rFactor Issues

[JoeNathanYouTube]

Okay, kids gather around because its story time.

I just recently purchased rFactor for several reasons. My computer and the modding community being the biggest factors. I tried the demo and thought the game played well and looked reasonable.Then I come back to rFactor, this time I have the full game. It has now come to my attention that the game looks horrific, specifically the circuit quality and mirror quality. They are severely lacking detail and are very pixelated. I've never seen an rFactor video on YouTube with this poor of a picture, so what mods are they using? I've found none to help.
And mods, those are a whole different story. I've "installed" a few mods, an F1 2014 mod which worked, a 2012 Stock Car mod which didn't work and corrupted the F1 mod, and then the Enduracers mod which worked. Now anything I try to install wont work. It gives me an error saying "The system could not find the path specified."

So far, buying rFactor has been the biggest bust. I need help.

 

[Paul Bennett]

I would try a complete fresh re-install maybe your best option. When you want to install a mod make a new copy (copy&paste) all files to a new folder then install the mod of choice. Some mods don't mix good with others, and it's trail & error finding good ones. As for graphics it's a bit dated but still worth the effort.

 

[JoeNathanYouTube]

Thanks for your suggestion. Still doesn't explain how come the videos I've seen on YouTube look so much better than what I have currently. Is that just video editing and rendering though?

Edit: I also am not quite sure the best spot to download mods is. I honestly don't like rfactor central.
I want some oval racing if possible. Some high quality oval racing. Oh and a little bit of endurance racing. So oval tracks/cars and endurance tracks.

 

[JoeNathanYouTube]

I don't want to give up, but all of the links to the mods/downloads are all taken down or out of service. This is pitiful, I can't do anything.

 

[Paul Bennett]

http://www.xtremefactor.es/en/descargas.html
http://www.bockbierbude.de/index.php
http://www.nogripracing.com/index.php#

 

[JoeNathanYouTube]

Thanks, you've been plenty help.

 

[JoeNathanYouTube]

Do you know how get the rfactor central client to work? I decided to give it a shot for the 1 click to install thing, but it says it stops working immediately after I click the download link on the site.

 

[Chronus]

Joe,

you don't need 1-click installs. With a little patience, you can search for the type of mods you want (Stock car evolution, for instance), download it via the standard way, open the archive manually and look at the structure of files and folders.

Usually, well packaged mods (most are careful enough to respect the ISIMotor2 game file structure) have the following folder tree:
- RFM
- MUSIC
- GAMEDATA
- UIDATA


By and large, rfm files have the name of the mod itself, so there is little chance of overwriting original content. The same goes for MUSIC and UIDATA. But do a folder comparison just to be sure.

Inside GAMEDATA, you ought to find:
- TALENT (rcd files: AI)
- SOUNDS
- VEHICLES (Teams in SIMBIN titles)
- SHARED (specific gmt files, shaders, etc)

Some mods come with their own shaders and user interface files, some also have some plugins (which go in two locations, usually: PLUGINS (at the root) and in the root itself.

You'll see VEHICLES holds the files for standard MAS files (compressed archives for holding gmt, textures, etc). Some mods do replace original MAS files, reason why it's good practice to back up existing ones. This folder also holds many other folders, all related to different modded vehicles (or series). By and large, most mods DO NOT TOUCH existing content here, and the same can be said about the SOUNDS and TALENT folders' content.

If you take 1 hour of your time just to understand these bits, understand the folder structure, you'll see it pays well.

Regarding mods and content: there are top notch mods (from Bristow, Niels, FVR) and very good mods (one that I have completed revamped myself but still find it very good is EOAA GT, by Rich Allenby). There are a lot of mods which come from people who do not dive into the physics side of rF, though. Anyway, there's a lot of mods ad tracks that make rF phenomenal.

Regarding your gfx issues:
- what are your specs? The only times I saw "pixelation" was with friends that had defective gfx cards, corrupted drivers or incompatible cards and systems.
- what's the content of your config.ini? That's the file "generated" each time you launch rF. Have a look at it and search for these entries on the web:
CPURating=4
SystemRAM=3896
VideoRAM=1692
ObjDetail=1
TexDetail=1
VideoGUID=<card ID string here>
VideoDriver=0
VideoMode=1
VideoRefresh=0
WindowedMode=0
RunBenchmarks=0
FSAA=0
VSync=0
ShaderLevel=3
SubViews=0
WidescreenUI=1
MinimumVidRes=(800, 600)
MaximumVidRes=(8000, 6000)

There's a few things you can do with the config.ini, there's also a lot you can do with the .plr file (player file, but that's another story).

G'luck.

 

[Paul Bennett]

@Chronus, I see your well ahead of me in the techie stuff. Got me thinking about the config.ini, I checked some of my installs they all look a little different. I have no major issues with graphics so I should just leave alone, or is there a tweak that gives a boost.

My old PC specs : Win XP , dual core, Nvidia GeForce 9800 gt

 

[Chronus]

Hi, Paul.

There is something that made a difference for me and some people.

SystemRAM=<system memory as is; got 4GB, input 4096>
VideoRAM=<video RAM; got 512 MB, input it here>

Some people advise VideoRAM as 1.5 actual vidmemory, I see no reason for that.

Also,
CPURating=5 (often defaults to 1 or 0), 5 being the RSC threads recommended value (and MAX)
ObjDetail=5
TexDetail=5
ShaderLevel=3 (as per original/standard rFactor's shaders, 3 is defined as DX9)
RunBenchmarks=0

I advise VSYNC off (for the obvious reasons).

It's up to each user to define FSAA level - I set it a driver level, and it works fine.

---
By the way, I have a quad-core Phenom and the same gfx chipset (Nvidia 9800 GT) as you.

 

[Paul Bennett]

Here's my default config with Win XP , 2gb ram , dual core, GeForce 9800 gt.
I did make the changes you suggested but did n't see a giant leap in frames

CPURating=5
SystemRAM=2044
VideoRAM=1513
ObjDetail=3
TexDetail=3
VideoGUID=D7B71E3E-4545-11CF-131F-0D2003C2CB35
VideoDriver=0
VideoMode=39
VideoRefresh=1
WindowedMode=0
RenderMethod=0
RenderTexSize=0
RunBenchmarks=1
FSAA=0
VSync=0
ShaderLevel=0
SubViews=0
WidescreenUI=1
CustomVidRes=(0, 0)
MinimumVidRes=(800, 600)
MaximumVidRes=(8000, 6000)

 

[Chronus]

Here's my default config with Win XP , 2gb ram , dual core, GeForce 9800 gt.
I did make the changes you suggested but did n't see a giant leap in frames

CPURating=5
SystemRAM=2044
VideoRAM=1513
ObjDetail=3
TexDetail=3
RunBenchmarks=1
FSAA=0
VSync=0
ShaderLevel=0

Did you then change the above? To...?

Increasing detail will have a slight decrement in FPS (from 3 to 5, that is).

Probably, and conversely, decreasing detail from 3 to 1 will slightly boost FPS.

Also, as you're not testing nor developing, set RunBenchmarks to 0. Anyway, when set at 1, memory related settings will revert to whatever the config program "detects" (we know it was designed for WIN XP, but in some cases I have seen bad mem configs even with XP).

As for Shaderlevel, I force it to 3 (as opposed to auto) - I read about people complaining of the quality of shaders on auto, and having a marked improvement upon forcing to DX9.

Also noteworthy, some editors/merge tools will change/add the odd bit or two, which will cause the config program to run again (thereby forcing the user to redefine its config settings) and ignore the config.ini you just modified.

 

[Paul Bennett]

Yes I made changes just showing you the default config for starters, will have a bit more time with thanks for the advice

 

[JoeNathanYouTube]

Thanks guys, its just that the 1 click install is so convenient, but unfortunately isn't supported on Windows 8

 

[Warren Schembri]

I am also a bit new to rFactor.
However, for rFactor, there is a Lite version and if you want to install a mod, it is best to first install the Lite version of rFactor and then install the mod into the just installed Lite version.

Basically, the rule of thumb is, each mod should have its own install of rFactor.

 

[JoeNathanYouTube]

well thats kinda weird. alright thanks.