Maverick and I of GURU put together an explanation of the Options screens that we are hoping will help the comunity overall. It's not intended to be a direct technical explanation of what the options do, but rather a more subjective explanation of how you or I might react to each setting.
I am posting it here for a few reasons, hoping to have it deleted once it's done.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Slartibartfast and Maverick of the Grown Up Racers Union have put together an interpretation of the Option screens in LFS in hopes of helping drivers sort through the mysteries of how each setting effects us on a visceral level. This is not a complete list of the settings, but rather, focuses on the settings that can affect the way we interpret our drive in LFS. Transforming visual and audio input to kinesthetic interpretations is a very important factor in how successful we are with our simming. Absolute lap time, consistency, and our level of enjoyment are all effected by how much we “get” or “do not get” from the illusion in front of us.
A lot of this is going to be highly subjective. Great! That is why they have put sliders on the values. Here we go:
OPTIONS
AUDIO
Car Sound Volume range: 0.0 - 20.0
Naturally, we need to hear the engine. It sounds cool and helps us know when to shift, if we have wheelspin, if the car is hopping, etc. If it is too loud, it will mask the other sounds. In rear drive cars it may be better lowered to help with ‘feeling’ the rear tires.
Skid Volume Boost range: 1.0 – 3.0
This is an important indication of what the tires are doing. It should be in the foreground of the audio mix to help ‘feel’ the car. If the tire sound is too low compared to other sounds, the driver will have a tendency to push too hard in corners or lock up the brakes. If the tire sound is too high, the driver will not push hard enough.
Wind Volume Boost range: 1.0 – 3.0
This increases perceived reality. It can also help sense of speed. Too much can be distracting.
Echo Volume Boost range: 1.0 – 3.0
This increases perceived reality. It can also help localization. Too much can be distracting.
SCREEN
The higher you can run your screen resolution the better. If we are trying to drive “inch perfect” and every pixel represents half a meter then we won’t be so successful. Also, it is of utmost importance that we look as far into the distance as possible when racing. Higher screen resolutions give us more detailed information, allowing us to plan ahead further.
There is a trade off however. The higher we run graphics options, the lower our frame rate will be. Frame rate is also important in sim racing. Frame rates below thirty get very hard to drive smoothly because every time we make an adjustment it may take a perceivable amount of time longer to get feedback from our monitor. Therefore, we will always be driving from memory, “I think I’m here… uh oh…. No I’m not.”
Each of our computers is different so taking the time to test and tweak will be to great advantage. The number one rule is, “Run as much as you can get away with, without sacrificing frame rate.” It is important to remember that online frame rates will typically be lower, especially in traffic.
There is no hard and fast rule, but settings like Screen Resolution and Frame Rates are considered necessary improvements, while settings like Simple Wheels and Disable Trees fall squarely in the “eye candy” department. Settings like Mirror LOD and Dust LOD can help situational awareness while racing, but if your computer is on the slow side, they suddenly shift into the eye candy category. There is a lot of gray area; you have to make the choices for yourself.
Wide Screen Effect options: Yes | No
All this does is put black bars over and under the image. I'd guess everything is rendered, and the black bars are put over the rendered image. Users with widescreen monitors or displays should use this, others should not.
On a typical 4:3 computer monitor, having Wide Screen set to [no] can give us vision that is a little more peripheral. It is easier to see how close we are to the side of the track. Hopefully, we won’t see someone’s wheel down there in the corner of the screen.
GRAPHICS
User LOD range: 0.25 – 1.00
This adjusts how much detail is in the distant track objects and other cars. It helps believability at the sacrifice of frame rate. Too little and the cars have square wheels.
Dust LOD range: 0.25 – 1.00
Depending on your setup, this could have a major impact on frame rates. Dust is good when racing because if you see the driver in front put a wheel off, you can guess that he is flustered and off balance. Dust is bad because if you are following “Black Jack” he is just trying to smoke you out to throw you off.
Mirror LOD range: 0.10 – 0.30
Mirror LOD also has a big impact or frame rate. What do you *need* to see. For me, cars only. The mirror is very important in racing. [Note: Hitting other drivers needlessly is considered impolite in most circles.]
Screen Width Affects LOD options: Yes | No
(What the heck is this? I can’t tell what it’s doing.) I'm really not sure what this does either. My educated guess is that it adjust LOD if you adjust your resolution (screen width). Slight impact on fps, pretty big impact on LOD. Try standing on the Blackwood starting line and tunring it on and off. I see details farther with it off.
Track LOD Reduction options: Yes | No
This reduces faraway detail to gain fps. It uses simpler models in the distance.
MIP Bias range: -4.00 – 0.00
MIPmaps are lower resolution textures calculated by the GPU to be used in the distance. Lower resolution textures are blurry. Higher resolutions are sharper. Can cause 'shimmering' of distant textures. Adjust to suit your preference. Lower is slightly faster. (More FPS)
Shadow Type options: Off | Low Res | Hi Res
Shadow has a great impact on frame rate. Ultimately we do not need it. It does add “weight” to the cars when viewing replays or following someone on track. Use with care.
Simple Wheels options: Off | Mirror | All
Removes highlights and spokes from the center of the rim. If you are having frame rate problems, doing without those things will help. Be careful with this setting! If you are using hardware shaders this cannot be set to on. That will cost you massive amounts of FPS, as much of the shading is done by CPU!
Disable Trees options: Off | Mirror | All
Removes the trees around the track. If you are having frame rate problems, doing without those will help.
Disable Flags options: Off | Mirror | All
Removes the flags around the track. If you are having frame rate problems, doing without those will help.
Disable Rubber options: Off | Mirror | All
Removes dynamic skid marks around the track. This can be very helpful as it gives you an indication of what your opponents are doing. If you are having frame rate problems, doing without those will help.
Enable Dither options: Yes | No
In lower than 32bit graphics modes, this allows the missing colors to be represented by something close. There is little, if any, frame rate hit. It is suggested for any mode but 32bit.
Enable MIP Filter options: Yes | No
This is some extra fancy filtering of MIPmaps. Enables you to run less MIPmaps with better result. Yes = faster.
Half Texture Size options: Yes | No
This option will allow you to use smaller textures. Depending on how much memory your video card has, this may be very helpful. It looks pretty darn good either way, and shows you what the estimated memory usage is in either mode.
Radeon
[This is the program recognizing my video card. Yours, and the options following, may be different.]
Hardware Vertex Shading options: Off | On
This allows the GPU to do very much of the work shading and transforming the geometry, greatly improving frame rates.
Z Buffer Depth options: 15 | 16 | 24 | 32
The Z-buffer is the buffer that stores how far into the scene polygons are. They are then sorted, and the ones furthest in are drawn before the closer ones. The accuracy of this buffer dictate how accurate this sorting is. Lower is faster, but you can get some mis-sorted polygons, like car parts being misaligned.
Simple Track (no car shadow) options: Off | Scenery | All
When you turn simple track ON, you turn vertex shading OFF, which means you just made the CPU do a lot of the shading and convolution of vertices that the GPU is perfectly capable of handling. The only time you would want simple track ON is when you have a GPU that does not support vertex shading, i.e. a 2d card or a very old type GPU.
Haze Effect options: Yes | No
This makes objects in the distance get progressively more ‘foggy’. It really helps with sense of distance and speed, making the sim more realistic by allowing you to drive more by ‘feel’ than by rote. Frame rate hit is minimal with a modern video card.
I am posting it here for a few reasons, hoping to have it deleted once it's done.
- Obviously, any mistakes should be corrected.
- I know a lot of you have your own tricks or observations that can make this more helpful still. (note the lack of explanation on why certain FF settings may be more succesful than others.)
- Suggestions about where to put this thing when it's done.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Slartibartfast and Maverick of the Grown Up Racers Union have put together an interpretation of the Option screens in LFS in hopes of helping drivers sort through the mysteries of how each setting effects us on a visceral level. This is not a complete list of the settings, but rather, focuses on the settings that can affect the way we interpret our drive in LFS. Transforming visual and audio input to kinesthetic interpretations is a very important factor in how successful we are with our simming. Absolute lap time, consistency, and our level of enjoyment are all effected by how much we “get” or “do not get” from the illusion in front of us.
A lot of this is going to be highly subjective. Great! That is why they have put sliders on the values. Here we go:
OPTIONS
AUDIO
Car Sound Volume range: 0.0 - 20.0
Naturally, we need to hear the engine. It sounds cool and helps us know when to shift, if we have wheelspin, if the car is hopping, etc. If it is too loud, it will mask the other sounds. In rear drive cars it may be better lowered to help with ‘feeling’ the rear tires.
Skid Volume Boost range: 1.0 – 3.0
This is an important indication of what the tires are doing. It should be in the foreground of the audio mix to help ‘feel’ the car. If the tire sound is too low compared to other sounds, the driver will have a tendency to push too hard in corners or lock up the brakes. If the tire sound is too high, the driver will not push hard enough.
Wind Volume Boost range: 1.0 – 3.0
This increases perceived reality. It can also help sense of speed. Too much can be distracting.
Echo Volume Boost range: 1.0 – 3.0
This increases perceived reality. It can also help localization. Too much can be distracting.
SCREEN
The higher you can run your screen resolution the better. If we are trying to drive “inch perfect” and every pixel represents half a meter then we won’t be so successful. Also, it is of utmost importance that we look as far into the distance as possible when racing. Higher screen resolutions give us more detailed information, allowing us to plan ahead further.
There is a trade off however. The higher we run graphics options, the lower our frame rate will be. Frame rate is also important in sim racing. Frame rates below thirty get very hard to drive smoothly because every time we make an adjustment it may take a perceivable amount of time longer to get feedback from our monitor. Therefore, we will always be driving from memory, “I think I’m here… uh oh…. No I’m not.”
Each of our computers is different so taking the time to test and tweak will be to great advantage. The number one rule is, “Run as much as you can get away with, without sacrificing frame rate.” It is important to remember that online frame rates will typically be lower, especially in traffic.
There is no hard and fast rule, but settings like Screen Resolution and Frame Rates are considered necessary improvements, while settings like Simple Wheels and Disable Trees fall squarely in the “eye candy” department. Settings like Mirror LOD and Dust LOD can help situational awareness while racing, but if your computer is on the slow side, they suddenly shift into the eye candy category. There is a lot of gray area; you have to make the choices for yourself.
Wide Screen Effect options: Yes | No
All this does is put black bars over and under the image. I'd guess everything is rendered, and the black bars are put over the rendered image. Users with widescreen monitors or displays should use this, others should not.
On a typical 4:3 computer monitor, having Wide Screen set to [no] can give us vision that is a little more peripheral. It is easier to see how close we are to the side of the track. Hopefully, we won’t see someone’s wheel down there in the corner of the screen.
GRAPHICS
User LOD range: 0.25 – 1.00
This adjusts how much detail is in the distant track objects and other cars. It helps believability at the sacrifice of frame rate. Too little and the cars have square wheels.
Dust LOD range: 0.25 – 1.00
Depending on your setup, this could have a major impact on frame rates. Dust is good when racing because if you see the driver in front put a wheel off, you can guess that he is flustered and off balance. Dust is bad because if you are following “Black Jack” he is just trying to smoke you out to throw you off.
Mirror LOD range: 0.10 – 0.30
Mirror LOD also has a big impact or frame rate. What do you *need* to see. For me, cars only. The mirror is very important in racing. [Note: Hitting other drivers needlessly is considered impolite in most circles.]
Screen Width Affects LOD options: Yes | No
(What the heck is this? I can’t tell what it’s doing.) I'm really not sure what this does either. My educated guess is that it adjust LOD if you adjust your resolution (screen width). Slight impact on fps, pretty big impact on LOD. Try standing on the Blackwood starting line and tunring it on and off. I see details farther with it off.
Track LOD Reduction options: Yes | No
This reduces faraway detail to gain fps. It uses simpler models in the distance.
MIP Bias range: -4.00 – 0.00
MIPmaps are lower resolution textures calculated by the GPU to be used in the distance. Lower resolution textures are blurry. Higher resolutions are sharper. Can cause 'shimmering' of distant textures. Adjust to suit your preference. Lower is slightly faster. (More FPS)
Shadow Type options: Off | Low Res | Hi Res
Shadow has a great impact on frame rate. Ultimately we do not need it. It does add “weight” to the cars when viewing replays or following someone on track. Use with care.
Simple Wheels options: Off | Mirror | All
Removes highlights and spokes from the center of the rim. If you are having frame rate problems, doing without those things will help. Be careful with this setting! If you are using hardware shaders this cannot be set to on. That will cost you massive amounts of FPS, as much of the shading is done by CPU!
Disable Trees options: Off | Mirror | All
Removes the trees around the track. If you are having frame rate problems, doing without those will help.
Disable Flags options: Off | Mirror | All
Removes the flags around the track. If you are having frame rate problems, doing without those will help.
Disable Rubber options: Off | Mirror | All
Removes dynamic skid marks around the track. This can be very helpful as it gives you an indication of what your opponents are doing. If you are having frame rate problems, doing without those will help.
Enable Dither options: Yes | No
In lower than 32bit graphics modes, this allows the missing colors to be represented by something close. There is little, if any, frame rate hit. It is suggested for any mode but 32bit.
Enable MIP Filter options: Yes | No
This is some extra fancy filtering of MIPmaps. Enables you to run less MIPmaps with better result. Yes = faster.
Half Texture Size options: Yes | No
This option will allow you to use smaller textures. Depending on how much memory your video card has, this may be very helpful. It looks pretty darn good either way, and shows you what the estimated memory usage is in either mode.
Radeon
[This is the program recognizing my video card. Yours, and the options following, may be different.]
Hardware Vertex Shading options: Off | On
This allows the GPU to do very much of the work shading and transforming the geometry, greatly improving frame rates.
Z Buffer Depth options: 15 | 16 | 24 | 32
The Z-buffer is the buffer that stores how far into the scene polygons are. They are then sorted, and the ones furthest in are drawn before the closer ones. The accuracy of this buffer dictate how accurate this sorting is. Lower is faster, but you can get some mis-sorted polygons, like car parts being misaligned.
Simple Track (no car shadow) options: Off | Scenery | All
When you turn simple track ON, you turn vertex shading OFF, which means you just made the CPU do a lot of the shading and convolution of vertices that the GPU is perfectly capable of handling. The only time you would want simple track ON is when you have a GPU that does not support vertex shading, i.e. a 2d card or a very old type GPU.
Haze Effect options: Yes | No
This makes objects in the distance get progressively more ‘foggy’. It really helps with sense of distance and speed, making the sim more realistic by allowing you to drive more by ‘feel’ than by rote. Frame rate hit is minimal with a modern video card.