VOGONS


Reply 20 of 72, by chinny22

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Another big fan of the game. Back when it was new I would buy each and every model of car and redo every race in Evo mode. Needless to say I got real good with the 356's with all the different versions, and could lap 1/2 the cars on the Monte Carlo tracks in one, even the early Golden age cars!

Steering wheel is a must and well worth the learning curve. I use a Logitech Formula Force.
Back then I had a GF2 so played in Direct 3D, but these days I would think something like the Ti4600 and a Glide wrapper would be best?

Ensonic PCI is a good card and was what I actually used back then, but these days I'd go with a card that has EAX, Audigy 2 ZS has the cleanest output of any Win98 SoundBlaster.

Reply 22 of 72, by SpectriaForce

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Back in 2000 I used a Microsoft Sidewinder Game Pad Pro with this game. Now I use a Logitech Wingman Precision game pad. For my large hands this last one has a better grip and there's no metallic paint that can worn off. The only disadvantage is that in factory driver you need to make some handbrake 360 spins, for which you still need the keyboard.

The monitor that I use is an Eizo Flexscan S1701 (17''), which is great for this game, no ghosting, good contrast and brightness.

These are all resolution and color settings in my game:

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Reply 23 of 72, by henryVK

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I loved this game so much.. I think my machine at the time was a 600 MHz Celeron with either a TNT 2 Pro or a Geforce 2 MX. Afaik that would let you play with high details at 1024*768.

Reply 24 of 72, by SpectriaForce

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A little update. I've tested NFS Porsche with an Asus GF3 Ti 500 and an Asus GF2 Ti. Interestingly the GF3 Ti 500 performs slightly better (higher frame rate) compared to the Quadro4 380XGL, best visible in 1280x1024. With AA and AF maxed out the frame rate was still too low in high resolutions on this pc. Furthermore my GF3 Ti 500 initially had some boot up issues, but after swapping with another card, it finally did install without beeps and artifacts on the screen. In Windows everything is razor sharp and works smoothly, but in NFS I do have some unsharp text in the menu (other than that everything is fine):

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I have changed nothing in the software, so I still use DirectX 7 and the same NVIDIA driver.

I was surprised to see that indeed a GF2 card performs pretty well in NFS Porsche. I've only done a really quick test, I need to put in some more time. What I did notice though is that with AA and AF maxed out the frame rate is again way too low.

I will soon test the game with a GF4 Ti4200 and Ti4600. I also need to try out a FPS counter, like FRAPS. Perhaps my PIII CPU is simply too slow to get the maximum out of this game, we shall see 😀

Reply 26 of 72, by SpectriaForce

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Well I have tested the game using the same setup (see first post) and now with Fraps (camera view: bird, large distance):

GF4 Ti 4600 max. AA + AF, texture sharpening, max. all in game details, 1024x768x32 bits

23 fps max.

GF4 Ti 4600 no AA + AF, no texture sharpening, max. all in game details, 1024x768x32 bits

43 fps max.

GF2 Ti max. AA + AF, texture sharpening, max. all in game details, 1024x768x32 bits

16 fps max.

GF2 Ti no AA + AF, no texture sharpening, max. all in game details, 1024x768x32 bits

37 fps max.

Another interesting fact is that with my GF4 Ti 4600, 4200 and GF3 Ti 500 I can see the unsharp texts in the whole game. Yes I know, these are all DX8 cards..

I really wonder what it takes to get better frame rates. In the future I will try out a faster CPU, I'm curious!

Last edited by SpectriaForce on 2018-04-28, 19:10. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 27 of 72, by vvbee

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I've no problems running it on a matrox g400 at 640 x 480, solid 60 fps generally. Don't prefer it on geforce cards though, mipmapping looks too sharp to be correct.

I kinda remember the fps struggling on a duron 900 + fx 5500.

Reply 28 of 72, by SpectriaForce

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vvbee wrote:

I've no problems running it on a matrox g400 at 640 x 480, solid 60 fps generally. Don't prefer it on geforce cards though, mipmapping looks too sharp to be correct.

I kinda remember the fps struggling on a duron 900 + fx 5500.

That’s the lowest resolution setting I believe, with large speedometer and rpm counter. I by the way have tested on 640x480 as well and the frame rate only improved with a few frames. I couldn’t get 60fps ‘solid’. I will test the game on other systems in the future to see whether your and some other statements posted here hold up.

Reply 29 of 72, by squiggly

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I played this back in the day. Pretty sure I had either a Duron or an Athlon (maybe even a Sempron) with some variant of a Geforce2 (maybe a GTS?). I recall playing it with a joystick, the Sidewinder Precision Pro to be exact: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/common … ecision_Pro.jpg.

And I would love that case by the way...3" bays...droool.

Reply 30 of 72, by vvbee

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SpectriaForce wrote:

That’s the lowest resolution setting I believe, with large speedometer and rpm counter. I by the way have tested on 640x480 as well and the frame rate only improved with a few frames. I couldn’t get 60fps ‘solid’. I will test the game on other systems in the future to see whether your and some other statements posted here hold up.

It's the only resolution as far as I'm concerned. I recently tested the game on a matrox mystique and even that managed about 10 fps all maxed. That's with an athlon xp in there.

Reply 31 of 72, by SpectriaForce

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Another update: there seems to be quite a difference in frame rate between the various camera views. The front bumper camera view gives a higher frame rate than the bird camera view (card: Quadro4 380XGL, DX8.0a):

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Reply 32 of 72, by SpectriaForce

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vvbee wrote:
SpectriaForce wrote:

That’s the lowest resolution setting I believe, with large speedometer and rpm counter. I by the way have tested on 640x480 as well and the frame rate only improved with a few frames. I couldn’t get 60fps ‘solid’. I will test the game on other systems in the future to see whether your and some other statements posted here hold up.

It's the only resolution as far as I'm concerned. I recently tested the game on a matrox mystique and even that managed about 10 fps all maxed. That's with an athlon xp in there.

I currently use a PIII 866 MHz. So I think there's some room for improvement.

Reply 34 of 72, by Tsukiouji

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SpectriaForce wrote:

Another interesting fact is that with my GF4 Ti 4600, 4200 and GF3 Ti 500 I can see the unsharp texts in the whole game. Yes I know, these are all DX8 cards..

To fix unsharp text you should play with pixel center to find the best alignment. ATI cards prone to this too.

SpectriaForce wrote:

I really wonder what it takes to get better frame rates. In the future I will try out a faster CPU, I'm curious!

Beware of the `fast CPU texture LOD bug` which kicks in (afair) after ~1GHz and going really wild at 2GHz+. There are patches to fix that.
Btw, I wholeheartedly recommend to patch NFS:PU extensivly with now-tried and available community patches, like "NFS5 Essentials" which fixes alot of car parts too.

Reply 35 of 72, by Almoststew1990

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N4SP2K is one of my favourites too. For my ultimate N4SP2K build, as boring as it sounds, I would use any old post-2003 hardware and Windows XP with a SB Live or Audigy card for EAX support. That way I know I'm achieving a constant 75 fps, thanks to XP I can use my 360 controller easily for analogue throttle, brakes and steering, with minimal hassle. For me sometimes it is the hardware that is fun, sometimes the games. On this occasion for me it is the game itself, not what I am running it on.

Ryzen 3700X | 16GB 3600MHz RAM | AMD 6800XT | 2Tb NVME SSD | Windows 10
AMD DX2-80 | 16MB RAM | STB LIghtspeed 128 | AWE32 CT3910
I have a vacancy for a main Windows 98 PC

Reply 36 of 72, by rasz_pl

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SpectriaForce wrote:
RogueTrip2012 wrote:

Anyway, so far DX7a seems to work fine, but I wonder whether DX8.x can improve graphics performance.

It doesnt work like that, its not like 1 better is faster or anything. This is a DX7 game and will ONLY use DX7 calls.
What you really want is a modern w10 system with 4GHz, GTX something or other card and nglide wrapper for smooth 4K 60fps gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM6aalHvxn0
http://www.iplounge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=10087

Open Source AT&T Globalyst/NCR/FIC 486-GAC-2 proprietary Cache Module reproduction

Reply 37 of 72, by God Of Gaming

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Randomly found this thread as I'm playing trough the game right now and wanted to google something about it and this came up. I don't like necroing but wanted to add a couple of things.

First, as far as I know, the game does not look better in Glide than in DX7, visuals are pretty much identical, unlike the older NFS games where Glide indeed looks better. Whats more, in Porsche, projected headlights are broken in Glide, so in fact DX7 is the way to go.

And second, idk what issues the OP had with getting the game to run on DX9, but I'm playing it right now on winXP with i7 and GTX 780, and I had no problems at all with making it work, pretty much installed it, updated it, launched it and it worked. Other than the widescreen patch I applied seemingly being Vert- (will stick with 4:3 next time I install it), and needing to apply a fix for the 2ghz+ texture bug, the game seems to work great. In fact I bet it will be just as easy to make it work on win7 as well.

TbbwVrJ.jpg

1999 Dream PC project | DirectX 8 PC project | 2003 Dream PC project

Reply 38 of 72, by foil_fresh

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I'm getting about 40fps at 1024 resolution on an Athlon 2200+ machine with a Radeon 9550. The brake light textures and the floor of the garage in the menus (the floor is a disco party when it's meant to be a downlight from the roof) are the only glitchy stuff I see. The projection headlights also don't look as good as I remember.

Would using a 6800GT fix the graphical stuff?

Win98se btw.

Reply 39 of 72, by marioman23

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I didn't have any issues on either my T42 (Dothan Pentium M, Radeon 7500) or my IBM PC300PL build (Coppermine Piii 1000 on MSI Slotket, nVidia Quadro SDR) Of course I ran 1024 too. Hey love that Noiseblocker fan, used the same one on my IBM 🤣. My IBM is having some BIOS issues that are probably related to capacitors I've already replaced once before... I have another Compaq with an Athlon XP 2200+ and a Quadro 700 XGL (basically in-between a Ti4400/4600) that I'm thinking of trying it on just to see what happens. I do have a 9800 Pro and a 1600x1200 Dell Ultrasharp VA panel I could try it with...

IBM PC 300PL (1 GHz PIII on MSI-6905 SlotKet, Quadro 256 SDR, SoundBlaster Live!)
Various ThinkPads
HP DC5800 (Xeon X3360, 9800 GT Akimbo)
Various vintage Macs + C64 + Vic-20
And of course the main rig (ASUS Prime X370 Pro, Ryzen 5 1400, HD 7850, etc)