43 replies to this topic

[paul skingley]

Keithuk, on Feb 15 2008, 12:51 PM, said:

Can anyone recommend a good graphics card that has the same graphical effects as Voodoo (3DFX)?  

What sytem spec you got ?

Voodoo 3DFX were good in their day ( Used to have a Voodoo Banshee ) but things have moved on.
Unless you have a really slow /old cpu you will be better off with a modern card.

GPL is very dependant on cpu usage and does not leave the graphics card much to do. So if you have low frame rates etc... you need to upgrade to a modern fast cpu.

My system is almost 3 years old now ( AMD64 Athlon 3200+/Nvidia 6800GT ) but it runs GPL and all current mods with good frame rates at high detail settings.


paul

Edited by paul skingley, Feb 16 2008 - 08:29 AM.

[ACHIM KRAFT]

Hi Ginetto !

Many thanks for loading up my resizing-work as single file. Great idea in times at RSC is down.

Keith (aka dangermouse) ask me today to do this. You do it for me, great.

Greetings

Achim

[ginetto]

You're welcome Achim
You should copy the link above to the first page so people see it better and don't have to try to go over at RSC since is down.

Edited by Ginetto, Feb 17 2008 - 04:58 AM.

[ACHIM KRAFT]

Hi Ginetto !

Many thanks for your single zip. I make a hint in the first post to the file in post #20.

Greetings

Achim

[ACHIM KRAFT]

Hi all !

Bad news from the 66er-mod.

My PC is to old for the complete stuff (16 different cars) of the 66er-mod.

I test with different tracks (with small load of 3do's and mips) and in different modus (training/single race/multiplayer without AI).

No success.

Always the screen says:

can not load the track, cancel weekend.

A check for all my resized work with PapyBMP report: no more oversized mips in my folders. So, i think the 16 different car-models are to much for my old PC. I must wait with the 66er-mod for a new PC.

But, there are all other mods to drive. So i have no problem with not running 66er-mod.

I hope i can help other drivers with my work.

Greetings

Achim

EDIT: All drivers they use my resized folders, please report any problems. I will repair quickly.

[ACHIM KRAFT]

Hi all !

After the bad news from running the 66er-mod here on my old poor PC, i will make a further test with all cars on 2D-helmet and 2D-wheels. But i am not very optimistic.

Greetings

Achim

[paul skingley]

ACHIM KRAFT, on Feb 17 2008, 11:45 AM, said:

Hi all !

After the bad news from running the 66er-mod here on my old poor PC, i will make a further test with all cars on 2D-helmet and 2D-wheels. But i am not very optimistic.

Greetings

Achim

You could also try turning off some effects. Beveled tyres may help save some polygons if you think the issue is polygon related.


paul

[S.Beuchert]

Ginetto, on Feb 16 2008, 01:57 PM, said:

Here are the complete Achim collection in a single .7z file (51.3Mb )
for who wants to test it without have to unpack all the singles files , thanks Achim


cars66_LITE

Found a little bug in the compilation  

IF you unpack the file you will get in the "brabham" folder another "brabham" folder with the files.
This will 'cause a "cannot load the track" message .






@ Achim , maybe check this too, not that you have made this slightly mistake too and overlooked it in first sight

[Bill]

It should load, there must be a stray file somewhere.
I will test now with my voodoo 5500 on win98 and see if there is a problem..
Swen may have found the problem

[Bill]

It loads here but is crashing in glide and d3d but I do not get the cannot load track after fixing the brabham folder, will test some more.

[ginetto]

Yes the brabham folder needs to be moved up one level, I've reposted the file (Bill, you maybe want to move it to the right server folder ).
I used it in D3D and it works fine, tried OGL but when in car, it gives me a  black screen; I never tried OGL before though so it may be a setting problem not related to 66MOD.

Edited by Ginetto, Feb 18 2008 - 05:48 AM.

[ACHIM KRAFT]

Hi all !

Many thanks for uploading, hints, testing and reports here on SRMZ.

@Swen and Paul:
My install has not the extra brabham-folder. Reducing the Detail-Level on minimum (in GPL), deactivated all effects (in GPL), reduce sounds (5), deactivate 4xAA and set level of Detail-Bias on Graphik-driver from -2.00 to -0.50 will not help. Get down the resolution on screen to 640x480 and using the low-mirros set from A. Dieckenson will not help. I test this all before. An extra check at all  my files in the 66er folder with PapyBMP (as Paul say) show me, there are no more oversized files in my installation. I think it is the complete load of 16 3d-car-models and/or loading hundreds of MB textures and a track. I have similar effects by using the 69er-mod-part3 = can not load the track. But this problem is solved by using part3-physik with part2-car-models. This way will not go on 66er-mod. There are 16 cars in it. Only 7 cars can tricky e.g. 65er lite. But for this, i had no motivation to do. Only buy  a new fat PC can run the 66er-mod in the future.

@Ginetto:
I think all is claer discribed here in this post, what is to do with the files to get it on work. Full install of the offical 66er-mod is first step. Changing manually all folders of the "resizing project" in the cars66 -folder will show every improved user the extra brabham folder. I think new zip-upload is not needed. Running my resized set on D3D is a good sign. The black screen with OpenGL is a bad sign, but can result by bad core.ini entrys for OpenGl or the wrong (old) rastogl.dll (wiherr's is newer). Testing OpenGl is not the same as testing with 3dfx-glide. Sometimes in 3dfx-glide will not run and in OpenGl you will not have problems. Or 3dfx-glide running well, so OpenGl must do the same.

@Bill: Thanks for your report. I read with interest, you have no "can not load..." messages on screen, but allways crashing after start. Maybe your PC configuration is a bit bigger (CPU/RAM/board) or more modern then mine.

Greetings

Achim

EDIT: Please, stay cool, the world will go round without the 66er-mod on my PC. There are all other mods on my PC installed and drive over 450 tracks will during some time.

Edited by ACHIM KRAFT, Feb 18 2008 - 06:07 AM.

[dangermouse]

Ginetto, on Feb 18 2008, 11:21 AM, said:

(Bill, you maybe want to move it to the right server folder ).

Done

[Rudy Dingemans]

Hmm, trying to determine why it won't work for you Achim. If Bill says it does load, the files themselves should be OK (otherwise he would definitely get the 'Could not load track'-message.

So my guess would be it could be a driver issue (Voodoo drivers being old and maybe not developed enough to handle modern mod GPL installs), or, maybe a memory issue (not enough RAM). Since I only have 384 MB RAM and the 66er mod does load OK here (if you have Win98 or ME, don't forget to include the 'ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1' line in your system.ini), my guess would be that it may need at least 256 MB or more, maybe 384.

Regards, Rudy
(GPLRank: -32)

[ACHIM KRAFT]

Hi Rudy !

Thanks for your post and the hints.

I make a complete system-report with a diagnose-programm. My system-specs are all in the report at the end of this post.

For the short overview i will list some details from my system:
P III 933 Mhz (EB or BE)
512 MB SDRAM (133 Mhz)
ASUS-Board TUSL2-C
Voodoo5 5500
Soundblaster PCI (maybe 128 ?)
Swap-File fix to allways 1.046.576 kB
DirectX 8.1 german (4.08.01.0881)
WINDOWS 98 SE (4.10, Build 2222) patched with all single patches from MS
Drivers for Voodoo5 5500 (latest  official release from 3dfx with all tools)
MS-FF-Wheel (USB)
100 Mbit Network-Adapter on PCI

Greetings

Achim

EDIT: Sorry, problem to upload the report from this system. Try another computer on my home-network for this.

EDIT2: O.K., here is the report (from program SANDRA Prof. 2002). Be carefull with the report. The unzipped text-file is ca. 1,6 MB.

Attached Files

•  System_Report_12022008_GPL_Config.zip   163.93K   1 downloads

Edited by ACHIM KRAFT, Feb 18 2008 - 12:57 PM.

[Rudy Dingemans]

Hmmwell, your system looks a bit like mine but for a faster cpu and GeForce3 graphics card. Your RAM should be enough - I have less. Maybe the card is running out of video-RAM. Try setting the Windows swapfile to 'let Windows manage the swapfile' (or something similar in German) and putting the line I mentioned in my last message into your system.ini.
Alternatively, I seem to remember that Nigel P. once mentioned that by removing a Gem .xml file, it would only use/load 7 cars, or load less tracks from the track.ini - might also save some memory. This is a longshot though. But I'm guesstimating that the mod *should* (or rather *could*) work on your system.

Have you tried to run GPL in software mode yet?

Regards, Rudy
(GPLRank: -32)

[Bill]

Mine is almost Identical to yours Achim, with the soundcard being a sblive.
After some tweaking I am able to run it now in d3d windowed mode with good results.
Full screen still produces a lockup in d3d and in glide I get the can not load track message.
Your work I would say is good since it does run but it will take some more testing to figure out why we have the glide error

[ACHIM KRAFT]

Hi Rudy !

Thanks for your comments and hints.

Video-RAM is on Voodoo5 5500: 2 x VSA1000 GPU with each 32 MB TMU (2 x 32 MB = total 64 MB). Maybe this not enough for the 66er-mod.

I will make further tests this week.

1.) I will test the Windows-Swap file in "your" way.

2.) Next test i will make with all 2D-Helmet and all 2D-Wheels in the carset (all 16 cars).

3.) Last extra-test is, i will check the 7 "normal" named cars (brabham, ..., murasama) as a single car set with the 65er-physik in GEM. Only for checking this cars (7 from 16) to run in 3dfx.

The "Nigel-methode" (delete some .xml-files) will not testing by me (see test 3). I will prevent my 66er-install from damage for further tests.

All in all, please don't waste to much time for my personal problems with the 66er-mod on my poor old system.

The positive effect on my resizing-project for all users with poor pc-specs is reached. The files are complete online as lite-set. Every single user can test it for improvement by using the 66er-mod.

Greetings

Achim

EDIT: Testing in software-mode (or in window-mode) are 2 further options.

Edited by ACHIM KRAFT, Feb 19 2008 - 02:00 AM.

[ACHIM KRAFT]

Hi Bill !

Thanks for further testing "my" 66er-lite-set and report here.

I am glad you can run it in D3D-windowed-mode. So i hope the set is generally running without big errors.

I will make some further testing here on my poor old system, maybe in the window-mode. I test it never before.

Greetings

Achim

[ACHIM KRAFT]

Hi all !

Report from my 66er testing (part2):

Testing today 7 car-folders (with my new packing and fully 3d - helmet and wheels) from the 66er-mod with the 65er-mod in GEM.

No problem to run. Work like a charm.

But this is an irrelevant test with only 7 cars (brabham, brm, coventry, eagle, ferrari, lotus, murasama) and the 65er physik. I can only report this cars will run on 3dfx. Other cars from 66er-mod can not test in this way.

Greetings

Achim