My Specs-

3.2gh P4
1g Ram
ATI x800pro
Audigy 2 zs

(fairly MOR machine)

Starting at the back of the grid at Aston North, all cars in view (AI's)..

average fps (4x AA, 16x AF - 1280 X 1024)

20 cars - 17.5
10 cars - 31
4 cars - 53

hotlapping - constant 75 fps (vsync on)

Having too many AI's on track kills FPS for me. I wonder if there are more opportunities for optimisation here? I'm definately CPU bound - average fps stays the same when using either vanilla (w/ no skins) or heavily texture modified versions (tracks/interior/skins). Actually, tbo- i was getting maybe 1 or 2 extra frames with 4 cars in vanilla mode (55 fps average).

Anyway, LFS is one of the few games I would upgrade my PC for, definitely. If the physics becomes any more complex, I'll probably need a new CPU. If graphics become more sophisticated, I'll probably need to get a new GPU.

Or I could just hotlap around to my heart's content...!

Intel E6400
1 GByte DDR2 RAM
Geforce 7900GS

Above 20 cars on the screen it's barely holding over 40fps at 1280x1024 and 4x AA and 8x AF. Driving alone the fps-rate is beyond rediculous numbers, but that's not the point of an online racing simulator, is it? So no, my system can't bear better graphics with this engine.

Vain

Quote from Dajmin :

Thanks Keithano. That'll teach me to go for lunch in the middle of a discussion

Welcome, they look really good. In addition, you can also use the high-res FOX interior addon too. It is another great high-res texture.

Quote from keithano :

There you go.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=20033

Thx a lot!

Quote from Electrik Kar :

Having too many AI's on track kills FPS for me. I wonder if there are more opportunities for optimisation here? I'm definately CPU bound - average fps stays the same when using either vanilla (w/ no skins) or heavily texture modified versions (tracks/interior/skins). Actually, tbo- i was getting maybe 1 or 2 extra frames with 4 cars in vanilla mode (55 fps average). ...

Fortunately, LFS is an online sim, so you don't need to run with 20 AIs.
The problem with AIs is that your local LFS has to calculate all the physics for every car in every physics update. In an online race this is not the case - your machine only needs to do proper physics calcs for you and the few cars nearest to you - the rest can all be optimised by using position information from the server... so a grid of 20 online players _should_ be much more efficient than a grid full of AIs.

Have you tried this and compared fps between online and an offline grid with the same number of cars ?

cheers

Col

Quote :

Have you tried this and compared fps between online and an offline grid with the same number of cars ?

This is what I was wondering.

I did check out the '500' server the other night, there were about 25 cars online. I didn't really experience any noticeable drop in performance in terms of fps. There were some laggy moments though (downloading skins perhaps), and cars were all over the place- it was quite chaotic actually.

I understand what you're saying- putting these two experiences together indicates it's the extra calculations the AI are doing which is causing trouble. That's fair. I just wanted to see what would happen when I pushed the AI's up, for benchmarking purposes really.. I also race the AI's a bit because it's more casual than going online and it gives me a break from texture work.

Ok, maybe the poll options are lame, but i think you can understand what they mean, with the "high end" i didn't mean Core 2 duo, and SLI 8800 GTX, i meant a system that is good enough to run other games in high details and you know that it could probably run LFS with better details...

The reason why i posted this thread is because i want to see what people think about all those fancy graphic effects you can find in other games/sims..
I know for example that Mrodgers, as he said, wouldn't be able to cope with better graphics than they are now, i can understand that, family, children, bunch of things you need money for, so you can't afford a better PC.. and than on the other side, you see Tweaker drolling over that screenshot for the new Race game... We gotta question ourselves, do we really want better graphics? Are we ready to loose many many players because of that?
People talking about cracks in the tarmac and other redicolous stuff, do we really need that?
What we REALLY need are, as stated numerous times, better cockpits(3d stuff) and just some more poligons on some cars (LX's, XRT, UF1 is really really redicoulous, i can't drive it just because of that).. and maybe some bumpier tracks(i don't think that would have much FPS hit) and that's about it..
As people said, while racing, you don't see many things, you are focused on braking points, the cars around you, etc, you don't have the time to admire all the fancy graphics..

Quote :

What we REALLY need are, as stated numerous times, better cockpits(3d stuff) and just some more poligons on some cars (LX's, XRT, UF1 is really really redicoulous, i can't drive it just because of that)..

Agreed. Also would be good to see a few of the track bugs ironed out (floaty trees and laptops for eg)- but the interiors are most important, as they immediately surround the player. A slightly better driver model (arms and hands) would be a welcome improvement too.

P4 2.53ghz
1gb ram
Radeon 9600XT 128mb

I get about 15-20fps on a full grid, then 30-50fps during a race (or higher, up to 70-80 if I'm running alone).

I could handle a small bump in graphics quality as-is, but with the jump to 32 cars I doubt much more would work.

My old 6600GT probably couldn't handle much more... but I'd be willing to upgrade for better graphics.

Quote from col :

I think there is something that has been ignored so far.

The market sector for LFS is NOT the same as that for most PC and console games !
It has been shown many times that a significant percentage of LFS users are older people who have financial responsibilities such as car, family, mortgage. Many of these folks are not 'gamers' and cannot justify regularly updating their system just for a 'game' (however good).

(There are also many licenced racers from less afluent countries where a high end PC system is definately a luxury)

Scavier obviously understand this which is why they have made sure from the outset that LFS works well on low end and older systems.

whats more LFS doesn't 'need' cutting edge graphics, its appeal is in its physics, the LFS community and a great online experience - none of which depend on graphics.

All of these are good points, col.

I still see room for improvements outside of the look of the game, and more for the engine its running on. It seems a bit laggy when there is a lot of cars together and that could be improved. Another thing is providing basic racing setups that aren't slow or hard to drive like the current defaults. Its very difficult as a newcomer to setup your car and learn how to drive at the same time.

I think this is a great game that just needs a bit of work on the edges to stay competitive.

LFS certainly have to take advantage of DX9 sooner or later. Day/Night transitions and weather effects that are in some simracing games nowadays is something that adds to the atmosphere and the racing itself. Use of shaders and objects having dynamic shadows adds to the atmosphere.

Some people might think that this is just some unescessary hollywood effects, but it isn`t. Racing is about handling every kind of circumstances and e.g see the light/shadows change during a race is an experience that affects your driving performance.

And the performance of the newest CPU`s and graphics cards today is very good, so in a year it should be affordable for most people to have an ok PC that can run DX9 stuff well.

But then again people will change to Vista and more power is needed

Quote from deggis :

Depends what "better gfx" means. Few fancy DX8/9 effects are useless as long as textures are low-res. Just doubling the textures size would make a huge difference visually and it doesn't have much effect on fps if at all, not even on older machines.

I agree with this, i love the dull dirty look of LFS, it makes it look real. Huge textures in this same style would make the sim look 10 times better. The day LFS gets all fancy and cartoony is the day i stop racing it.

Next month, all problems will be finished

http://cgi.ebay.de/QuadCore-10 ... goryZ139551QQcmdZViewItem




:clapclap:

Quote from Xaid0n :

Wow you have better Specs than me and you're considered low end? damn

Athlon 2500+ @ 1.8ghz
512mb DDR 333
128mb Nvidia 6200
131gb HD

If you want to improve your machine just put in a motherboard that clocks to a 200fsb. These 2500's overclock beautifily to a 3200 with just this mod, also if u upgrade to 1 gig of ddr400 you'll see your machine fly

I can already handle much much better graphics, so i wouldn't mind to have a "cutting edge graphics" LFS, but imho the settings should allow the game to be playable on low end systems.

Quote from undertaker00 :

Next month, all problems will be finished

http://cgi.ebay.de/QuadCore-10 ... goryZ139551QQcmdZViewItem




:clapclap:

i hate the way they say a Quad core is 10 GHz when its 4x 2.66 GHz CPU's in one chip :X

Reading the replies from "OLT Pro racing thread" and having discussion with some people on our local forum, i came to the conclusion that further graphic improwements shouldn't have major impact (if at all) on our systems...
Now, i may be wrong, but it seems that people with low end graphic cards ie FX5200, Radeons 9600 or lower, have same FPS like people with high end graphic cards..
It seems that graphic card doesn't do that much stuff in LFS, it's all in the processor. The proofe of that is that i don't have any FPS difference with default content and with all the high res addons(ie high res tracks, interiors, wheel, gloves)... so that means that there is plenty of things left for graphic card to handle..
I think that if the interiors get updated and cars gain more polygons, etc.. that we might have same performance as ususal...
I don't know would the graphic changes use any more processor power than now? or that is all on the graphic card to handle? If this is the case, than i'm sure that our low end/mid end graphic's card could handle more polygons and some high res interiors..
Am i wrong here, what do you guys think...

No problem on running LFS at max quality settings with AA 16x (SLI Mode) and Aniso 16x too at average of 90fps. I think LFS graphic engine support much better quality without performance suffering.
Anyway, LFS looks nice for me, but is a game that needs AA, is horrible without it

My PC is just touching on 7 years old, and I don't think it was a very good PC when it came out.

The game plays fine, albeit with a few luxouries turned off.

If LFs got better graphics, itd be a 50/50 toss up as to if it could run properly.

I'm making dad buy me a new PC for when i move out later in the year, I'm not taking this antique with me. So in that case, graphics me up scotty.

Llew.

I don't like the shadow technique they are using with the cars at the moment. They should employ a basic dark rectangle (or the shape of the car) under the car and make it really dark. The other shadow type could be the current one that follows the direction the light is coming from.

Because as it stands now if the car is in shadow the car itself doesn't have one, therefore it looks like it's hovering above the ground. Visualwise this is my major pet peeve.

With my old PC I'd run it in low resolution or else it would lag. But I bought this "peice of shit" for £350 brand new, and it turns out its got mad graphicz that apparantly are standard these days, I need to get up from out underneath my rock. So I run everything on high, high, high. Very high. Highest in fact. Bring on the hardcore graphicz...

I think S2 doesn't need any more graphic improvements. I've bought my PC 6 months before the first public version of S2 was released, so I had/still have no problems running the game at high FPS . I don't want to buy a new PC until S3 comes out as if I buy a new one soon, then i won't have money for another new one when S3 comes out. Let's just sit tight and enjoy racing with 31 cars around us , we'll get better graphics in S3. No need to hurry imho.
btw: Athlon XP 2800+ and Ati X1650 Pro -> I have to turn off full wheels,shadows,trees,rubber,flags and lower the LOD settings when many cars are on grid (20+) so I can still have a constant 40+ FPS (anything below 20 is just a pain in the ass ! ) - no AA or AF turned on :S . Maybe it is time to format my HDD or change some drivers

my pc is a medium spec , even tho currently im only getting 60fps , when this harddrive is wiped ( takes to my 500 gb extrenal one ) ill be getting slightly better , also my graphics card from my knollege is about 6 months old , which will take better graphics

pretty much no bother, X1900XTX should run it fine tbh. Its fairly crap now but it was brilliant a good 6 months ago.