motivated by the great performance of my (in the mean time overclocked to 3.5 ghz) system, i went for a set-up session of GTR2.
the first goal was to get a fluid performance. since GTR2 is suffering from stuttering since it’s initial release, i was wondering if there is a chance to minimize this effect. after the test of some settings (graphics) on the nordschleife (latest conversion from the r-factor version) with max cars (68, i think) i found that there is too much variation in terms of frames per second, related to time of day, weather and behavior of the field. to tweak the settings is not really possible, even if i was using a demo to get the same ‚input‘ all the time. i’ve managed to change priority and affinity (click on ’show processes for all users‘ at task manager to change those settings) which shows some impact. the frame rate (just an example) went up from 44 to 48 average after changing priority from normal to very high. by setting priority to realtime, the stuttering was completly gone but the sound stopped to work on my sb xfi card. setting affinity to 1 or 2 cores makes no difference at all.
to get an impression of the impact of different in-game settings, i went for a normal track like Barcelona. here i was testing day-time, night-time and rain. a track like Barcelona isn’t suffering from high quality shadows that much like nordschleife, so this isn’t an issue here. but going into the night, especially in rain, changes the situation drastically. even with just about 30 cars on the track, the frame rate dropped to 20-30 (at 1280×768, 2x aa, 8x anisotropic). neither a reduction of aa nor anisotropic was impacting this, so the limit is the cpu. reducing head light quality rendered the feeling into driveable and because of the stupid flashing interior at headlight max quality, stepping back with the head light quality isn’t such a big visual impact. the lightening of the cars when followed by others is quite minor, a stable framerate not. rain is affecting the performance, i would say, regardless to the graphic settings. i haven’t reduced none of the parameter so that there was a major increase in frame rate. i assume that setting back the special effects may give some benefit but i’ve got a stable frame rate after a few corners.
motivated by this, i’ve started the custom elise cup, which starts at Barcelona and after some practice, i’ve had a very nice race with 18 elises, lot’s of passes and overheated tires 😉 – welcome back GTR2
stay tuned for some more tests soon