The online racing simulator
Automatically changing graphics settings in a race?
Hi!

Background:
I got this idea when seeing people with second grade hardware complaining about low framerates in the beginning of races with large grids. I've noticed that as the race progresses and there are fewer cars in your immediate vicinity, the framerates go up. Take me as an example: if I maximize AA and AF, everything runs smooth with only a few cars around me (which is how it is for most of the duration of a race), but my framerates are so low in the beginning of the race that I'm forced to play with "only" 2x AA and 4x AF for the duration of the race. In my case it isn't that much of an issue since the game still looks great with my race settings, but I'd imagine it could be a problem for people who have to disable AA and AF alltogether in order to get decent FPS in the beginning of a race.

Suggestion:
What I'm wondering is if it would be possible to implement a feature that automatically changes graphics settings in the game to keep frame rates above a user defined minimum as the race progresses. So that in the beginning when the whole grid is in frame AA and AF and stuff would be turned down, but then as the race progresses these things would be turned on again to make the graphics better? Would that be at all possible? I imagine it would be hard to seamlessly integrate it so that the view doesn't stutter as the settings get changed, but perhaps this can be overcome by some clever design?

I had a look through the forum and didn't see this mentioned elsewhere, so I figured I'd start a new thread.
#2 - bbman
Already in, called "Dynamic LOD reduction"...
#3 - herki
LFS doesn't use AA and AF natively. So it's up to the user to turn it down/off in the grahpic card options if their framerate suffers. Should be common sense
He's not talking about LOD... but it is a neat suggestion. I don't think it should be top priority as users can set it up for themselves and such even though they could run slightly higher after race start - it really isn't that much of a graphical difference.
But if you implemented that, then people with less powerful CPUs would actually get lower framerates because LFS would be constantly calculating whether it should or shouldn't enable a certain feature. Doesn't seem like a good idea, on an application level at least. Maybe as a feature in a graphics driver it would be better.
#6 - bbman
Quote from blackbird04217 :He's not talking about LOD... but it is a neat suggestion. I don't think it should be top priority as users can set it up for themselves and such even though they could run slightly higher after race start - it really isn't that much of a graphical difference.

In a way he did - otherwise his suggestion would be completely pointless, as LfS doesn't use either AA or AF natively...

In other words: why would you worry about the volume on your radio if you can't even turn it on?

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