Game Speed: If you find that Dirt Bike is running too slowly on your computer, you can try the following: - Edit the preferences and turn off the things that slow it down. - Make the main window smaller. - Make sure no other applicatons are running. - Try setting your display to 16 bit color and then try it with 256 colors. Controlling the Bike: Shifting: Dirt Bike 3D defaults to Automatic Transmission. With Automatic Transmission, the computer does the shifting for you. If you turn off Automatic Transmission, use the following keys to shift: - upshift - X key - downshift - Z key The current gear is displayed in the status window. Throttle: Throttle is controlled by the LOCATION of your mouse on the screen. - Many players become confused, thinking that it is the moving of the mouse which determines throttle. - If the cursor is at the top of the screen, throttle is on full. - If the cursor is at the bottom of the screen, brakes are on full. You can influence the rotation of the bike in the air with throttle. - tilt the bike forward by decreasing the throttle. - tilt the bike backward by increasing the throttle. NOTE: This effect is a gyration effect, by which changes in momentum of the rear wheel can be used to rotate the bike. Different bikes will have different levels of responsiveness to this effect. Steering: The Novice Bike has automatic steering turned on, causing the computer to attempt to steer the bike. The Intermediate and Expert Bikes have automatic steering turned off. Move the mouse from side to side to steer. Opponnents: The yellow bikes are the recorded races of the high score times. Each time a new high score is set,that race will be recorded so others can race against it. You can create and delete Opponents by choosing "Edit Players" under the "Edit" menu. Dirt Bike 3D supports computer controlled bikes. You can add as many of these bikes as you want, provided you have enough memory in your computer. The computer controls these bikes exactly as you do...by controlling the throttle and shifting. You can slow down the computer bikes by editing the characteristics of the bike (lower the horsepower, for example). Head to Head Play: Any number can play over a TCP network. Dirt Bike can be played over the internet, but slow internet response times limits reasonable speed play to local area networks.