GRAPHICS CHANGES and optimising rfactor 2

HI all
I have an i7 processor gtx 1060ti 6b card and 16 gb ram
.All my games load quickly and run in max graphics.
Rfactor 2 is generally ok but if I was to say run le mans on max graphics it takes forever to load.
Also, when loading (on any setting) the screen does this weird thing where the yellow bar is moving across to load track, the screen flashes and then the graphics appear way brighter...the graphics appear ok but slightly different. I'm running rfactor 2 as 64 bit and it is installed correctly on my c drive.

Firstly, please can anyone tell me suggested 3d graphics settings for rfactor 2 and nvideo control panel.
Secondly, can anyone please suggest whether I should be able to run an intensive track like le mans or nords on ultra with my system specs.
Finally, please suggest any other checks I can run to ensure I am running rfactor 2 optimally on my system - in terms of graphics and loading.

All help is much appreciated as always!
Andrew

 

Bear in mind every time you change (most) graphics settings and then load a track, the shaders (or some other voodoo stuff) get rebuilt and greatly increases the load time. If you leave the settings alone the next load (even after a restart/reboot) will be faster. But especially big tracks are never a 5 second load. Sometimes people struggle when entering competitions because by the time the track loads (especially that first time) a 3-minute timeout is up and the server has booted them.

You haven't given screen resolution but I suspect that card will generally struggle on recent content on ultra settings. As in, struggle to run at constant excellent fps - but exact figures will need someone who cares more. I run triples on a 1070ti and compromise enough on graphics (without getting too technical with it) to keep 60fps in dry conditions, at least.

@DrivingFast may happen along and give you some good pointers, he does that a lot. And it's often useful info.

 

@Andrew F

The FPS in rF2 can change incredibly depending on the race conditions.

The following conditions, especially cumulative, destroy the FPS :

- Rain, to a lesser extent the numerous clouds, the day/night cycle in particular between 4:00 PM or 5:00 PM and 10:00 AM, the time scale decreases CPU performance a little bit especially when there are shadows and all the light effects, the number of AI plays a huge role in the CPU load but also the FPS and VRAM which must be sufficient.

So the first thing to do is to set the race conditions in a reasonable and thoughtful manner :

- between 20 and 30 AI only
- maybe you will have to deprive yourself of the time slot that I mentioned above.
- If you do not want to drive in the rain or very rarely, deactivate the "rain" and "road reflection" effects.
- If you lack VRAM on very demanding circuits like the Nurburgring, it may be necessary to put the circuit details on high (against ultra).

The high parameters that I recommend to start with, to associate with the adapted race conditions, are :

- AI visible max 9 or 10 (very important setting
- circuit detail : full
- player detail: full
- opponent detail: LOW
- texture detail: full
- X16 anisotropic
- special effects: medium
- shadows : high
- shadow blur : fast
- soft particles : off
- rain drops : medium
- road reflection : high
- environment reflection : high
- post effect : medium, AA level 3.

These are the parameters are high.

Then you would have to go down a notch :
Detail circuit, texture detail (not X16 anisotropic), rain drops and road reflection, post effect low.

Then if that is not enough :
Environment reflection low and shadows medium and shadow blur off, post effect off, AA level 2.

 

@Lazza @DrivingFast
Thank you so much for your help. I'm going to save these settings and try them. You guys deserve a lot of praise for helping people!

 

Hi I use this thread to not open another one with a similar question. I use a triple full hd monitor driven by a pc with an i7-6700 CPU, Gpu gtx1070 and 16Gb of RAM. With this configuration, I struggle with Le Mans with the settings all at idle. Do you have any advice on the parameters to change in the game folders which helps to stress the pc less? I always play online and I am preparing a 24h so any conditions are possible. Thanks

 

@ivaldi85 You can start by using the settings of @DrivingFast, they are a pretty good baseline.

 

@stonec The problem is that they are already lower and not constant. I blocked the max frame rate at 80 but I also go down to 40 and every now and then I have big slowdowns ...

 

1) make sure in your windows energy options that you run the plan of highest performance so you won´t throttle down your cpu if you dont have focus on rf2 ( i really dont understand why rf2 releases auto-high performance when it looses focus)
2) make sure in your nvidea control that energy option is on maximum performance else it may throttle down. Also set threaded optimization to off, and latency at best on "on" but not on "ultra"
3) Check by recource manager -> cpu whether one core is on maximum load allways. If so, do NOT use Max. Framerate which may CAUSE this. Try Sync mode video and your screen mode to full window 60hz (or whatever your monitor rate is), which is a auto-throttle to 60fps. It is better if you have a monitor with higher refresh rate for less latency.

If all is checked and does not help, you may post your player.json so we could check fro some options there

 

A little late to the party but going through different threads as to hitting a sweet spot for graphic settings. I believe @davehenrie posted of lower opponent cockpit settings (sorry working off spotty memory) and @DrivingFast suggestion to rum LOW opponent detail. Are these one and the same?
Also, several posts on a wide variety of settings (FFB,AI behavior, etc..) refer to the file(s) itself for making changes using Notepad, is there some that should be looked at and where are they?
Thank you for sharing your expertise.

 

The file you want to edit for 'most' of the graphic changes is the Player.json. It is located inside the rFactor2/UserData/Player folder.
AFAIK, .json is just another version of a .txt file. There may be differences, but it works the same way. There are several .json files that govern much of can be changed in rF2. Open up the player.json file by double clicking and that will usually launch a txt editor. Then SLOWLY read each line. Usually there are two lines per instruction. One that governs the rule, such as MakePlayerFaster=True. (that's fake btw, trust me I've been looking for that for years in these files) Then the next line explains the choices, true or false, 0,1,2,3 etc. Think of it as a REM statement from the good days of basic.

 

Thank you @davehenrie, silly question perhaps but I get a little paranoid changing things. Do you keep a change log or is it possible to make the font BOLD or ITALIC to note changes, as in example I changed to false, and have it execute properly?
"Load Opponent Cockpits":false,
"Load Opponent Cockpits#":"Whether to load gauges and LCD for opponents, don't turn off if you're planning on hot-swapping vehicles in multiplayer",

 

Be cautious with this option, I recently set it to false and the textures of the whipers and the dashboard were white, at least on the MacLaren 720GT3. Maybe the fault is the combination of my settings but check it if you change it.
Greetings

 

you can leave yourself a note in the comment line. After the last word, muliplayer. add Originally "Load Opponent Cockpits";true THEN make sure the line ends with a quotation mark AND a comma.

"Load Opponent Cockpits#":"Whether to load gauges and LCD for opponents, don't turn off if you're planning on hot-swapping vehicles in multiplayer. Originally "Load Opponent Cockpits";true ",

Every line you edit needs to have the exact same last character, for example, after false there is a comma. if you change it to true it must also have the comma. =true,

 

In the Nvdia Control Panel 3D settings there are two settings which can help with performance.
(1) Set Power management mode to Prefer maximum performance.
(2) Set Texture filtering - Quality to High performance.
Leave all other settings as default.
Here's a video on how to get more FPS without over clocking your GPU.

 

Noticeable change in FPS by changing opponent cockpit to false and turning rain and road reflections to OFF. Doing this allowed me to increase detail shadow and blur. Took the advice suggested by @Highlandwalker and saw a slight drop in FPS but the load on the GPU dropped by a greater percentage. Having seen this I will look into the UI of the GPU and see if I can apply the 2 Cents from Jay.
Thanks again everyone I feel like I'm on the right path now.

edit for follow up; I ran Afterburner and maxed out power and temp limits as described in video I then took some time to learn how to OC my GPU and was able to get an additional 130 MHz from the core clock and 375 MHz from the memory to run at 1974/4374. That was enough to gain some FPS to crank up the shadows and blur to max. Don't really do rain or night so can't speak to that but getting on average 75 fps (60-90) on triple screens with max settings, I am one happy racer.
So to anyone experiencing some issues with graphic settings takes the advice of these guys as it made rF2 soooo much better for me, I guess it would for you too.

 

i have good result with the gtx 1070 ti 8go msi
i run with 220 fps on 3840*2160 pixel on 32" samsung with f1 1988 on circuit d azur
i use dsr for windows
all setting of graphics game are off except track low, player full , opponent full, x16

 

hi guys interesting read .I have been having some weird problem regarding graphics performance maybe you know the answer.
When im playing offline with lots of cars i have no problem all is running smooth.
Then same mod GTE same cars driving in a league online and even im lowering details visible cars compare to offline but im having choppy game when sometimes GPU goes 100% usage and fps dropping to aboout 100 with capped frame 120 fps .
But why is stuttering if im running gsync and why only online . Even sometimes with only few cars online i am having this i dont understand .

 

Hi Pablo11 Don't know if this will help but here goes. I have fibre internet which is fast, 1gb down 50mb up, but I ran into the same issue that you are having. When I'm at our local server, Australia, we run at 64 bit in the rf2 internet settings. So when i went to race on American server I forgot to change the internet settings. I was getting stutter warping choppy etc. Then I remembered to change the internet setting to as fast as it could and no more problems. Like I said don't know if it will help but have a look. Cheers Paul

 

a new driver for nvidia graphic card, and it s very good now (gtx1070ti)

 

I don't know if will bve useful, but take a look to your network settings in rF2.
Here you have a guide from Jimmi Allison
https://forum.simracing.club/index.php?threads/network-settings.4073/