19 replies to this topic

[Pete Gaimari]

I figured it out.

Edited by Pete Gaimari, Jul 26 2012 - 09:26 AM.

[davef]

Pete Gaimari, on Jul 26 2012 - 08:20 AM, said:

I figured it out.

Oh ? Was it svenvangent inside your Mod ?       

[svenvangent]

davef, on Jul 26 2012 - 10:24 AM, said:

Pete Gaimari, on Jul 26 2012 - 08:20 AM, said:

I figured it out.

Oh ? Was it svenvangent inside your Mod ?       

Tutuuuuuuuut   

[Pete Gaimari]

Turns out it was add on tracks like Brands. It runs on D3DV2 just fine on other tracks. I may just run Brands for a rank, and then switch it to Oulton for my championship racing against the AI. Oulton looks great with the Jack Seller update.

The 66 cars are more of a load than the 67 cars though.

[MECH]

svenvangent, on Jul 26 2012 - 10:38 AM, said:

davef, on Jul 26 2012 - 10:24 AM, said:

Pete Gaimari, on Jul 26 2012 - 08:20 AM, said:

I figured it out.

Oh ? Was it svenvangent inside your Mod ?       

Tutuuuuuuuut   

Edited by MECH, Jul 26 2012 - 10:51 AM.

[MECH]

Pete Gaimari, on Jul 26 2012 - 10:49 AM, said:

The 66 cars are more of a load than the 67 cars though.

That's because they have more carslots then the 67's.
Each separate slot will put a drain on fps because an extra car is loaded into memory.

[Pete Gaimari]

MECH, on Jul 26 2012 - 10:55 AM, said:

Pete Gaimari, on Jul 26 2012 - 10:49 AM, said:

The 66 cars are more of a load than the 67 cars though.

That's because they have more carslots then the 67's.
Each separate slot will put a drain on fps because an extra car is loaded into memory.

I know, but I can put just 10 66 cars on the track, and not get the same fps I get with a full field of 67 cars.

The 66 cars are fun to drive though. The Brabham BT-19 is close to the 67 BT-24 with a bit less power, but not the low speed grip problem. I can see the 67 cars with the same low speed grip as the 66 cars would be a joy to drive. Maybe some day.

[MECH]

Pete Gaimari, on Jul 26 2012 - 12:05 PM, said:

I know, but I can put just 10 66 cars on the track, and not get the same fps I get with a full field of 67 cars.

Yeah, this part has bugged me also for some time.
I get the fealing that GPL loads all cars into memory regardless what the number slider is set to or what the ini file has for team cars set.
So the only benefit you get that is that GPL doesn't have to actually draw the car, that's why the slider does have an effect but not as big as you would expect.

Pete Gaimari, on Jul 26 2012 - 12:05 PM, said:

The 66 cars are fun to drive though. The Brabham BT-19 is close to the 67 BT-24 with a bit less power, but not the low speed grip problem. I can see the 67 cars with the same low speed grip as the 66 cars would be a joy to drive. Maybe some day.

There is a 67xtra under development so I guess that will happen some day

[Border Reiver]

MECH, on Jul 26 2012 - 01:01 PM, said:

Pete Gaimari, on Jul 26 2012 - 12:05 PM, said:

I know, but I can put just 10 66 cars on the track, and not get the same fps I get with a full field of 67 cars.

Yeah, this part has bugged me also for some time.
I get the fealing that GPL loads all cars into memory regardless what the number slider is set to or what the ini file has for team cars set.
So the only benefit you get that is that GPL doesn't have to actually draw the car, that's why the slider does have an effect but not as big as you would expect.

Agreed. The problem is that GPL can't know what cars it would have to load in general since that is determined by the bump order in the driver.ini and the car/AI numbers in that file and I don't think it scans each dat and only loads the files it actually needs for any given race. To overcome this problem of not knowing what car files it will need when you first enter the track and so that it doesn't have to load things "on the fly", GPL loads everything until it runs out of spare texture memory just in case it will need it. After that I think it uses a stack and chucks out files at the bottom that have not been used each time it comes to another new texture that it now needs but does not have loaded. I think these are then the stutters that you see as stuff like that happens.

The problem with 66 mod in particular is that there are a lot of car slots in the mod and because of the use of track specific driver.ini files the AI used also change per race. This has the additional problem that it is not just 19 AI carskins getting loaded for every track, but it is also all of the other options for all the other races that can never get used for this race, but still get loaded. I think it even loads all of the online skins as well, since it just loads everything inside the dat file for each car, so there is loads of stuff that will never get used, but still gets loaded.

The above problem also gets worse with the more hi res texture files that are in use as these also use more texture memory and again there will be a heap of hi res files that will be loaded but will never get used.

It is no surprise that 65 mod is the one which causes least problems as it only uses 7 car slots and does not swap AI numbers per race (unless you add in addons), and so it only loads the minimum amount of stuff for the carset. Looking at "properties" on any of the folders in the gpl/cars folder will give a reasonable guess at which mods will cause problems by looking at the file size of these carsets.

Rob

[Pete Gaimari]

I guess this was magnified even more by running Brands Hatch which seems to have quite a load on it's own.

I'll have to rethink this. The 67 season runs so smooth. It's hard to give that up.

[Pete Gaimari]

I solved the problem. I'm back in the 67 Eagle.

[davef]

Pete Gaimari, on Jul 26 2012 - 04:14 PM, said:

I guess this was magnified even more by running Brands Hatch which seems to have quite a load on it's own.

I'll have to rethink this. The 67 season runs so smooth. It's hard to give that up.

Maybe substitute Silverstone for Brands in your championship season against Ai ?

67 Eagle is a pleasure of course.  

[Pete Gaimari]

If it was just Brands it wouldn't be a problem, bu it didn't really run smooth on any track compared to the 67 cars. It was fun for awhile, but I missed the Eagle, and the 66 Eagle wasn't fun to drive like the 67. I found the blubber off slow corners in the 66 cars annoying, because the AI don't do it.

Anyway, i'm more than happy with the 67 cars. I'll wait for a 67 mod. If I live that long.

[Border Reiver]

Be careful what you wish for though.

As I understand it, a "67 extra" mod would be designed to also include all of the other cars that were run in 1967 but are absent in the original 7 car GPL, and as described above, adding extra slots to a carset, especially if the realism police get hold of it and also insist on the AI car numbers and line up changing per race as the real guys did, will massively bloat the texture usage and lead to the stutters you see with 66 mod. 66 mod was the first one where a really thorough and representative mod for the whole season was attempted, showing as much variety as possible in the cars available. To make "67 extra" worth attempting and justifiable there would be no point in limiting to only 7 slots, so I would worry that if 66 mod causes this sort of problem for you, then "67 extra" would be just the same, or perhaps even worse, depending on how many of the one off cars get added and how enthusiastic the painters get with using very large, highly detailed textures for ever one of the carskins.

Rob

Edited by Border Reiver, Jul 27 2012 - 03:50 AM.

[Dark]

This is interesting. I'm getting stuttering with all mods including the original 67's installed with the new installer. I'm assuming the latest ATI driver isn't dealing with the hi-res textures very well though but Pete your saying your 67's are running fine so i'm not sure now