVGA performance increase. From 13-15 SVGA >fps up to 20-24 fps. Which brings up my problem. :-) Hmmm - why not? It sure does show me how fast my video card is when doing pretty common operations. Sure, it runs in 320x200, but it usually is a pretty good indicator for what your PC can do. And if that's all you get out of Wing Commander3, that's not gonna be enough... Greg - don't waste your money then. I have a Dell Pentium 90 with 32MB RAM, a Number 9GXE video card (PCI, top ranked for DOS video), and the game essentially stinks in what they call SVGA. I run with car decals on, but I turn off object texture, track texture, grass texture, horizon on some tracks, and I only see 6 cars ahead, 1 behind, hear 2. Iget at the most 15fps with fewer than the maximum cars in view, and only on some tracks where there aren't too many objects in constant change. Short tracks like Bristol need the most horsepower to run smooth. Even in 320x240, the game is noticably slower than Indycar, but I think if you buy it for the other improvements over Indycar, and for the fact that you may like NASCAR in itself, then go for it. I hate the way the cars handle - they are slow and much less responsive than an Indycar (which is probably very realistically modelled), and I really get dizzy doing 200 laps on a mini-oval. I love other aspects, like the sound of the game, as well as the much better in-cockpit displays of vehicle status, as well as the ability to tell the pits in advance what to do (although there should be more control over the "repair" option). The Pace Car still needs major bug fixes - otherwise I won't run Martinsville ever again - every other time I get there the entire field decides to park for a few minutes, while the pace car just lines up in back of the field. Lots of other minor bugs, too. I have problems running it on a pretty well equipped P90 in SVGA! Indycar on the other hand finally runs just right on that machine ;-) My P90 has what you'd call a lighning-fast "SVGA" card, although I am not quite sure what exactly you have in mind with that term, as you dismiss the one benchmark that all the IWCC NASCAR players in Tony John's NASCAR league use to measure if their machine is up to the task.

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> >In WingCommander3 I got aprox 40% SVGA performance increase. From 13-15 > SVGA > >fps up to 20-24 fps. Which brings up my problem. :-) > Hmmm - why not? It sure does show me how fast my video card is when doing > pretty common operations. Sure, it runs in 320x200, but it usually is a > pretty good indicator for what your PC can do. And if that's all you get > out of Wing Commander3, that's not gonna be enough...

1) WingCommander3 is 640x480x256 SVGA. 24SVGA fps out of this game is a BIG DEAL of sorts. 2) 3dbench *OLNY* accurately measures 300x200x256 VGA performance. 3dbench scores tell you absolutely nothing about SVGA performance. A friend gets a 47.6 3dbench score. I get 45.4. We both have DX2/66's. In WC3, he gets 13-15 SVGA frames per second, while I get 24. Why? My so-called lightnin fast video card blows his away in SVGA. But, he gets higher 3dbench scores! This is probably because he has the BIOS tweaked, or has a better motherboard. Bottom line, is that it is a mistake to take 3dbench numbers, and expect to extrapolate SVGA performance. It isn't that simple. I don't dismiss 3dbench at all. It is a fine benchmark for VGA. It won't tell you much about SVGA though. I have data :-)

I am running a Pent 90 with Diamond 64bit PCI and get 3 d bench of 83.1. I do not find the frame rate acceptable for SVGA in Nascar when running any kind of sizable field. In the IWCC racing series we are running full fields. To me frame rate is everything. I run VGA with the digital sounds turned off and set my minimum frame rate to 25. This works really great and I get very good car feel. IT was the same as when I first got World Circuit and had to run with a frame rate of about 17. When I upgraded and was able to run at max frame rate (about 25+ as I remember) I found that I almost could invariably keep from spinning since I could "catch the car". (this was with steering assistance of course). I don't think there is a machine out right now that runs Nascar with a full field, with good detail AND an acceptable frame rate for super VGA. It may run ok with no details or few cars but when the action gets heavy, the frame rate (and your control) goes to heck. I am too bad a driver to afford that :) I don't think a DX2 really has enough power to run the VGA version at a level that I find acceptable. I had one and ended up buying the P5 to run the game. Jeff Haas

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>>In WingCommander3 I got aprox 40% SVGA performance increase. From 13-15 >SVGA >>fps up to 20-24 fps. Which brings up my problem. :-) >Hmmm - why not? It sure does show me how fast my video card is when doing >pretty common operations. Sure, it runs in 320x200, but it usually is a >pretty good indicator for what your PC can do. And if that's all you get >out of Wing Commander3, that's not gonna be enough...

Hi, I was reading about the previous comments on performance of Nascar on an P90. I am running Nascar on a P90 TK-IDM motherboard with 16mb of RAM, ATI Graphics Expression PCI SVGA, Adaptec SCSI host adapter. I run with full detail turned on in SVGA mode, with the exception of Grass Texture and Road texture. I find it runs very smooth. I would check the CMOS settings on your board, I have just a clone, and have no problems. If cache memory figures in on the performance, my board has 512k. I have raced Nascar on a 486DX2-66 MHz machine. It runs fine in 320 x 200, which is all that Indy Car was. In 640 x 480 SVGA, give it up... Way too rocky... Craig. BTW: I have not heard any music in the menus, or during racing. I can only hear the announcer at the beginging of the game...

writes: settings on What do you mean but "smooth"? FPS would be something I'd like to hear. Anything less than 15fps may still look smooth, but for a competitive driver it may not be good enough. I prefer to run in VGA at 25fps over a "choppy" 12fps in SVGA anytime! A good looking game is not necessarily a good enough simulator, and that is what NASCAR is supposed to be in the first place, I thought. I can control the car in VGA MUCH better than in SVGA, although one "could" play it without road and grass texture, except you'd be one of the back markers due to lack of car control...