To be really brutally honest, over the years I've had ATI and Nvidia cards... and I have an opinion (dangerous haha!)
My friend today recommends an ATI, as they get the best benchmarks per £/$ etc
Tomorrow, if it's an Nvidia, that is what he would recommend.
However, at least for the gaming market that we buy within, Nvidia DO produce better gfx cards with better all-round support in my experience. The last high-end gaming ATI card I bought got on my nerves so much with less support for useful things... yes, things that not most gamers would want, but they were cheaper because they simply didn't offer everything a GFX card SHOULD imo offer.
I think it's good that a game like Racer is showing the glaring issues with ATI's ignorance of support for other API's in their full! Why buy an ATI when it's clearly inferior?
Racer is pretty much showing you how naff an ATI card is... simply buy an Nvidia for your next gfx card.
PS, this choice I made was from ATI being crap generally and deciding not to buy, before Racer NEEDED full-CG support... the fact Nvidia do support CG fully simply backs up my choice that Nvidia will always try provide a fully-featured GFX card and drivers even at the gamer level, making them useful for workstation use etc etc!
As per the movement forward, I'm generally positive for Racer to develop, in a year all this will be water under the bridge and Racer will look more fantastic than it ever has no doubt!
What is frustrating right now is that as someone who tinkers with Racer almost every day, I am finding I spend a disproportionate amount of time staring more and more problems in the face. Things change at every release that simply didn't need to, or if they do, there is no solid logic for it mentioned.
I must have spent at least 24hrs solid over a week trying to work out why flags for my sky box were making my cars hover off the track in one instance, then another time for many hours trying to work out how movables should be set up elegantly in the movables.ini files, and after doing a load of work, the next release saw them back in geometry.ini...
TrackEd that destroys formatting, making it utterly useless. Imagine setting a few properties for a few cone types (small, medium large) at the head of the already large geometry.ini file, and then defining a hundred cone movables elegantly referencing those definitions. Then after using trackEd the file is suddenly 100x bigger, and essentially un-manageable!
Please think about content creators. We are not stupid. After almost a decade of messing with Racer I have a pretty good idea of what a content creator wants and needs wrt to the Racer platform. Rather than ignore us, or change things without consulting us, or even change things and simply not say, just think about telling us your plans and maybe get some feedback first. Or at the very least just give us a more detailed change log and examples of how the new things should work so we don't waste days or weeks labouring over something that will change the next release, or is known to be broken... yes it is a beta, but it wouldn't do any harm to just talk more about what does or doesn't work, or guide our efforts to more value for Racer generally
The community puts TONS of hours in. Maybe we need to be better at telling you what we need, a really well moderated bug thread perhaps, some official FAQ's on here that are cross-referenced by the Racer team, and updated or notified where needed when things change. (ie, what flags do I **REALLY** need for a sky box... what shader f/v files should I use, and how should each one be implemented, giving examples)
Simple stuff, we can all work better. Just please take on board what we are saying. Ie, when new shaders that look fantastic and support older content are posted up (Stereo's alpha controlling reflection mapping), it'd be nice to see them included in future releases!
When I say that there is no way to enable live envmapping apart from editing Racer.ini by hand, that means the menu/setup system is lacking. I think most Racer users use Raven, and that says to me that Racers menu is lacking. I bet even the Racer dev team use Raven
Sorry for the mini-rant, I'm positive in my negativity.
I see HUGE potential for Racer, I just want it to be the best it can! When it has worked well in the past, it's been fantastic! Those best times were probably when there was some stasis to Racer. Lets hope we get there soon and see the likes of Stecki or Tops wanting to make their ground-breaking content again for Racer without fear of it all looking pants in 6 months because shaders got changed
Dave