GPL stutters strangely after a few minutes of play. By the 3rd lap at
the Ring, it's unplayable. The frame rate drops from 30'ish to 5
sporadically, and then returns to normal. The stutters start short with
long times between, progressively growing to a continuous slow mo'
jumpiness. The game time is slowed also to match when this happens; I
managed to drive all of SchwendenKreuse in slow motion. (It's amazing
how well I could hold the line given the extra time to jiggle the wheel;
judging speed is hard, though.) The sound stutters, too, while this is
happening, giving a strong feeling of acid flashback. Tonight, the
replay was similarly affected, but this is the first time this happened.
Previously, the replays happened in real time through the slo-mo jerky
moments.
I've done all I could from Alison's advice on her page. I defragged the
disk, and set a fixed swap file size. Vcache is set to 12MB to match my
machine's 48 MB. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the game; this only
caused me to lose my setups. Turning off most textures sped up the frame
rate nicely, but didn't change the bad behavior. Turning off skid-marks
didn't help.
The machine is a Compaq Presario 8772, P5 MMX, 200 mhz, 48 MB, onboard
Interwave sound. Voodoo 1. Win95, DX 5.2. 3Com 3C900 ethernet. Generic
joystick. No other software running; task scheduler disabled; no screen
saver; power saver enabled but set to 45 minutes. Scanner software is
loaded, but the scanner is powered off.
I've done all I can think to do. The game ran fine when I first
installed it some weeks ago (9/30). In fact, the power saver used to
ruin perfectly good hot-laps after its 45 minute delay (none of this
Shift-R stuff for me!). I don't recall it happening in other tracks;
come to think of it, the problem started around the time I switched back
to the 'Ring after running at Monza for a few days. I haven't run at the
other tracks for any length of time...
Ideas, anyone? The problem, I realize, is difficult to describe. I can
video tape it and send an avi to anyone who might be able to help. The
replays, of course, will run fine on your machine, and won't show the
problem.
Thanks.
Michael.
Never mind. I just found out the brake or throttle pot is acting weird,
or maybe stretched a wire tugging and pulling on the pedals at times.
It's a 3 year old set of CH pedals. Tried recalibrating the controls and
found out the throttle jumps values up beyond 300K. Really strange
effect this has on the game, though... Looks like I buy a new wheel
sooner than I expected.
Michael.
