Colin McCrae - Dirt demo in 3d?

Post by **LukePC1** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 1:48 pm

Has anyone ever tried the demo of this game jet? This is an interesting case. With lowest settings (and dragons Utility - don't konw anymore) and one cpu this game renders two pictures without crashing. If seperation and convergence is changed the appearence changes - e.g. the pictures get further appart.

This sounds ok, but the game looks completly FLAT! I can't get ANY S-3D, although the menue looks a little 3d to me...

Infact the panel is a little in front of the other scenery, when the (shutter) glasses are upsidedown. Has anyone more luck than me?

Post by **Nobsi** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 5:05 pm

The Dirt demo and also the full version are running perfect in 3d (100%) if you:

a) Switch off the shadows completely (They render wrong in 3D and cost to much performance to get a decent frame rate).

b) Disable the post effects (They work also in 3D but only on 0 convergence setting, which is not suitable for correct in screen rendering and correct car/world size feeling).

Please note that even if post render effects are switched off, the dragon utility is still used to enable the stereo render target. Unfortunately the game offers no possiblity to switch the post processing render stage completely off, you can only disable the various effects.

On my system (Athlon64 single core @ 2,4GHz, Geforce 7900 GTX and 2GB RAM) I get 20 to 30 frames at 960x600 without AA with all graphics options maxed out (except shadows and motion blur, of course) in the rally stages (single car).
This is plenty for me to get a good car handling and enjoy the game, it really rocks.

And here the instruction how to switch off shadows and post effects:

a) Shadows

Search for the file "hardware_settings_config.xml" and change the line

<shadows enabled="true" size="2048" maskQuality="2" />

to

<shadows enabled="false" size="2048" maskQuality="2" />

Note this file may not be located below the dirt installation folder, in the demo it is below "documents and settings" and in the retail version you can select the target folder for this file during the installation!

b) Disable post effects

In the Dirt game folder "postprocess" replace the contents of the following files with the contents of the file "null.xml" which is also in this folder:

type1.xml
type2.xml
type2_noblur.xml
type3.xml
type4.xml
type4_noblur.xml
type5.xml
type5_noblur.xml

This is somewhat a mallet methode to disable all post effects, if someone has time and patience to figure out which effect actually makes trouble in 3D and offers a more finely adjustment of the xml files, this would be greatly welcome!

Btw all games in the Colin Mc Rae franchise since CMR2 have had perfect stereo with the nvidia stereo drivers available at that times.

Post by **LukePC1** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 10:29 am

Hm tried this game with the suggested changes. Stereo works, but my Frames drop from about 40FPS in 2D to about 8-6FPS in 3D (FRAPS)! This makes the game unplayable

- isn't this a high performance loss?

Furthermore I can't disable shadows... the change doesn't work... don't even know if it's the right file, but the name is right.
It is in Gamefolder/Dirt/systhem. There are also some others like
hardware_settings_ratings.xml
hardware_settings_restrictions.xml
they seem to describe the possible effects. I tried to decrease the numbers used into the _config.xml to minimize the needed memory...
no real effect

How high is your 2D performance? Do you get more than 1/4 of the 2D performance in 3D? Usually it should be around 1/2...

Luke

Post by **Nobsi** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 1:10 pm

Hello LukePC1,

the hardware_settings_config.xml in dirt/system is the wrong one, there must be a second one with the same name, which actually holds your settings. I can not give you the location since you had to enter that at the end of the dirt installation. If you can't remember, simply do a find on your harddrives. The file date of the correct one must be recent, since it is rewritten when you start Dirt.

Of course with shadows still switched on, it's not playable in stereo.

With shadows off I get around 40 frames in 2D in rally stages with a single car, in stereo it drops to around 26 fps.

With shadows on high and in 2D I get around 30 fps (all values measured with FRAPS).

I would like to know if the 8800 can handle this game better in stereo and if shadows on this card are rendered correctly? Anybody has tried that?

Still sticking with a 7900 GTX till there is a decent driver for 8800 and dual core processors.

Post by **LukePC1** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 4:03 am

I found the right file, turned of the shadows and wrote to some part where 'ultra' stood 'low'. Might have been the textures, but I don't notice much of a change...

But the performance is ok now about 25FPS on 800x600 with somesettings turned off...
Thank you for the help

Luke

Post by **santana** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 4:39 am

To get stereo you have to do 3 things:
1) disable shadows
2) disable post effects
3) run dragons utility

It is running ok for me
thanks Nobsi

Post by **Nobsi** » Wed Jun 20, 2007 5:09 am

Ah yes, of course I should have stated more clearly that the dragon utility, which can be found in the download section, must be used. This utility enables a beta feature of the stereo driver for limited post effect support.

Run the utility, select the Dirt.exe file in the Dirt game folder and check "Enable stereo render target". This makes some registry profile entries for the game.

After that and with the other mentioned modifications you should get perfect stereo with fully adjustable convergence (Ctrl-F5 / Ctrl-F6)

And still the question: Has anybody with a 8800 tried stereo with this game? Are shadows properly working on that card?