How to Configure NASCAR Racing 2002 Season's Graphics
 How to Configure NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season's Graphics

You will use this program to configure NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season to run on your system by selecting a preferred renderer, 3D device, as well as the resolution and color depth you wish to use in the game.

This configuration program will automatically run the first time the game is launched.  If you need to reconfigure your graphic settings you may re-launch this program at any time.

How To ...

Select a Renderer

Select a Display Adapter

Select a Driving Resolution

If you experience problems see the Troubleshooting Problems section of this help file.


How to Select a Renderer

When the 3D configuration program is launched, your first option will be to select the renderer you wish to use.  You will have the choice of the Direct3D Renderer or the GDI Renderer.  Most users will want to select the Direct3D Renderer, but if you are running a dedicated server without a 3D accelerator you may want to select the GDI Renderer instead.

Once you have selected the Direct3D Renderer or GDI Renderer in the drop-down list, you will then need to choose a resolution.


About the Direct3D Renderer

Direct3D Mip Filtering

As part of the 3D Configuration test NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season will automatically select the recommended mip filtering mode, but advanced users may wish to experiment with the values listed below.  Note that if you manually select a setting that is too advanced, it might cause mip-mapping to disable, use a lesser setting, or go into a software emulation mode.

Direct3D Mip Filters in the REND_D3D.INI:

Texture Magnification Filters:

1 = point sampling

2 = bi-linear filtering

Texture Minification Filters:

1 = point sampling

2 = bi-linear filtering

Mip-Mapping Filters:

1 = use top mip level always

2 = use appropriate mip level

3 = tri-linear filtering if minification filter is 2

Useful Links


About the GDI Renderer

NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season's GDI renderer is intended for use by dedicated servers and does not require a 3D accelerator.  The GDI renderer will run in an 800x600 window, and will not render any 3D scenes in the game.

Useful Links


How to Select a Display Adapter

After you have selected a renderer, if you have multiple display adapters in your system, you may have the option to select which device will be the preferred 3D adapter used by NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season.

NOTE: If you have a video card will supports hardware Transform and Lighting you will see a second Direct3D adapter in the drop-down list designated with a (TnL) extension.  For the best performance it is recommended that this (TnL) adapter be used when available.

NOTE: This is step only applicable to the Direct3D Renderer


About Hardware Transform and Lighting

NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season can take advantage of video cards supporting hardware Transform and Lighting.  This allows the video card to offload some of the graphics computations from the CPU allowing for increased performance.

When using the Direct3D Renderer you will need to select the labeled (TnL HAL) device.


How to select a Graphics Mode

After you have selected a renderer and display adapter you will then be able to choose your driving resolution and color depth.

This window also may have two additional options depending on which renderer you chose in the first step as well as your system’s configuration.  These options are as follows:

Run in a Window:  When checked this will cause the game to be run in a window which can be useful for dedicated servers.  This option will only be available if the selected graphics mode is less than or equal to your Windows desktop resolution and the same color depth as your Windows desktop.

Use Software Cursor:  When checked this will disable the default hardware mouse cursor and causes the game to use a bitmap mouse cursor instead.  It is recommended that this option only be used if you experience problems with the hardware mouse cursor.  Note that some cards such as the Voodoo2 do not support hardware mouse cursors.


About Resolution

The Graphics Mode window will display all of the available resolutions that your system supports for the game.  These will be sorted with higher resolutions being at the bottom of the list.

Increasing the resolution can potentially result in more detailed images, but it will come at the cost of performance and available texture memory.  It is possible that at high resolutions the game will be forced to reduce texture quality to allow the textures to be loaded into the reduced texture memory on the video card.


About Color Depth

Each of the resolutions listed in the Graphics Mode window will have an associated color depth, either 16-bit or 32-bit.

Increasing the color depth can result in higher quality images, but it will come at the cost of performance and available texture memory.


Troubleshooting Problems

If you experience problems running NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season it is recommended that you first try running the game using the Direct3D Renderer using full-screen 800x600 in 16-bit color.

If you continue to experience problems you should try updating your system’s drivers.  For the best performance and compatibility it is important that you use the most current drivers for your video card as well as the latest AGP drivers for your motherboard chipset.

Known working drivers for several video card manufacturers have been included on the NASCAR® Racing 2002 Season CD, and you may also use these links to find additional drivers.


Useful Links

Use the following links to find updated drivers for your system:

General:

DirectX: http://www.microsoft.com/directx/

Chipsets:

AMD: http://www.amd.com/

Intel: http://www.intel.com/

VIA: http://www.via.com/

Video Cards:

3dfx: http://www.3dfx.com/

ATI: http://www.ati.com/

Matrox: http://www.matrox.com/

NVIDIA: http://www.nvidia.com/

S3: http://www.s3.com/