I have to admit that I've been spoilt with R3E. You see, I have a relatively modest set up to play driving sims on - it's a laptop with an i7 CPU and an Nvidia GTX790M GPU on board along with an ultrawide 1080p monitor. Quite frankly, I've been amazed at how good the game looks and runs off line using this set up with relatively few compromises with regard to visual quality settings. I can get a constant 60fps (admittedly with VSync on to help smooth things out) giving a lovely smooth looking and tear free ride. In order to achieve this however I need to keep my AI car count down a bit. This is to be expected for my set up, and I have no complaints at all. However. Take a look at the table below. This shows how many AI opponents I can happily run before I start loosing frames (dropping erratically to the 50-55fps region) which is where things start getting choppy. Track / Max Opponents for constant 60fps Brands Hatch / 19 Hungaroring / 19 Knutstorp / 19 Mazda Laguna Seca / 19 Mid Ohio / 19 Norisring / 19 Portimao / 19 Sachsenring / 19 Sonoma / 19 Spa / Between 4 and 9 Zandvoort / 16 These tests were carried out with me starting at the back of the grid so that all of the cars were in view in order to put maximum pressure on the PC to perform. I then ran a lap or two keeping all of the AI cars in sight in front of me. As you can see there's one track that stands out quite a bit! The main area on the Spa track that causes the problem is right at the start, going into turn one and then along the straight towards Eau Rouge. Any more than 9 AI cars and things get very choppy indeed and the only way to keep to a constant 60fps is to have no more than 4 AI cars on track with me. The rest of the track runs at 60fps no problem. It's important to note that these results are all relative. I know that if I get a faster computer things will improve, but the point I'm making here is that relatively speaking, these parts of the Spa circuit do not appear to run as smoothly as elsewhere on the track nor do they run as well as the other tracks I've tested. Even Norisring with it's many track-side trees and buildings throughout can deliver a constant smooth 60fps for me. Hence my appeal to the Devs. Would it be possible to take a look at Spa and see if these parts of the track could be improved? It's a very popular and legendary circuit that would really benefit from a little bit of gentle tweaking.
Spa has some impressive views, which means the CPU is incredibly busy because so much of the world is visible at the same time. Compare this to Macau where buildings block out most of the view. I think this explains a lot of the framerate issues with Spa. Nords probably has the same issue. There was talk of adding some LOD mapping to trackside objects and buildings. Not sure where this went
Yeah, while I was trying different settings I did set the trackside LOD to low and turned off track side animations on Spa just to see what would happen. There was some improvement, but the frame rates still dropped and stuttered quite badly compared to all the other tracks with a high LOD setting. Maybe it's that really long view up to Eau Rouge together with the extensive stadiums that's doing it?
You might have got it turned off already but I found that 'lens effects' was the biggest frame rate killer for me.
Same here, with an old Phenom II x4 my settings allow 55-60fps during starts on most other tracks (except for Nords) when starting from middle pack or the back, but at Spa from the starting straight until Eau Rouge it can stay at only 45-48fps for an extended period. I guess this is expectable when CPU limited, given that DX9 depends a lot on it for draw calls, but if some LOD mapping could be implemented for trackside objects/buildings, it could help a lot when using low/med track detail settings. Thanks.
I run my triple setup with mid to high settings on all tracks with 60FPS just on SPa there is an big performance drop on Start/finish and between Bruxelles and Pouhon.
Same here. Reminds me of GTR2 where the pit area always was a little delicate to pass by (frame drop) no matter which track..