i currently have a 1.6 mhz processor, 512 ram, ATI 9250. i get good fps on games like COD (125 fps) im im gettn like 20 on here. But its the lagg i get when theres alot of cars around, very bad. i have a good constnat 512 connection, and have played alot of other games perfectly fine. I tryed playign with some of the graphics settings , and i have screwed it all up :P i can now not see the names in the position list nad stuff, and when i select one option it crashes the game totally, so have have to RS my pc.
What should i do ? (gettn new pc in 2 weeks but stil wona sort it out)
if that CPU is AMD XP 1.6 are you in the clear, if it's a P4 , you might need an upgrade.
tweak with the graphics settings, I was able to squueze 30fps out of R9500 + AXP 1.4Ghz with resolution 1280x1024x32bit 2xFSAA / 8xAF and medium detail settings in-game (including low res shadows)
your graphics card should hold up nicely up until 1024x768, if you are getting a new PC, go for A64 3200+ Socket 939, your game will run VERY smooth then
You should not compare games like COD with LFS. MOAA, COD and the like are based on a modified Q3 engine, which is about 100 years old in computer years. Maths wise there is not a huge demand from this sort of game. LFS in contrast is very demanding on your CPU due to the size and complexity of the physics engine and each extra car in view makes the demands much higher because the same calculations are carried out for each car in view. AI cars make the situation worse still because LFS needs to calculate the physics for the car even when not on view and also control the AI driver for the car.
Your GFX card is also old and probably does not support the shaders reequired for LFS. If HVS is not enabled then you will suffer a huge performance hit as the shader operations need to be carried out in software.
There are some speed up options that control the number of cars visible etc that will be worth playing with but you will have problems on servers with a lot of people on them.
Your new PC will probably make a huge difference. As mentioned by others go for an AMD64 based system as on the whole they spank Intel in the games world. Intel keep tweaking the P4 to try and get more out of it but float maths have alway been their weak point.
If you did stuff up your settings and want a quick way to reset you could try and delete the cfg.txt file as I think LFS will recreate with default values. Keep a backup just in case though.
Thanks people, i got a athlon 3.2 coming soon with a gig of ram, so that should help things a bit ! also at x-mas gettn a new card. tyres are more important atm :P
Are you absolutely sure ? I thought i read somewhere how online, other cars
don't have 'full' physics but instead rely on the prediction code for their
positioning. My brain is known to mix up things, but i remember a thread where
Scawen explained the physics caculations online. Hey, maybe it was a dream,
hehe.
