Thanks for all the feedback. I knew that Sony had the monopoly atm, and it's interesting to hear that GP4 is still better. Otherwise, to summarise, there are better driving simulators, but GP4 is prefered because it is a) still best *F1* simulator, b) is relatively customisable c) has strong user community. Is that a fair summary? How well is the graphics engine standing up - is it stiby bigj - Grand Prix 4
I just visited gpg.org for the first time in ages. Great to see GP4 is still being played and modded etc. I was curious to get peoples feedback on it - I mean w.r.t. to other simulators - how does it compare with latest games?, which games are better(any!?), what other F1 sims are there now? how does it perform with modern hw? BigJ.by bigj - Grand Prix 4
> applied to the whole screen using a simple spherical bump Yes - you could post-process; ie. render the scene to an offscreen rendertarget and then use that as a texture, using a bumpmap or pixelshader to lookup spherical coords. But as you say the sampling would be weird - not sure how filtering would work out. I'm sure it's been done at least as a tech sample. GP4 is DX8.1 lby bigj - Grand Prix 4
Re: Fish Eye. A fish eye lense can make straight edges appear curved. So, if T-Cam in real life uses fish eye lenses then that would account for why real life versus GP4 T-Cam views differ even though the car model is accurate. There is no way to make straight edges (of triangles) project with curvature with current 3D HW and/or APIs. Only the verts are projected - so even using a vertex shby bigj - Grand Prix 4
If you author geometry into the world and apply a texture that has ** at least 1 pixel with alpha not solid ** then that geometry will be sorted and rendered last. What does this mean. Well, you should be able to author decal pit/grid markings and lines as you wish - using .tex and geometry quads. I guess you'll need to remove the current sw rendered details and/or blank the .jip files.by bigj - Grand Prix 4
Both the full car shape and cockpit shape are always loaded. The code path handles explicit rendering of mirrored objects (to a level as set in the menus). So, its possible the mirrors could: a) no reflect your own car at all b) reflect the cockpit model c) reflect the full car d) reflect a 'dummy' sprite to represent your car. I can't remember which of b/c its set up to supportby bigj - Grand Prix 4
Rendering: The heat haze is just a rectangle mesh rendered into the scene a la imposter (a render is taken of everything 'through' the mesh - this is why its such a frame rate hit). Animation: The mesh is actually a grid of nxn cells. Every frame the verts making up the grid are moved through a noise function. Since the noise function isn't a function of time, then yes, its possiby bigj - Grand Prix 4
>> Author: villej >> I still have old GF2 Pro and GP4 runs very well with it. GP4 was developed with GF2 Pros and PCs down in the 1GHzby bigj - Grand Prix 4
There is a blur effect on the bumpmap. It is 'stretched' in proportion to your speed. Also the mipmap bias is adjusted. It sounds like your card and/or drivers aren't handling the bias very well. Probably sampling 'of the end' of the mipmap chain. I suggest you might want to try newest drivers if you haven't. If this doesn't work then its probably some hardwaby bigj - Grand Prix 4
You might find that even with hi-res textures set in the menus, for low resolutions the low-res textures are _still_ used. (Since there's no point loading hires textures if you never see >1 pixel:texel on screen)by bigj - Grand Prix 4
I can absolutely confirm that the alpha channel modulates the strength of the environment reflections. Where 255 (white in photoshop) => full reflection and 0 (black in photoshop) => no reflection. However - this feature is hardware dependent - it requires a ADDCOLORMODULATEALPHA blending operation (with alpha cascaded from 1st stage) that some cards don't do (correctly). This is prby bigj - Grand Prix 4
Hi, I found exactly this yesterday on a clean XP install - all drivers current. As soon as the race started it would crash (or within a few seconds). Not sure if its a sound bug in the game or some hardware/driver issue - its using motherboard onboard sound solution with (I'm guessing) much CPU assistance - so could be either. For me, turning off both 3D and 2D sound acceleration solvedby bigj - Grand Prix 4
Are these really ps2 shots ? at 1024 x 717 - I'm guessing 1024 x 768 cropped. Does ps2 do such a mode ? can it afford the vram ? or perhaps this is a) a mock up - shock! b) a PC (!) version being passed off as ps2 - shock!! ?????by bigj - Grand Prix 4
look for mip map bias in f1graphics.cfg try enabling trilinear filtering (same file)by bigj - Grand Prix 4
I've got to agree with LS, I drove GP4 last night with a steering wheel (logitech formula force) and had accidentally turned off traction control. I couldn't understand why everytime I tried to accelerate from standstill in a straight line the car would twitch and spin out. I very much recommend people try this game with a wheel and the aids (steering help/traction control) turned oby bigj - Grand Prix 4
Randy, I'm using the latest for the 7200 (which is what my VIVO is it seems). These are 13-June-2002 iirc (I'm at work at the moment). M, Thats cool, I was worried that everyone was running non-tnl and non-compressed textures which would have been big slow down and accounted for the CPU dependent nature of the engine. It seems, however, that it was just an issue with detection of my (by bigj - Grand Prix 4
Can someone (anyone) confirm that their f1graphics.cfg file has compressed textures turned on ? Look for "Use compressed textures if supported" Mine was turned off. This could make a big difference for cards that are <=32MB Similarly, for my card (Radeon VIVO DDR 64MB) the TNL line was set off. "Enable hardware T&L if available" Enabling this gives a big speedup (asby bigj - Grand Prix 4
You can force it on just for GP4 by editing the f1graphics.cfgby bigj - Grand Prix 4
TGAs support 32bit : that is, they can include an alpha channel. Newer bitmap formats do this too (I believe) but I'm guessing there's not much support yet in editing packages. The alpha channel in the car liveries is used for gloss mapping : it controls strength of specular/environment reflections.by bigj - Grand Prix 4
I had this first time. Had to install DX8.1 Do this. If you think you have, do it again anyway. What video card do you have btw ?by bigj - Grand Prix 4
Bump mapping : have you noticed that the bump mapping motion blurs as the car moves. Start of stationary and look at the track, now move forwards and you'll see the track bumps stretch.by bigj - Grand Prix 4
Antialiasing : gp4 doesn't use this by default. To turn it on : either set in your graphics drivers (if it allows it) to be always on. or. set application select in graphics drivers and edit f1graphics.cfg : There is a setting in there to enable antialiasing.by bigj - Grand Prix 4
Bump mapping is costly for fill Also advanced car shader And to lesser extent I believe the highest level reflections So to run higher res turn those things off/down Could also try 16bit mode if this is still slow.by bigj - Grand Prix 4
For graphical glitches it would be really useful to attach screen captures. Picture being worth a thousand words etc.by bigj - Grand Prix 4
Sounds like you've installed the dx8.1 sdk. Go to the control panel - select directx - d3d - and make sure you've got retail selected. This will also give you a considerable speed up as it removes much run time debug checking.by bigj - Grand Prix 4