Need help tweaking Vice City on my setup.

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BoomAM

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2001
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I think its good when a company puts alot of effort into their website, to make it "fun". The VC port was`nt that bad, not perfect, but certainly not as bad as other ports. GTA3 for example.
 

Intelman07

Senior member
Jul 18, 2002
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This does this on my machines too. (both of them) It is just the game I guess. The graphics will look cheesy then they will fix themselves when they load.
 

Naruto

Senior member
Jan 5, 2003
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WHen i turn that frame limiter on, things get alot more choppy. I have vsync off in my setup.
 

Matt84

Senior member
May 21, 2003
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I play with vsync on because my monitor with my ti4600 suffers bad from image tearing. Playing gta3/vc with vsync on and framelimiter on makes the game really choppy in some parts no matter what detail/res I use. If I enable frame limiter and run with 1024x786x32 then the games all smooth.
 

Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
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Welll I have just tried it again, with frame limiter on and quite a long drawing distance I get 30fps from fraps and it is not smooth when panning left and right. With frame rate limiter off I get 65-75fps (although only 50 being displayed as its TV) it is a lot smoother when panning left and right. But its still not very smooth.
 

Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
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Did that same difference very noticeable. Have you tried it with and without? in 98 mode if need be. now look left and right (in the game) and if you cant see the difference I would guess you dont use computers for a living.
 

BoomAM

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2001
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Two things.
1) I use computers everyday for at least 5hours a day. Im currently studying the increadably easy subject(for me anyway) of computer maintenence and repair. So dont question my abilites of using a computer or the understanding of one, as i could probably teach the dam course that im on with more accuracy than what im given.
2) As for the smoothness of looking left and right. Are you refering to the speed at which it switchs? On GTA3, when you looked left/right, you would slowly see your character moving his arm/gun to the relevent direction, in VC, it just goes strait to the right direction. Dunno why its like that, but its no biggy.
 

Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
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Two things
1) I use computers everyday for at least 5hours a day. Im currently studying the increadably easy subject(for me anyway) of computer maintenence and repair. So dont question my abilites of using a computer or the understanding of one, as i could probably teach the dam course that im on with more accuracy than what im given.
2) As for the smoothness of looking left and right. Are you refering to the speed at which it switchs? On GTA3, when you looked left/right, you would slowly see your character moving his arm/gun to the relevent direction, in VC, it just goes strait to the right direction. Dunno why its like that, but its no biggy.

1) I am not questioning your abilities, just your knowledge of frame rates, motion and how the eye perceives it.

2) In the game stand still, now using the mouse pan left and right, notice the choppiness, do the same with frame limiter off you should notice a big difference.

another example is moving your mouse across the screen, start sweeping left to right slowly, nice and smooth yes. Now go quicker getting less smooth? same principal.

Another thing to try, change you monitor refresh rates to 60 hz - I would hope you see the flicker, now move up a stage say to 70hz do you see the flicker ? whatt about if you turn you head 45 degrees away and use your peripheral vision do you see it now?
Their is a big difference between playable and smooth, 30fps is playable but it is not smooth. In face paced games a higher fps is essential.
 

BoomAM

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2001
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I run at 60hz anyway. I have a TFT. That might be a reason why i dont notice much difference between the frame rates yoy suggested.
To be quite honest, ive not noticed any choppyness or jerkyness anywhere in VC. Thats probably due to my 9700pro though. I dont see any flicker either.

One thing that does bug me about VC though, is the aiming. For some reason, the games aiming seems to be locked to an invisable grid. Its hard to describe, but its very hard to get 100% perfect shots away because of this.
 

Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
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I run at 60hz anyway. I have a TFT. That might be a reason why i dont notice much difference between the frame rates yoy suggested.
To be quite honest, ive not noticed any choppyness or jerkyness anywhere in VC. Thats probably due to my 9700pro though. I dont see any flicker either.

One thing that does bug me about VC though, is the aiming. For some reason, the games aiming seems to be locked to an invisable grid. Its hard to describe, but its very hard to get 100% perfect shots away because of this.
That would explain alot, TFT's are 'always on' in that they stay the same colour unless told otherwise and due to their response time you are actually getting a sort of motion blur as the TFT cells cant dim quick enough. This is where the difference I am describing shows up as monitors and TV's turn on and off at their refresh rates. As for aiming are you using a ball or optical mouse?
 

BoomAM

Diamond Member
Sep 25, 2001
4,546
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Optical mouse. Logitech MX-700. It used to happen with my old Intellimouse Optical v1.0 & DeusEx.
The setting in mouse propeties called "improve pointer precision" fixed it, but it isn`t there anymore for some reason. Is it accessable via the registary?

I dont get any type of blur. My TFT has a 16ms responce time.
 

Mingon

Diamond Member
Apr 2, 2000
3,012
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I dont get any type of blur. My TFT has a 16ms responce time.

well you should get some blur but your refresh rate is lower than your response time which is why you dont notice it. If you monitor supports higher refresh (which most do) say 75 hz you will start to see bluring as your monitor works best at 1/0.16 = 62.5
 

wasssup

Diamond Member
Nov 28, 2000
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for what its worth, i have a semi-decent system (9800 3dmark2001 score when my ti4200 isn't OC'd)..

i've only played VC with the frame limiter on, and its VERY smooth at 1024x768 with a few things going on in the backround...I really can't complain. Then again, I don't need 200fps or whatever to play a game like a lot of others apparently do.