Quote from NitroNitrous :

I would add hires texture packs (tracks, adverts, tyres, skins at 2048, tail lights, etc) and the real reflection mod

Thus why i linked to the LFS Texture Database - i'd love to upload my texture folder, but unfortuantely i don't know who the authors of some stuff is.

I do remember i use Darkones Reflection mod, and love EK's work.

I've installed nHancer, applied max quality settings in there (16xAA "coverage sample", 16xAF), I've got the mip bias to 2.0 in LFS (it seems the best compromise), I've got Electric Kar's high-res textures, and this is (an extreme example, admittedly) the result.

I can't believe it doesn't look like this for other people. *sniff*

You using the latest drivers Kev ?

Quote from thisnameistaken :

...

I can't believe it doesn't look like this for other people. *sniff*

Haha, I laughed aloud when I saw that (sorry)
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Quote from thisnameistaken :

Which setting will get rid of the horrible moire effect I get on the kerbs? I've got a metric assload of anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering going on - I shouldn't have fuzzy kerbs!

I got the exactly same problem when I tried to tweak my graphics settings to get some more fps for the 40+ grids (X patch). Something went wrong and with trial and error I finally got the old good settings back. I don't remember what was the actual reason for the bad picture then but I'd guess for too much antialias or using super sampling instead of multisampling. Not sure though but worth a try...

Maybe you want to try these and see if LFS looks any better? If, yes and you want it to look even more better, adjust one setting at a time and see if there is any noticable effect. The key is to try different settings one by one to find the setting that causes the ...issues...

My settings (Gef7800GT):
Nvidia driver settings for LFS:
Antialias 4x
Anisotrophic filtering 16x
Image settings: high quality
Transparency antialiasing: Multisampling
Negative LOD bias: Clamp

Everything else is off or unticked.

LFS:
Texture mip bias 0.0


Two sample screenies (resized from 1600x1200) to show how LFS looks with the above settings.

Kev can you post a full resolution ss?

ATI FTW especially at higher res with lots of aa + af

SD.

Thanks Hyperactive! You listed the magic setting.

The Negative LOD Bias: Clamp* improves matter greatly, in return for a bit of blurring, but blurring is way preferably to crappy kerbs and fences that look like LP records.

Thanks v. much - I've been putting up with this crap for months! I haven't had an nVidia card since the old GeForce2, so I've never tossed about with the settings before.

Thanks to everybody else for your help too. If anybody wants to turn up in the Three-Legged Mare in York tonight I will fill them with pints.

* AndroidXP mentioned it earlier but I ignored him. I won't ignore you in future, dude.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Thanks Hyperactive! You listed the magic setting.

The check is in the mail

Kev, i dont know if it's it but i often get uglier edges in games like in Battlefield 1942 IF i turn AA on.
€: oh well nevermind and have fun at ur nice settings
__

My setting on that pic was 4x AA and 8x AF. In LFS settings i turned everything on max.(except resolution) Big performance boom boom, but it looks nice. Used Mods: Tyre High Res skins, high res skins for the sky and of the streets. Of course a reflection mod too. Changed curbs
http://i197.photobucket.com/al ... reenshots/lfsdriftzor.jpg

If anyone wants to edit the LFS wiki page, it I think simple guide would be more useful. Just pointing out that 1) turning MIP filter on & lowering MIP bias setting 2) turning on FSAA/AF from the GFX card control panel and installing Electric Kar's hires packs. For most people, that would make the big difference.

It's really amazing sometimes to see people with modern computers to run LFS with NO fsaa/af at all and with horrible MIP bias setting, sometimes even with 16 bit colours For crying out loud, I have 4 years old computer and still running with FSAA...

Yep, I recently switched from a lower end ATI card to a similar nVidia card. nVidia can't handle negative MIP map bias. If you don't have that setting to "Clamp", you get moire effect all over the place (I use a LCD monitor at native resolution, I don't know if it happens on CRT's).
I still get some moire, especially at Aston and Blackwood. It is distracting for sure.
I had some problems with moire with the ATI card too, but not as bad and I found settings that fixed it.
If you leave MIP clamping off, you have to bump your AA up to 8 to get rid of most of the moire. But, with my card and my resolution, that drops me back to ~40fps in hotlap mode.

To whoever mentioned they were getting 100+fps. Why? What is your refresh rate on your monitor? Getting higher FPS than your refresh rate does not do you much good. Bump up the quality settings to the max until you start dropping below 60 FPS.

Quote from Hallen :

To whoever mentioned they were getting 100+fps. Why? What is your refresh rate on your monitor? Getting higher FPS than your refresh rate does not do you much good. Bump up the quality settings to the max until you start dropping below 60 FPS.

I was bumbling about SO on my own today with 150 fps - but the second i drop in a full grid i'm looking at 45

Quote from Hallen :

To whoever mentioned they were getting 100+fps. Why? What is your refresh rate on your monitor? Getting higher FPS than your refresh rate does not do you much good. Bump up the quality settings to the max until you start dropping below 60 FPS.

That's not the whole story. Minimum framerate is the key, not average. A completely hypothetical example, if you have average 60fps, occasionally it might drop to 20fps. If you had average 100fps, it might only drop to 45 which will make all the difference in the middle of a race.

Also, I really notice the difference between 60 and 100 fps Glad I have a monitor that does 100hz. It definitely improves my laptimes. 60 seems almost jerky.

Quote from Hallen :

To whoever mentioned they were getting 100+fps. Why? What is your refresh rate on your monitor? Getting higher FPS than your refresh rate does not do you much good. Bump up the quality settings to the max until you start dropping below 60 FPS.

Wrong. You definitely benefit from having more fps than your monitor's refresh rate. One example is more frequent reading of input devices -> less input lag.

Quote from Iron :

Wrong. You definitely benefit from having more fps than your monitor's refresh rate. One example is more frequent reading of input devices -> less input lag.

That's only a benefit if the controller input processing and graphics processing occur in the same loop. This approach has all sorts of problems, including the potential for input lag you mentioned. A more sensible approach is to decouple the controller input processing, graphics processing and physics processing from one another, put each in a separate thread and have the controller input and physics threads each run at whatever frequency is deemed appropriate. Using this approach, fluctuations in the graphics frame rate do not affect the controller and physics processing which will continue to run in the background at a constant* frequency.

* or to be more accurate, a near constant frequency. In non-realtime systems, there will always be some variability in time steps even when interrupts are supposed to be generated every x milliseconds.

Quote from ATHome :

That's not true. Works like charm on my ATI X800

That's impossible. Supersampling Transparency AA has no evident affect on transparent textures in LFS (those with alpha). If it does, show me an example.... like with the chainlink fence.

Don't mix this up with supersampling aliasing... two different things.

Quote from Jakg :

I was bumbling about SO on my own today with 150 fps - but the second i drop in a full grid i'm looking at 45

Yep, but that is a result of your CPU not the graphics settings (for the most part). The AI eat frame rate. As long as you don't drop below 60 with a full grid online, then you really have it made. If you do drop that low, then it is a result of your Dynamic LOD and other LOD settings.

Quote from Iron :

Wrong. You definitely benefit from having more fps than your monitor's refresh rate. One example is more frequent reading of input devices -> less input lag.

What game are you playing? This is a discussion about LFS.
LFS cycles for input is not tied to frame rate in any way. Frame rate has nothing to do with the frequency of car position or physics updates. Frame rate is only how frequently your picture gets refreshed. How often your screen is refreshed is dependent on the frequncy setting for the monitor.

Anyone fancy doing something like this specifically for ATI cards?, especially my lowly X800PRO

Dan,

From my limited n00by experience with an ATi cards you can do i in the drivers or using the excellent ATi Tray Tools.

My bad, I wasn't strictly speaking about LFS. I just have a lot of experience with these kind of things, from playing the fastest FPS game on earth (in terms of gameplay and reaction times), QuakeWorld (aka Quake1), where every nuance counts (and which is a very old game with a very weird engine i admit, with physics tied to fps). I can feel the difference in QW between trilinear texture filtering, bilinear texture filtering, and no texture filtering. Although I also admit that LFS is not that demanding for so fast and precise inputs, so it is not a really important factor (fast and precise = in fps a few pixels distance can make the difference between hit and miss).

So if these things are in separate threads in LFS, then it wouldn't be a big problem to make them run on separate processor cores, making LFS multiple core ready (not a big problem = at least not a complete rewrite)? Or are they not neccessarily the same thing, programming wise?

I still think that limiting framerate is a bad idea. You won't get a smooth picture anyway (=tearing) unless you have a rock stable fps, meaning your minimum and maximum fps is equal at every single moment (and equals your monitor's refresh rate of course).

Someone mentioned that you should run games in your TFT's native resolution, because the picture quality is way better that way. True, but it's not the only reason too, the scaling of the picture takes time which introduces display lag. Which again, may not be so noticeble in a game like LFS, but i'd avoid it anyway.

how does this look

http://storm.game-serve.co.uk/images/mgfx.JPG

Like you need AF and custom textures!

(I'll post a pic of my whored one in a sec)

Quote from boyracer1981 :

how does this look

No offense, but it looks blurry. My resolution is much lower than yours and I think it looks better. I have only a lowly X1650 and can only do 1158x864 as I said earlier, and my distant textures such as the signs up ahead are not nearly that blurry. At least I don't think so, but perhaps it's because I'm looking at a screenshot now, and in the mix of racing with mine. No time to scrutinize my screen when in the middle of racing.

It would be interesting to see a screenshot comparison of everyone, using the same car/track and same location to compare.

Tada!

I don't think the FSAA is working, plenty of jaggies (windscreen, tires, mirrors), somehow the nHancer doesn't seem to load the profile or something:

with AF

http://storm.game-serve.co.uk/images/mgfxaf.JPG

with my spec laptop it should be much better