Tweak Guide

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Introduction
This guide focuses on giving you the rundown on how the various in-game settings affect image quality and performance through a series of screenshot comparisons and performance discussions, and some troubleshooting tips and general performance optimization information which should help you squeeze the most out of the game on your machine.

Note: This guide refers to the latest retail version of Project Torque: Version 0.8.8 (1324) Make sure to check back regularly for updates.


Contents

In-Game Settings

The following are the main in-game settings for Project Torque which can be changed to alter image quality and performance. Each is covered in detail under the relevant section. I note the image quality and performance impacts of each setting, however keep in mind that obviously the impacts will differ depending on your particular system hardware. Make sure to view the descriptions and associated screenshot/animated comparisons carefully and find your own balance of image quality vs. performance. The best way for you to arrive at the optimal settings on your system is to read the descriptions below, then experiment by using FRAPS, a free utility which shows the number of frames per second (FPS) in the corner of the screen. Adjust your settings and note your FPS - the higher your FPS, the smoother your gameplay will be.

  • To access the main game options, scroll to the Options icon at the bottom right of the screen, and click on it or press Enter. Under the Options section, there are five sub-sections: Video, Sound, Control, Game, and Chat presets. Each is covered below:

Video Settings

  • Resolution: This setting controls the pixel width by pixel height of the image on the screen. The higher the number of pixels on the screen, the more detailed the image but the lower your performance. Please see the rundown on resolution for more information; rundown on resolution, resolution example
  • Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing: Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing (FSAA, or simply AA), is a method of smoothing jagged lines on the screen. The higher the slider is taken here above the far left, the higher the sample rate of antialiasing used, and the smoother jagged lines will appear in the game. In Project Torque moving the slider one notch to the right from the far left provides an instant reduction in the jaggedness of lines, however it also brings with it a major performance hit. Further moving the slider to the right doesn't noticeably improve image quality, but further reduces performance. It is recommended that if you need the FPS, you set the slider to the far left (disable AA). If you really want to smooth out jagged lines, only move the slider one notch to the right, as any higher will severely drain performance for little or no visible image quality gain.
  • Shader: This option is only for compatibility, unless your using a older card like a ATI 8000 series, or Nvidia mx4000 or something of the sort there is no real reason to play in sm1.1
  • Texture: This setting affects the texture resolution. The higher you set this the higher the resolution of the textures, and the greater the performance impact. The performance impact is not as dramatic as that of antialiasing, however at the Highest level it can reduce FPS noticeably on older/slower graphics cards.
  • View Range: This setting changes how far away the game will be rendered. Increase this settings will decrees performance because the farther away the game is rendering, the more there is on screen. Unless you’re getting very bad performance It is recommended that this be set at med-high settings
  • World Level of Detail: This setting controls the level of detail in the surrounding objects in the game world, such as trees, poles, etc. The performance impact of this setting is most noticeable at the Highest level, so Medium or low would be a good choice for most people. The precise impact depends to some extent on your CPU power, and to a greater extent on your graphics card to draw all those additional details. The biggest impact of this setting will be felt when going through forest areas, and also when combined with the Shadow Detail setting. At High for example there will be lots of trees as well as lots of shadows, which will slow down most systems.
  • Vehicle Detail: This setting controls the number of polygons used to draw the vehicles in the game, along with some other minor changes. When set to High, the car models are as detailed as possible, with lower performance compared to when set to Low. However it is hard to see any major differences between these settings, and in general the cars still look quite good at the Low-Medium setting.
  • Opponent Vehicle Detail: This setting is the exact same as Vehicle Detail except its applied to the Opponents cars. I recommend between minimum and medium settings for most users. The performance hit is much greater than the image quality difference is worth.
  • Shadow Detail: This setting controls whether shadows for various objects are shown, and to what extent. To better see what this means, look at the screenshot comparison below. With the slider to the far left (Off), virtually no shadows are visible, mostly just the basic car shadow. At the middle slider setting (Medium), the car casts a more accurate shadow, but still basically no shadows from the trees. With the slider to the far right (Highest), the trees cast detailed shadows on the car and the surrounding surfaces. The performance impact will vary by system, but in general selecting the highest setting will see lots of slowdowns in areas with lots of detailed objects, such as forests and complex city scenes and/or lots of vehicles. This is made worse if you have a high World Detail setting. The best performance is seen at the lowest setting, and since visually the Medium setting is not much better, disable shadows is highly recommended to most people for gaining a great deal of FPS and avoiding slowdowns. shadows
  • Dynamic Environment Map: This setting controls the level of detail given to reflections on the car's surface. There really isn't any significant performance or visual quality difference whatsoever when changing this from lowest to highest, except for off, which does not look very good. In theory when at the low setting (slider to the far left), the surrounding objects will not reflect on the car's surface, and when set to the highest, all reflections will show. Set this to one notch from the left if you want a good balance of visual quality and performance, otherwise in most parts of the game there is no significant image quality or performance impact.
  • Particle density: This setting controls the amount of smoke shown. Smoke takes up a large amount of system resources and it is recommended that this be at the “Low” setting.
  • Motion blur: Motion blur is meant to simulate the “streaking” affect that movement has on a object. In Project Torque it basically just adds annoying to the screen because the shader model does not properly support motion blur. Doing this effect only really works on shader model 3.0, and many dislike the motion blur feature and leave it off. There isn’t really a performance hit so this is user preference.
  • HDR: This setting controls the "bloom" effect. It simulates HDR (High Dynamic Range) lighting, it does not control the overall lighting quality of the game. The major impact of this setting is primarily in reducing or increasing road/sky glare. Performance-wise, the impact depends on your particular graphics card, and for most systems there shouldn't be a major impact, so set to suit your tastes.
  • Noise: This option adds visual fuzz to the screen. There is little to no performance hit from this so once again, up to user preference.
  • Contrast: This setting does exactly as it sounds, it changes the amount of contrast (difference between light and dark). No real performance hit here so once again, user preference.
  • Visual Treatment: This setting controls the overall 'atmospheric' image quality of the game. It is controversial in that some people like it, and some people hate it. The game developers have purposely designed the lighting and color of the game to be very rich and almost photo-realistic in places when 'Visual Treatment' is enabled. However, it is a stylized image quality which may not suit some people. Fortunately the designers have provided this setting for you to enable/disable this feature. With this setting at off the colors and lighting are much closer to that of other games, and when set to High they are more contrasted and colored. Choose whichever you like, performance impact is slightly noticeable.

Sound

  • Volume Controls: The five sliders here control the various volume levels for the main audio elements of the game. Adjust according to your tastes - none have any performance impact. Moving a slider to the far left to disable a particular element will not give you a performance boost.
  • Interactive Music: This setting controls the generic game background instrumental music, set to suit your taste.
  • Custom soundtracks: Project Torque supports many audio file types including .mp3 and you can make your own custom music lists for the game. To use this feature simply put music in C:\Program Files\AeriaGames\ProjectTorque\music\mymusic
  • Audio channels: This option controllers how many sounds can play simultaneously. Unless you know your audio cards maximum number of sounds, leave this alone.

Controls

  • This section determines your keyboard bindings for various controls in the game. Make sure to go through carefully and adjust to suit your playing style.

Game

  • Transmission: Choose the transmission type you want to use.
  • Clutch: Choose if you want auto clutch on or off.
  • Steering help: Changes how much the game will attempt to steer for you.
  • Throttle help: Changes how much the game will attempt to control the throttle level.
  • Head turning: Also known as Look to Apex, controls how much the camera will rotate during a turn from the interior view.

Important Optimizations

  • Many people report problems with this game and in a large amount of cases these are due to general system issues and not the game itself. With that in mind please take some time and follow the advice below if you truly want this game, and indeed every other game you own, to run at its fastest and most trouble-free.
  • First off, looking at your operating system itself is the best place to start. Tweak hound has some of the best tweak guides for XP and Vista. These guides as easy to follow, full of information and included different levels of tweaking for the average computer user up to hard-core gamers. That guide can be found here; http://tweakhound.com/xp/xptweaks/supertweaks1.htm

-Make sure you always have the latest drivers for you video cards, cpu, motherboard, sound card ect.-

The above information really will serve you well in the long run, not just in this game. If you don't optimize your system and keep everything updated and maintained correctly you will keep running into "mysterious" problems time and time again. Do yourself a favor and when you get a chance spend an afternoon or two optimizing your machine the right way with the guides above.

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