Pyronick

I've had races through rFactor, Live for Speed and GTR Evolution that were very intense, took about 1-2 hours and were about a few hundreds of milliseconds per lap and precisely timed pitstops almost every week!Maybe they aren't the graphically best looking games, but I guarantee you that it's very exciting every single time. Way more fun than I ever had with GRID, Toca/DTM race driver, DIRT, etc. If you have a G25, TrackIR and a powerful PC, I really recommend playing GTR Evolution, rFactor or Live for Speed. ;) It's as close as you can get without having to pay for iRacing (which isn't that great imho) or without having your own go-kart/track monster.

Afaik, the DirectX 9 API was never really built for multi-GPU configurations and massively parallel processing. But even with nVidia's 6th (technically 3th) generation and ATI's 3th generation multi-GPU configurations most games still have trouble. Only if DirectX 10 was available to Windows XP...

Yeah, I found out after I installed the game.The driving physics in terms of momentum do feel realistic, but corner speeds are crazy. The grip is near impossible and traction control can't be disabled on most cars. Also the Volvo 240 Turbo isn't as skittish/snappy as it is in real life.

Afaik, the forests in Crysis and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion were computer generated and then slightly adjusted to add some extra detail.It's not realtime, but it should be possible to do in realtime on either the GPU through shaders or on the CPU through SMT processing.

Well the Brawn GP car obviously has the best chassis and a top tier engine.Jenson and Rubinho are both still good drivers. Hamilton doesn't stand a chance without the developing input and telemetry of Alonso. Ferrari, McLaren and Honda must be pulling their hairs out... Brilliant! :D

If the Sony-Intel deal is true, the brawn of Intel might finally push OpenGL (and OpenCL) to modern standards. Hopefully we'll be released from the DirectX API at that point.

If the logics/algorithms are properly made and tested, computers might actually be far better texture artists.The human brains works with patterns, we can distinguish a lot of natural patterns like the number pi, logarithms and mathematical constants like Euler's number, prime numbers, Fibonacci numbers, L-systems, etc. If these are used properly, terrain and textures can be produced very naturally looking. Perhaps even more natural than most human texture artists are able to portray. Yes, but the number pi is always the same because the algorithm is persistent.

Maybe ArmA 3 will bring us initial procedural terrain, vegetation and texture generation. Then the need for big storage media is over aswell.

Could you tell me your operating system and graphics card (plus the driver version) you have installed?

It's a Dell PowerEdge.Which has Windows Server 2008, 2 Intel Xeon quadcores and a hell of lot of RAM (96 GB I believe, not sure though), hotswap drives and what not. It also has a Quadro graphics card, not sure what kind of though. Amazingly a simple Core 2 Quad with a HD4870 1GB gets higher Napier-Stokes ratings (more precision, better floating point numbers) but does it quicker aswell. Where it takes 2 days to compute the turbulent airflow of an Audi Sport R10 TDI through corners Porsche and Du Pont of the Le Mans (circuit de la Sarthe) track on the ideal line, my 800 euro DIY computer does it in less than 24 hours. I'm no nVidia hater by all means. I loved my 8800 GT, unfortunately I got the memory problems. But that can happen with all cards.

That's because nVidia slowed down API support. From 2007 to 2009 there has been little technological advancement.nVidia had the position to use the TWIMTBP programme to nerf games down to the SM4.0 spec. (which I prefer to call SM3.1 due to the identical SIMD instruction set) AMD is still recovering from the financial problems caused by the acquisition of ATI. So the Direct3D 10.1 (which should have been Direct3D 10 and available for Windows XP) API hasn't been promoted as much. Some native D3D10.1 games have actually been downgraded to D3D10 spec so nVidia cards perform better. Not only this stopped progress, but also the pushing forward of CUDA and pushing back of DirectX Compute Shaders made sure we still are stuck to crappy PhysX middleware and CPU-processed fixed-point computations because CUDA is proprietary. As an aspirant automotive engineer I have to work with so-called thousand+ dollar nVidia Tesla "supercomputer" hardware for CFD in SolidWorks. But the package we use for that is CUDA accelerated and it still gets beaten by my HD 4870 using AMD Stream and old-fashioned OpenGL through an older SolidWorks plug-in.

Exactly.If a specific algorithm is used for this without random number input you'll always get the same terrain on every computer.

Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 is not really a full blown game as most people apparently expect. Instead, it's more like an optimized version of the original Red Orchestra mod. Something along the lines of CounterStrike, but more in to the Battlefield-thing. Hence the 15 dollar price, it's a nice little game when you get bored of ArmA at times. Because Unreal Engine 2.5 didn't provide all the needs and there were not enough engine-level programmers the game didn't really change much. At the moment, the limited portal-based map optimalisation leads to small maps. The lack of real teambased gameplay as you see in ArmA 2 also doesn't make the game really tactical. There is alot of interaction with the environment though, any weapon can be rested on surfaces to reduce sway for instance. Hopefully Unreal Engine 3.x brings us bigger maps, squad-based teamplay is announced for Heroes of Stalingrad and they have more men at work. Only if they take enough time to properly develop the game...

The vehicular transmission simulation needs better coding. In Operation Flashpoint driving with Q kept your vehicle in lower RPMs, W just meant more throttle and still early shifting. Using E was like full throttle all the way to the redline. If engine stress/load (going uphill or heavy cargo) could also be a factor in transmission simulation, the whole driving experience would feel more realistic aswell. No one shifts when going uphill, going downhill most drivers use lower gears to slow the vehicle down. (not including most automatics) Also, I'd love to see understeer coded properly in this game. Atm, increased speeds only decrease your steering lock. Some of the effects are the same, but it's not real understeer.

You must be talking about Unreal Engine 2.5 development tools. Which use substractive mapping instead of Unreal Engine 3.x development tools which use additive mapping like most other SDKs.I don't think there is much UT-code left in these games. The whole ballistics system of Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 is pretty complex. More complex than that used in WW2 Online or Armed Assault. It's more like on the level of Steel Beasts but on the infantry side instead. Tank combat hasn't been as developed as the infantry gameplay though, so it's quite lacking on the combined arms part.

Well summarized.

SSDs don't have seek times. They do have memory access latencies though, but that is negligible.Atm SSDs are way too expensive for most of us, but if you want to be an early adaptor you might want to get one. I tried an Intel X25E as MBR and pagefile dump and it really is fast. But that was probably also due to the fact that it was my only SATA drive next to my DVD writer. For other stuff I have an Ultra320 SCSI system which still kicks SATA/300's ass. If you really want the best of the best, get the Core i7 920 and a good X58 board with SAS. Don't use SATA drives but use SAS instead, it has way better latencies and the bandwidth is much better aswell. And you'll be ready for the next-generation SAS-enabled SSDs as SATA is getting outdated and lacks TRIM commands. SATA2 will only have a higher constant bandwidth and is outdated already.

Apparently you need more than 500 GB to install patch 1.14... This is on Windows 7, without the patch I cannot play the game because the GUI does not render properly.

nForce chipsets... The horror! :eek:

Trespasser had ragdoll-like physics. It's 11 years old.

The same here.

Yes, it's all possible.But developers often soften requirements for internet connections by excluding a lot of features. We're not far from the year 2010, most people that can afford a computer to play these games have a broadband connection. With the exponentially increasing amount of fiberoptics users, we'll have plently of bandwidth (20-100 Mbit near symmetrical upload/download) in about 2 years. I think BIS already done a great job by raising the bar to a minimum of dual-core and Shader Model 3.0 (according to the official system requirements) hardware. Although they should have made unified shader architecture hardware the mandate imho.

The problem is not the processing power. There is plently of processing power, if the developers raise the bar to a minimum of multithreaded CPUs and unified shader GPU's. It's the internet connections we have, most of us still have low bandwidth connections under 20 Mbps. And even those who do have 20 Mbps connections, don't have enough upload bandwidth. By 2011 most of us here should have fiberoptical internet connections. Those that are stuck with DSL/cable connections will probably have better bandwidth aswell due to offloading the grid by adaptors of fiberoptical internet connections. The year 2011 will drastically change the whole computer world, starting with x86 CPU's which will finally have the floating-point operation(due to vector extensions, MUL/MADD, fused multiply-accumulate, etc) grunt it should have.

So, it's a purely passive IR sensor?Has anybody experience with using an IR desklamp or sth?

No (IR) rigs at all, just your casual outfit. :D