Many performance issues on Windows XP

[andrewk8]

I installed vdrift-setup-2008-08-05.exe under Windows XP SP3 and have MANY video issues. I have a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 w/ hyper-threading enabled, 1GB RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce FX5500 w/ 256MB & Forceware 169.21, DirectX 9.0c.

First, I can't switch to full screen. Vdrift will change video resolutions, but Vdrift itself won't show in full screen. I have to use Task Manager to kill Vdrift to get back in.

I can't change video resolutions. When I change resolutions, I get a couple of fuzzy green / red rectangles and nothing else. I can click on some of the rectangles to get out of Vdrift.

I tried running Vdrift in windowed mode (practice race). Frame rates were horrible. CPU usage was pegged out (50% - remember that I have hyperthreading enabled) and it took about a minute to perform the 3 second count-down. Clicking ESC and trying to exit the game, mouse movement was miserably slow - couldn't hardly track the mouse across Vdrift. Had to move it in small increments to prevent over-shooting the buttons. It took just about as long.

My computer isn't a modern power-house, but it's not a dog either. I can run a lot of other OpenGL / DirectX games with medium / high video settings and they're very playable.

[joevenzon]

The full-screen and resolution switching problems on windows will hopefully be addressed with the next release.

I believe the main reason for the slow performance is your graphics card. Disable shadows in the options->display->advanced tab and that should speed things up. You can also disable shaders, which will speed things up even more at the expense of visual quality. Let me know if this helps; I'm curious.