Track Physics in GPL

[gttouring]

Some of the tracks, which ar not of the GPL originals, or graphic enhancements, often have horrendous physics, not to mention AI....what is up here.
the "basement" tracks derived from slot car tracks are fun in a LAN group, but tey seem so icy, and many ovals the A.I. stinks and the physics is way off on the banking(lausitz mine is bad and daytona)
and maany other tracks, my copy of Brands Indy stinks like bad cheese, it is so slippy and i can barely keep a wheel on going from paddock to druids.
i have seen this on many nonGPLEA approved tracks and wondered what gives (Avus 59 works great, but my suzuka is awful, and my F1Indy)

also does Noonans Track converter work to make GPL tracks from NASCAR racing 2k3, and make tracks for N2K3 from GPL tracks too? (vice versa and verse vice-a)

[pirenzo]

Well, they're all the same track surface, its not something an editor can change. It gotta be down to set-up i should think

[Aysedasi]

I personally have never come across a particular track where I thought it was over slippy. There are tracks which are very difficult to drive quickly, of course. But then you also mention a lot of tracks which I've no great interest in.

[gttouring]

Ah Ayse- always one to count on, the basement tracks are fun for a party not as much as duking it out at brands, spa or watkins glen- hey where is Road america???

by the way I am also working on a new PC (building from scratch) which is the best site for GPL patches to work when i reinstall? i'll be running about P4 2.6Mhz and have a radeon 9600 Card - I think I'll stick with windows 98 though as i haven't got a hang of linux yet in fact i know nothing of it.

[gttouring]

oh and what about Snowitude- the winter version of Solitude?
is the track different then? whay is that so slippy

[pirenzo]

When i say can't change the surface, i mean you can't change the grip level of the tarmac surface. You could put in concrete surface instead which is slippier. I'm not sure what they used for Snowtude because i've never driven it, but if i did i might be able to tell.

[Aysedasi]

I've never driven Snowitude either.

[Try Hard]

GT if your interested I can point you to a site where you can get a legit copy of XP but at much cheaper prices than retail. Theres nothing illegal about them, they are just OEM copies that are "ment" to be sold with new pc's, and as such don't have a manual. My copy of XP pro cost ~£100, whilst i see home is ~£65.
Anyway, back on topic, I haven't a clue about track editing, and surfaces (although how about setting it as a damp surface?), but then again I would hardly notice anyway, as I have enough trouble staying on the track, let alone trying to figure out the surface
Ed

[gttouring]

and as new PC's go
what to do with my old one?
i was thinking of keeping it for word processing and some Surfing, and CounterStrike.
i was going to change the Chip for the biggest one i can stuff in it (it is an old slot 1 motherboard) and it is running a 512k cache P3 500Mhz
the question is is a Celeron 1.4 Ghz with a 128 cache a real improvement? as i under stand the memory in cache helps speed the thing along- any ideas?

[pirenzo]

by 128 cache do you mean RAM?

If you dop then that's exactly the same as my system, and so i'd recommend more ram than that. 256 or 512.
The 1.4GHz will be fine though, it's just things will load pretty slowly, and with graphics intensive tracks you will miss the start of races while your game loads up.

[Spudgun]

Extra on-board processor cache certainly does help although the performance difference isn't really enough to be noticeable.

A P3 and a Celeron are effectively the same chip except the Celeron has less cache and hence cheaper. If you had a 1.4 P3 and a 1.4 Celeron running side by side you wouldn't notice alot of difference.

The performance between a 1.4 and a 500 would be a significant increase and would be worth it (if the price is right of course ).

One thing I would suggest though is if you're going to do that upgrade, bung some more RAM in if you can. Lack of RAM is a big performance killer.

I'm running an Athlon Thunderbird 1.2Ghz, which is starting to get a little left behind with these processors in the late 2/early 3 Ghz bracket. But I've got a 1 gig of RAM in it which really, really helps. I can host a GPL race with at least 10 players (maybe more if my connection will allow it) and drive myself at a res of 1280x1024 with no slow-down whatsoever anywhere.

It especially helps for gaming since the more stuff it can store in RAM, the less it needs to refer back to the HD, which uses valuable CPU power when you really need it to get through Masta alive.

[Aysedasi]

What OS do you have Spud? I was always told that there was no point at all having more than 512 meg of RAM - in fact, I read that it could do more harm than good - but perhaps that was for later OS's?