F1RS (F1 Racing Simulation)

http://www.f1racingsim.com/faq.htm The Unofficial F1RS FAQ v1.00 copyright 1998, David Greene Please note: F1 Racing will not currently work with AMD K5 processors, or Direct 3D compatible video cards with less than 4mb. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Installation Issues I can't launch my installation, why? Which install size? Installer cannot detect a 3Dfx Card (Voodoo1 or Voodoo2) If you can't install the game on your hard drive: Cannot copy concretdom.wav Bad Installs? Error messages "GCD init error" "No D3D present in Direct Draw Enumerate" Cannot copy concretdom.wav "System out of memory" "error message ir41_32.dll" "Windows don't run in high color mode" (65,000 colors) "No blend, no stipple => no game". Hardware Issues My Cyrix processor doesn't work, why? The game doesn't work with a K5 processor. I have an AMD 5x86-P75. Normal Video Cards Direct3D video cards with less than 4mb Diamond Monster PCI Sound Card Riva 128 Diamond Stealth II (Rendition) Voodoo Rush Cards Voodoo 1 Cards Voodoo 2 Cards Upgrading from Voodoo1 to Voodoo2 If you have a combination Matrox/Monster cards: S3 Virge. Power VR. Graphical glitches under D3D. Controller Issues Configuring your Wheel in Win95 Calibrating your Wheel in Win95 Configuring your wheel in F1RS Adjusting the sensitivity Reducing the "Dead Zone" Technical Problems Importants issues that should be considered by anyone who has problems with F1RS The menus are very slow. Can't click load, save or configure buttons. Music Problems General sound effect problems. Unusual Engine sounds. Dolby Surround sound. Virtual Memory / Hard disk space problems. Virus Killer and TSR related problems. General Game Questions Monaco tunnel is too dark Track loading music Viewing Ghost Laps Unscheduled Pitstops Automatic/Manual Gearbox Car performance for human drivers Driving helps Using the telemetry Game Performance Questions My game runs slowly, what can I do? First lap slowdown Multiplayer Questions Can't select Split Screen mode. Is 2 player modem play possible? Is internet play possible? 3rd Party Addons and Carsets 98 Season Carsets About this FAQ The Author Disclaimer Other sources of information ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Installation Issues I can't launch my installation, why? This may be fixed by selecting an option in the Windows operating system, which will allow automatic launching from your CD-ROM. This option may have been deactivated. To reactivate it, go to Start Menu / Settings / Control Panel / System / Device Manager / CD-ROM Properties / Settings / Check the Auto Insert Notification box. Which install size? It is highly recommended that you install the maximum installation. This will prevent the "slow menu" problems and reduce track loading times. Installer cannot detect a 3Dfx Card (Voodoo1 or Voodoo2) If the F1RS install does not detect your 3DFX card, then you are probably using the 3DFX reference drivers or the very latest from Orchid. On installing these, a couple of files are missed out of your windows/system directory. Some software specifically uses these files to recognise the existence of a 3DFX card (including F1RS). The most straight forward solution is to put the files back in - this will not cause any problems or degrade the performance of the newer drivers, but will improve compatibility. The missing files are glide.dll and sst1init.dll. If you have these files lying around on your hard disk, just copy them back into your windows/system directory. If not, you can obtain them from http://www.ubisoft.co.uk/f1rs.zip If you can't install the game on your hard drive: 1. Certain problems can arise during installation if you change the installation directory or -- more specifically -- if you have changed the name of your hard drive. Installation only detects the C:\ hard drive. If you have changed the assigned directory for the installation, loading of saved files may not work. 2. During installation, there might be a copy error. Check that your CD-ROM drive is running under Windows and not under DOS. 3. When certain files can't be copied, there may be a problem with the CD-ROM's default. Cannot copy concretdom.wav This appears because you have outdated CD-ROM drivers that aren't fully compatible with Windows 95. Your PC is running the CD-ROM drive in MS-DOS compatibility mode which only allows 8.3 characters per file name. You'll need to get new drivers from the manufacturer. Bad Installs. If you ever have trouble reinstalling F1, try uninstalling the game manually before trying to reinstall. The two directories to remove are c:\ubisoft\f1rs\ (or whichever directory you chose during installation), and c:\windows\ubisoft\ Error Messages If you get an error message saying "GCD.init error " : * Check all your peripherals to ensure that they are installed correctly. * Make sure that there is at least 100 MB on your hard drive when the install is finished. * Set Virtual Memory to be managed by Windows. (check this by clicking "Start", "Settings", "Control-Panel", "System", "Performance", and "Virtual Memory") Manual settings may be incompatible. * Check if you have a standard Microsoft serial 2 button mouse driver installed under Windows 95. Certain more specific drivers (three button, etc.) have caused some problems. * If you have a blank screen: Make sure you have at least 100 MB available on your hard drive after installation is complete. * Put the Matrox in Slot 1 and the Diamond card in Slot 4 respectively. Check in your system configuration to see if Matrox and Monster use the same memory range. Switch off all the acceleration functions of the Matrox. "No D3D present in Direct Draw Enumerate". This error indicates that F1RS is not recognising the D3D capabilities of your video card. Again, this error can appear for one of 2 reasons: First, you may not in fact have a video card which is compatible with the Direct 3D standard. If you're not sure about this - then check with the manufacturer of your PC, or the supplier of the card. Many fine standard cards (such as the S3 Trio, and the Matrox Millenium 1) are not D3D compatible. As indicated in the requirements listed on the box, F1RS needs this. In this case you have 2 choices: Either buy a 4mb D3D compatible 3D accelerator card (we'd recommend something with the 3DFX chipset), or take the game back and try to get a refund. Secondly, if your PC does have a D3D compatible card, then the error indicates that your software drivers are too old for F1RS or Direct X 5.0 to recognise it's capabilities. The only solution is to obtain more recent drivers for the card. "Cannot copy concretdom.wav". This error appears during install if you have very old CD ROM drivers which aren't fully Windows 95 compatible. If this is the case, your PC will be running the drive in what is known as "MS-DOS compatibility mode", and as such will only recognise files on the CD which have file names complying to the old 8.3 character standard. Some of the files on the F1RS CD (including "concretdom.wav" use the extended Windows 95 filename format. To solve this, you should get new drivers from the manufacturer of your CD ROM. If you are PC proficient and know your way around your DOS config files, then one way of attempting to fix this problem without getting a new driver disk would be as follows: Try removing the DOS CD-ROM drivers from your autoexec.bat and config.sys. You can then reboot Windows in the hope that it will detect the drive and supply it's own drivers. This will not always work, and is not recommended for those who cannot reel of their entire DOS mscdex command line letter-for-letter with their eyes closed. "System out of memory". On a machine with a 3DFX card, this is most likely down to out of date Glide drivers. To solve this problem, an automatic installer for new Glide drivers is included on the F1 CD (in the directory 3DFX). One other reason for this message is that F1RS cannot read or recognise the Wsock32.dll file in your system. If you've installed some non-Microsoft Internet software on your system, this may have automatically replaced the Windows 95 Wsock32.dll file with its own version - this is most common with Demon Internet's Turnpike software. To verify this has occurred, check the file in the Windows\System folder. The original file is 65 kilobytes. If your Wsock32.dll file is not that size, then your original file was ... read more »

Michael E. Carver skrev i meddelandet I don't know whether it's "correct" to reply to a FAQ, but I would like to point out that to my knowledge it makes no sense to specify a *maximum* value for the swap file. Instead, specify a minimum value but leave the maximum value alone. That way, the swap file will never shrink below the minimum, but it can still grow larger if it *has* to. With a large minimum value, it will probably never grow larger, but there's no sense in forbidding it, should the need arise. --- Jon Petersson (http://user.tninet.se/~rdv654m/Jon.html) I support Sarah-K and the rasf1 cars (http://www.sarah.org/rasf1/)

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>Michael E. Carver skrev i meddelandet >> The first thing is to use a permanent Win95 swapfile. >> To change your swap file to a "permanent" value do this : >> 1. go to control panel, select system icon >> 2. select the performance tab >> 3. click on the virtual memory button >> 4. select let me specify my virtual memory settings >> 5. put 128mb as minimum and 130mb as maximum

Rather, you should put both values to same (min=max). But there is. If min != max, Win95 may start re-adjusting the size of the swap file JUST as you are trying to take that sharp corner. That's one of the cases where the stu-stu-stuttering starts. If you have set both values to the same, ie. the size of the swap file can not change at all, this particular stuttering will cease to exist.

>But there is. If min != max, Win95 may start re-adjusting the size of >the swap file JUST as you are trying to take that sharp corner. That's >one of the cases where the stu-stu-stuttering starts. >If you have set both values to the same, ie. the size of the swap file >can not change at all, this particular stuttering will cease to exist. Good point, I will change it in the next update. Thanks, David

Sorry, but I have to disagree. The swap file will never grow unless your computer *needs* more memory. When that happens you have a choice of; a) leaving the max value alone, allowing the swap file to grow, causing a little stutter b) refusing to give the computer more memory, which stops F1RS and brings up a dialog saying "Out of memory - close some programs and try again" or simply freezes the computer. You can't just ignore the fact that the computer *needs* more memory. Under normal circumstances, only running F1RS will *never* make your swap file grow larger than 128 MB. --- Jon Petersson (http://user.tninet.se/~rdv654m/Jon.html) I support Sarah-K and the rasf1 cars (http://www.sarah.org/rasf1/)

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> I don't know whether it's "correct" to reply to a FAQ, but I would l > ike to > point out that to my knowledge it makes no sense to specify a *maxim > um* > value for the swap file. Instead, specify a minimum value but leave > the > maximum value alone. That way, the swap file will never shrink below > the > minimum, but it can still grow larger if it *has* to. With a large m > inimum > value, it will probably never grow larger, but there's no sense in > forbidding it, should the need arise.

I have always used a minimum & maximum swapfile size that is the *same. This way windows does not spend any time or resources worrying about the swapfile. (provided you specify a big enough swapfile in the first place?) To make sure the swapfile is large enough, I use the formula swapfile = 2.5 to 3 times the size of the installed ram. 8?) *Peter* 8-) (NB: remove asterix to e-mail)

"Peter Gagg" skrev i meddelandet ... I find that formula a bit strange, since the *more* RAM you have, the *less* need you have for a swap file. --- Jon Petersson (http://user.tninet.se/~rdv654m/Jon.html) I support Sarah-K and the rasf1 cars (http://www.sarah.org/rasf1/)

Seems strange but that is correct. Go to any hardware page to find out more. >"Peter Gagg" skrev i meddelandet ... >>To make sure the swapfile is large enough, I use the formula >>swapfile = 2.5 to 3 times the size of the installed ram. >I find that formula a bit strange, since the *more* RAM you have, the *less* >need you have for a swap file. >--- >Jon Petersson (http://user.tninet.se/~rdv654m/Jon.html) >I support Sarah-K and the rasf1 cars (http://www.sarah.org/rasf1/)

% "Peter Gagg" skrev i meddelandet ... % >To make sure the swapfile is large enough, I use the formula % >swapfile = 2.5 to 3 times the size of the installed ram. % I find that formula a bit strange, since the *more* RAM you have, the *less* % need you have for a swap file. I really think this is the rule that was cobbled up from the days of Win3.x and machines with 8 to 16 meg of memory. I agree that for normal applications a machine with 64mb of memory shouldn't need a 160-192 mb swapfile. But a machine with 32mb of memory could do with a 64-96 mb swapfile. I have a 64mb of memory and use a 64mb swapfile. Even in F1RS about the only time I notice a stutter in the framerate is the first time an audio segment is loaded (ala "new track record"). I think the "rule of thumb" is just that, it's an easy way to get the information out and basically cover the ground. The goal should be to find the proper amount of memory required (both real and virtual) to run the applications (and combinations) that one needs. Start with the rule of thumb and then do some system monitoring (use Win95 System monitor), and watch your used and free memory. Then you can fine tune your system for your needs. -- **************************** Michael E. Carver ************************* Upside out, or inside down...False alarm the only game in town. =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=<[ /./. [- < ]>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

i use about 100mb swapfile .. no problems with any program. windows performance same if i increase it further ... or should i am talking about heavy usage ... winbench results maxed out as well. i have 128 ram ... so if you say 3 x ram .. than its around 400mb ... geez .. --ray

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> Seems strange but that is correct. > Go to any hardware page to find out more. > >"Peter Gagg" skrev i meddelandet ... > >>To make sure the swapfile is large enough, I use the formula > >>swapfile = 2.5 to 3 times the size of the installed ram. > >I find that formula a bit strange, since the *more* RAM you have, the > *less* > >need you have for a swap file. > >--- > >Jon Petersson (http://user.tninet.se/~rdv654m/Jon.html) > >I support Sarah-K and the rasf1 cars (http://www.sarah.org/rasf1/)

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