Vader's call on the PO meter is spot on. It is a very dodgy instrument and can only give you a general idea of whats going on. The trick with the stopwatch is good, and I used it to add lots of eyecandy a few months after the release of GP4, that I never would have dared touching if I had trusted the PO-meter. However, there may be a trick that serves you better now.
If you have gpxpatch installed, then go to \gpxpdata\log and open gpxlap.log in notepad. You should see something like this:
Start of session: Quick/non-championship/championship race
End lap 0: car 6, racepos 22, time -:--.---, PO 0/ 0%, 0.0s slomo
End lap 1: car 6, racepos 9, time 1:54.063, PO 70/187%, 3.0s slomo
End lap 2: car 6, racepos 13, time 2:00.702, PO 67/145%, 0.9s slomo
End lap 3: car 6, racepos 13, time 1:50.836, PO 58/134%, 0.1s slomo
End lap 4: car 6, racepos 13, time 1:51.368, PO 58/131%, 0.3s slomo
Gpxpatch opens a log each time you participate in a race. The
X.Xs slomo is what you need to look at. It is tool developed to let leagues check that drivers are not driving in slowmotion, and hence cheating by having lots more time to get corners right. When your PO goes over 100, then in THEORY you get slowmo. But as the slowmo tool shows a lap of over 90 seconds, with an average PO of 58 and a max PO of 134 gave only 0.1s of slomo!!
So, just follow all the tips and tricks you can find, slowly increasing you settings and level of FPS, until you find that you get unacceptable levels of slowmo. Quickraces in the wet are best when you measure this, since quickraces give you a couple of laps to asses the level of slowmo, which varies from lap to lap, and the wet gives the maximum strain that your gaming rig will experience in any situation that can happen while racing in GP4.
Happy tweaking, my friend.
Post Edited (04-17-03 17:45)
It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.