tweaking timecyc.dat

yelo99pig

after reading kbps's thread i began playing around with \pc\data\timecyc.dat to find any performance relevant entries to either gain more fps or increase visual quality. timecyc.dat controls visual effects depending on ingame time and weather. for each weather condition (EXTRASUNNY, SUNNY, SUNNY_WINDY, CLOUDY, RAIN, FOGGY, LIGHTNING, TEMP) there is a block of eleven lines with numerical values, each defining the visuals for a certain period of time. the other lines beginning with //... are comments explaining the file structure. to apply any changes you have to make your gamefiles moddable somehow. and remember to backup everything before changing anything. all screenshots are done with ati tray tool's osd feature enabled to display fps and free video memory ingame.

-> FarClp
this one is setting the distance for clipping (= not rendering) the gameworld. standard value is 1500.00 except for some timeslots of TEMP condition. i think that's a very high value considering it's forced to everyone regardless of system performance and ingame settings. so i tried various other values to check performance impact and visual changes. first a series of screens done north of booth tunnel (EXTRASUNNY, Midday):

-----------250.00-----------------------500.00----------------------750.00----------------------1500.00----------------------2500.00-----------


a nice fps difference going from standard to 750.00 or even 500.00. i suppose both values have high enough view distance to acomplish any missions on foot, vehicle or heli. please note the visual glitch when using 250.00. next a series of pics done at the northernmost spot on columbus avenue (EXTRASUNNY, Midday):

-----------250.00-----------------------500.00----------------------750.00----------------------1500.00----------------------2500.00-----------


the screens already show a nice performance increase lowering FarClp to 750.00 or even 500.00. but also driving columbus ave down with full speed shows improvements. with 1500.00 performance dipped down to 16 fps while racing along the park. with 500.00 it never goes below 20 fps. it generally feels smoother when driving around town, it seems to take some load from the whole textures / geometry streaming process. i recommend anybody to try 750.00 or maybe 1000.00. it brings a little fps increase, smoother gameplay while moving with no heavy visual drawbacks. increasing FarClp further brings more view distance and pushes the distance fog connected to it further away. nice for heli tours with brucie or anybody with maxed out ingame settings but still higher than necessary fps. but it's mostly not conspicuous while on ground.

-> CONCLUSION
FarClp is a nice start in tweaking the timecyc.dat. players willing to sacrifice some view distance will get higher fps and smoother gameplay - within realistic expectations of course. best practice is not to choose one value for all weather / time slots, but reduce it more for situations you get lower fps like rain. after playing around with it i ended up with this:
-
values of first image is used in EXTRASUNNY and SUNNY, the ones from the second image in SUNNY_WINDY and CLOUDY. DRIZZLE, RAIN and FOGGY are a big fps hit on my old gfx card, so i use 500.00 for it in all time slots. LIGHTNING is set to 400.00 again for performance reasons, but the shorter view distance fits quite good to those weather conditions.

i will try to find more helpful values and any help is highly appreciated. a good start is mycleaned timecyc.dat. i copied the EXTRASUNNY, Midday timeslot to every other timeslot and formatted it with spaces to make it easier to read and tweak. so no matter what condition the game is using internally, you will always get the EXTRASUNNY, Midday condition. remember, if you change any value, you have to change it in the whole column because you have no control about what condition / timeslot combination is used when loading the game. also i'm not sure if all descriptor <-> value connections i supposed are correct. and i have no idea what the many values below GlobalSunMultiplierAmbientOcclusionScaler mean, any insight by a talented modder will make me very happy

-> MY SETTINGS
resolution: 1280x800 @ 60hz
texturequality: medium
renderquality: high
viewdistance: 23
detaildistance: 18
cardensity: 13
shadowdensity: 0
clipcapture: off
ingame resource estimation: 389 / 480 mb

-> MY COMMANDLINE.TXT
-minspecaudio
-frameLimit 0
-novblank
-availablevidmem 1.0
-memrestrict 408944640

-> MY SYSTEM
amd athlon x2 6000+
2x 1gb mdt ddr2-800
asrock alivedual-esata2
his x1950pro agp 512mb turbo
samsung syncmaster 205bw
soundblaster live 1024 player
windows xp pro sp3
directx nov2008
ati catalyst v8.11
everything else up-to-date

幻~影

會員未必個個都明..