Hi guys,

I'm Rob form back in the days ! :)
I used to love and play this game A LOT. A little check on Qball Ghost gallery archives and tracks leaderboards will explain that better than any words ! I used to share the place with Algor38, Bart and Vienna ! :)

I bought and installed the GOG version today. I first tried the default GOG setup but the game speed felt higher than what I remembered even though I activated Vsync in my gfx card pannel. Plus 800x600 was hurting my eyes so bad ! I then decided to try the Dgvoodoo + Podhacks setup described in this forum by user:lptrkc.

It works well. The game is displayed in fullscreen and looks somehow better. BUT there's quite a big amount of input lag while using this setup. I can feel it as soon as the menu appears, the mouse moves slowly with some lag. And it goes the same for the steering wheel inputs. Cars are difficult to handle well and I wouldn't even try beating any records with that setup. Plus the game feels too slow.

I tried lowering Dgvoodoo resolution to 800x600 and other 4:3 available resolutions, but it doesn't seem to change much. If I shut Vsync off, the game goes crazy like w/o the MMX patch for those who remember. Like 10000fps and everything is so so fast.

I'm wondering wich options remains to improve the result. Playing with the default GOG setup is the best option so far. The game is a little bit too fast wich makes it really harder especially on technical tracks, but at least the controls are really good. Dgvoodoo slows things down too much on my setup.

Help would be welcome, it feels so great to ride Io's tracks again ! :D

My rig (oldie) :

IP35 Pro Abit (rip)
Q9400@3200mhz
4go DDR2
GTI560Ti
24' Acer GD245HQ

Finally, many thanks to those people who've been compiling, archiving, collecting... NicoDE, PodPhreak?, all the others, great job guys it's good to know Pod is still there somewhere ! I was stunned to discover that "timemachine" thing to visit Qball ghost gallery ! :D

I installed fraps to record videos and try to illustrate what I mean. Thanks to this I noticed Pod was running locked@60fps while using the DgVoodoo setup. That gave me a hint and I looked for a solution to make it run@120fps (my monitor freq)

That's how I've found a setup wich gives slightly better results. I unchecked the "Monitor freq is always the closer freq" in the "Glide" tab of DGVoodoo and I set my monitor freq@120hz below the resolution setting.
Fraps indicate the game runs@120fps now. The mouse still feels slow in the menu but the input lag is has been reduced quite a bit.

Though on some tracks the controls still feels weird. On Downtown for example, the game feels too fast...

Weird :)

Currently I'm overloaded with work, but in my spare time I still try to solve some open issues with POD.
Make sure you use PodHacks 3.9a (revision 55 - the recommendation is hidden somewhere in the ReadMe of PodHacks 4.0 :)).

On Linux (Wine) the sound issues (and performance issues caused by the sound) are 'fixed' by converting the Track02.mp3 into Track02.wav (lame --decode). Both (PodHacks and the run-time patch in GOG's glide2x.dll) support MP3 and WAV.

Make sure to disable the "Limit DirectDraw to about 60 surface flips/second" option in PodHacks.

I have not enough spare time to finish testing and publish a new release (too many unfinished changes). But for another player I built a test binary http://pod.nicode.net/gold/gog/PodHacks-3.9b_testing.zip with process/thread priority support (POD's behavior is counterproductive because it gives the sound thread a very high priority - but in current Windows versions the sound APIs use background threads and messaging to do the work).

Feedback would be nice. Just drop me a note if that solves your problem.

Best regards,
Nico Bendlin

Thanks Nico ! I'm downloading and trying this out. Will keep you posted.

I've been testing out stuffs all morning :

- nGlide : car texture bugs and same "lag" issue.
- GOG Version default setup and DGVoodoo : Without Vsync it's waaay too fast. With Vsync it's either too fast OR too "laggy (smooth for the eyes but big input lag)".

I've tried 60hz, 100hz and 120hz freq. @120hz game's running too fast. @60hz there's too much input lag. @100hz it's the best result I've found so far. Game's still a bit fast, but the lag isn't so bad. Best solution so far.

Now I try your stuffs ;)

ps : I feel like the problem is Vsync really. The old MMX (wasit?) patch allowed high ingame FPS while keeping the game speed normal. High fps = good input response.

ps2 : I've been testing with and without the "Limit DirectDraw..." option before, didn't notice any change.

Oh right. I guess I'll try that "slow down the game" patch then. If I manage to find it.

I tried your testing Podhack version and couldn't spot any differences.

I noticed that changing the screen frequency in the Nvvidia pannel is useless. DGVoodoo frquency setting is enough to lock the framerate. With my screen@120hz I can lock the framerate@100hz if I set the screen freq@100hz in Dgvoodoo. That's a way to modify the game speed/input lag. But the result isn't perfect at all...

http://nicode.net/analysis/pod/patch/podpatch.txt contains a list of URLs of patches that I unpacked for the analysis (should be nearly complete).

ps: all unpacked patches are in podpatch.7z (371 MB!)

I'm trying to install the GS2 patch for Pod. But when I do so, I get the following error message : Unable to open Ubi.ins file.

Any clue of what I should do ?

If you have a fast internet connection: get all unpacked patches podpatch.7z (371 MB) and extract the content of gs2_3dfx into the game folder.

Else:
- do you have a %windir%\UbiSoft\ubi.ini and the paths point to the POD directory?
- did you extract the InstData\ubi.ins (see previous post) in the POD directory?
- Windows version?

---

Just another idea for the performance issues:
Switch from the [PodHacks Music Player] to the default wave-out device. This feature only exists to support separate volume controls for the music and the sound effects (on Windows Vista or later). But it could have side effects.

I followed the installation steps carefully so I have the windir\Ubisoft folder and the installation files. I'm using Win7 64 Ultimate.

I downloaded the gs2_3dfx folder and extracted it into the game folder. I now have glitches in the menu and the mouse cursor is locked in the top right corner of the screen. Even though I checked the Podhack option to prevent this ! :/

On the other hand, the game seems to run better. I need to test it more, but it feels like back in the days !
Fraps says it's locked@77fps. But it feels smoother than the 100fps setup I was testing this morning...

Just to be sure: You started PodHacks again and the new binary is checked (patched)?

Yes I did ! Still using you "testing version" though. Should I switch back to the other one ?

You might try the gs2_dx5 patch (is required for the Arcade track anyway).

Maybe the GS2 patches are not fully supported by PodHacks (tested them only on Linux and remember to have no problems). I'll have a look at it during the next days.

With the gs2-dx5 patch, there are no more glitches in the menu. Though the mouse cursor si still trapped up there. Keyboard browsing the menu isn't really a problem though...

Since I applied GS2 patcht, the game crashes when I leave it. Not a big deal either. As long as the gameplay's good, and it is so far, I still have to test bigger tracks.

That is a know incompatibility with current DirectX versions (it's not allowed to create a device object in one thread and to release the object in another thread). That is the main reason why most of the DirectX-based Glide wrappers do not support POD. And it takes a lot of effort to patch this behavior in POD (did not have the spare time yet to try to fix it with PodHacks).