This is still work in progress, but it contains a list of things I have seen i.e. frequently asked on various forums. so here is a FAQ that may accompany the manual. I will update it in the next few days but here is a transcript of what I got so far. Any additions you would like to see let me know.
Q. I see no car models and get loading errors after installing the mod
A. More than likely you installed the server version, uninstall it, download the full version
and reinstall.
Q. I cannot change the rev limit of the cars in the car setup screen and the engine revs are greyed out
A. Engine rpms are controlled entirely with the boost buttons, and effectively allows the engine revs to be set in the car while driving, boost 1, maximum revs, boost 9 minimum revs.
Q. My frame rates are very poor, what can I do
A. When racing with full grids it is recommended to set the LOD slider in the CTDP control Center to a lower setting, especially if your ingame settings are at maximum, this applies to high end systems too, reducing visible vehicles and shadows can make a large difference. Unless you got the latest cards like Ati 4870×2 in crossfire or Nvidia gtx280 in SLI it is still recommended setting at the LOD slider to the second highest setting at minimum. The highest setting can be used for test day or when a limited number of vehicles are on track, or for watching replays and making movie files from you replays for high fidelity results. If you do not reduce this slider from maximum, the mod will use large amounts of memory that will push close to the 32 bit limit with large number of drivers (> 25 or so) . In practice most 32 bit operating systems cap at around 3.2 Gb even when 4Gb is intalled ( for various reasons) !
Ultimately this is a high detail mod, and detail comes at a price. To get the best result a PC with CPU core 2 duo 2.2 Ghz (or AMD equivalent) or above with 2 – 4 Gb DDR2 memory, a 256 bit 512 Mb Video card is recommended for a full 22 car grid in order to maintain reasonably good visual quality with acceptable framerates. For sure the mod will run on lesser systems, but consider reducing both ingame settings as well as setting the control center LOD slider to one of the lowest settings and use the autoFPS feature, in this way rFactor wil attempt to minimise framerate dips below a specified value.
Q. The AI don’t work or are very slow.
A. This is a track related issue and has been reported on some tracks. unless you know how to edit mods or happy to play offline only where mismatches are not an issue there is no quick fix at this time.
Q. What’s going on with the upgrades, on some tracks the engines can rev higher or lower than others, different tyre choices and things seem to change randomly from track to track.
A. For tracks that were on the FIA 2006 calender that are suported by the mod, each Team has forced upgrades and air pressures, you can try changing them in the “buy upgrades” tab in the user interface, but it wont have any effect once you go out on track if the upgrades is either Track conditions or Track Configuration these are forced in any case. Other upgrades such as the shift light and mirrors upgrades are optional.
Tracks that are not listed on the FIA 2006 Calender have forced post season physics that is effectively the same as the Brazil version of the cars on a standard air pressure day, this cannot be changed unless you edit the mod which will cause mismatches.
You cannot change any upgrades between qualifying and race, this is particularly important when picking the shift light upgrade, although in version 1.1 a suitable default HUD shiftlight level is now set, should you change it, always decide your upgrade before loading the track and set it for race ! The shift light upgrade does not change the LED shift lights on the steering wheel in any way, it is for the HUD only and may also be useful for players using the autoshift driving aid .
Q. The offline AI cars should have the correct liveries for each track but it is not working
A. Not all tracks are supported, in some cases tracks don’t support this feature well, depending on track folder structure, especially if more than one version of a track is installed and contained in the same subfolder. This is an rfactor track issue. Note that tracks that were not on the FIA 2006 calender will use a default livery.
Q. when I buy a car and go out on track the incorrect livery for that round is loaded.
A. Human drivers must still pick their livery from the user interface,
the automatic loading of liveries applies to AI opponents only.
Q. Cars fail to load in the showroom or rfactor crashes in the user interface or soon while loading a track
A. The most common reason is an incorrect or a corrupt installation, or the first item in this FAQ will also cause this, however it will also be caused by a setting for the user interface, make sure that you have always set UI detail to low. This setting is contained in the user profile PLR file. Open it with notepad and it as follows,
Low Detail UI=”1″
This file may be found in \UserData\playername\playername.PLR
This has no effect on the display quality of the cars in the showroom or on track.
Q. The mod is huge in size and the liveries occupy a large amount of disk space,
will reducing the texture from 2048×2048 down to 1024×1024 and resaving them improve peformance ?
A. Read the manual for more information, contrary to what you may think, the answer is no. You can force texture sizes loaded in by rfactor already due to the DDS mipmap feature, to use a smaller texture size you specify it in the user profile, or change ingame settings, in which case the texture size is determined from the detail setting, but this can also be done independently from model (LOD) detail if desired with some edit tweaks in your user profile .
There is no need to resave hundreds of textures in the skins folders, unless you want to save diskspace.
Q. On some tracks the car livery looks corrupt or wrong.
A. In some cases it may occur that a track and mod have conflicting textures, mosty due to sloppy and lazy naming conventions, however we have tried to reduce this in patch 1.1 by avoiding common texture names, but there is no guarentee that some tracks somewhere will cause such issues.
Q. Why do my replays crash
A. while we have attempted a fix in patch 1.1 relating to music files which worked as far as we know, should it still occur try removing the music mp3 files from the music folder in the first instance to see if it resolves the issue. The music files are located in Music\CTDP2006. In some cases it may also be caused by a corrupt replay file.
Q. Do I have to launch the mod from the CTDP control center ?
A. No. If you use the CTDP control center to change settings and launch rfactor directly from its own shortcut it will still use those settings and work . In fact should you have any issues or crashes you may like to try this as an alternative to see if it resolves it. The launch rfactor option in the control center is there for convenience and a way to easily add other startup options to rfactor.
Q. The steering wheel rev lights since patch 1.1 no longer light up all the way to red, sometimes only green or yellow, why ?
A. This is deliberate, the rev light wil only come on fully on the max available revs on max boost 1, just like reality, the rev lights on steering wheels rarely come on in race conditions. Typically on boost 6, the recommended race setting, green and yellow rev lights will come on before the limiter, letting the driver know that the engine is in the “save” zone.
Q. The cars that have a rev lights on the dashboard like Mclaren do not work in TV cam view but only in cockpit view
A. This is not a bug, but an rfactor limitation, there is no fix, although there is a kind of fudge workaround by making the cockpit view the TVcam view if you know how.
Q. When starting a championship sometimes the wrong track loads or rFactor may crash to desktop
If the track is not installed this may happen. Tracks will not work unless they are exactly named to match the names in the championship list, so while one version of australia will work another may not. We have tried however to use mostly commonly available tracks that are downloadable from http://www.rfactorcentral.com and http://www.nogripracing.com . You may use championship manager to customise a championship, but as such, due to track AI inconstistencies, and the fact this mod does not come with a trackpack, championship mode is not supported and untested. Better result are achieved by running each round separately, find an AI strength setting for each track, typically 95 – 100% gives realistic AI laptimes, running it that way is the best solution. The rFactor AI track learning feature will also help to stabilise AI.
Q. When I go out onto track with multiple AI cars, all the opponent cars are the same as the team I am driving.
A. Before track loading under opponents ensure you select CTDPF1_2006 to get all Teams out on track. By default when a vehicle is selected, only the vehicle filter of your own team is selected as possible AI opponent.
Q. When racing tracks in some cars autoshifting fails to work, why ?
A. This is a bug that has come to light in version 1.1. Brief test shown that it affects Ferrari on non 2006 tracks, Pick a shiftlight upgrade that is lower than the max rev available for now and it will work. The default setting for the shiftlight upgrade appears to be incorrect for some cars, but it does not affect all cars. At this time it is not known which Teams/cars are affected by this. Tests have shown Midland/Spyker is correct, Ferrari is not.
Q. Which tracks work with the mod ?
While we haven’t tested them, All tracks work, in theory, the only differene will be what upgrades are imposed as explained in the question relating to upgrades. Some track/cars may have AI issues, given the autoshift issue in 1.1 as stated in the previous item. Also some tracks the AI may not work due to issues with the track itself. See this thread for further information http://devblog.ctdp.net/?p=526 . Some common tracks that are known to work with the upgrades are (amongst others):
CTDP Bahrain http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Bahrain%20International
Sepang GP4 http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Sepang%20GP4
Albert Pack-GP4 http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Albert%20Park%20GP4
2006 Imola GP http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=2006%20Imola%20GP
Nuerburg http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Nuerburg
Barcelona http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Barcelona
Monaco http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Monaco%20New%20Layout http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Monaco%20EMG
Northamptonshire http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Northamptonshire
Montreal http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Montreal%20ISI,
Indianapolis http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Indianapolis%20GP4
Magny Cours http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Magny%2DCours%20GP4, http://www.nogripracing.com/details.php?filenr=907
Hockenheim http://www.nogripracing.com/details.php?filenr=1004
Hungary http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Hungaroring%20EMG
Brianza (Monza) http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Brianza
China http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Jiading http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Shanghai
Japan/Suzuka http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Suzuka%20GP4 http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Suzuka%20EOAA
Interlagos http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Interlagos%20EOAA http://rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Interlagos%20GP4
This is by no means the entire a list but something to get you started.
Q. A mismatch is reported when joining a dedicated server, why?
A. Due to a collision geometry error a mismatch will be reported when the LOD slider setting in the control center graphicsettings tab is set to medium High. Three ticks from the left or exactly set in the middle . Use either a lower or higher setting will resolve this.
Q. I am missing car sounds for the safety car
A. When using an rF lite installation the safety car has no sound due to missing sound files. Copy the sound folder GameData\Vehicles\Sounds\50V8FPEngine from a full rfactor installation to your CTDP installation will solve this.
Q. Where are the moving arms.
A. They are on their way in the next 2 – 3 days 😉
