Yet Another Performance Tweak (timecyc.dat)

[babarian225]

MAybe a Sticky

 

 

OMG running GTA IV @ 65fps Constantly!

 

 

with theses settings:

 

1440x 900

 

High

Highest

 

Draw distance 12

Detail Distance 1

Car Density 33

Density 0

 

- Magic Mod

- No rain Mod.

- FarClip 3500

 

I get 65,70 fps Constanly with Dowloads in the Background!!Well back guess background is quite crap with no Detail but hit the P button and it blurs it out.

 

lowest Fps at night 60fps

 

 

This is not a Test of Faith..

This is not a Test of Faith..

 

 

*************EDITED***********

 

Acutually I tested the game without that Mod file and it runs the same on lowered settings.

 

I guess it initially runs better because I set lower settings...doh

 

 

and visuals on the lowest settings are still poo. can't notice any improvement with the mod!

 

sorry for the misleading

Edited January 13, 2009 by babarian225

[0goldeneye0]

wow, it works! And I dont mean that, yea I get a little FPS boost and thats it, I get like a solid 40-50FPS. That and it also fixed my texture popup issues.

[Marcin6]

So , this is for View Distance or Detail Distance ?

 

In game i can change View Distance to 1 and then i`ve gut 100 View Distance with your file ?

[Pixelated]

 

So , this is for View Distance or Detail Distance ?

 

In game i can change View Distance to 1 and then i`ve gut 100 View Distance with your file ?

This gives you a farther draw distance and allows you to see buildings and certain objects from farther away. You can lower the in game view distance which is more CPU\GPU intensive to increase performance. If it's not detailed enough for you raise the detail distance to compensate. Hope that answers your question.

[Marcin6]

Thank`s for reply

[bukkit]

actually it looks crappy, to see far bulidings is fine, but with ugly blury textures.

so it pulls the game visuals down, and no significant performance boost. nice idea, but not very usefull

[Marcin6]

actually it looks crappy, to see far bulidings is fine, but with ugly blury textures.

so it pulls the game visuals down, and no significant performance boost. nice idea, but not very usefull

Yeah but for now , it`s no way to perform the game

[Pixelated]

actually it looks crappy, to see far bulidings is fine, but with ugly blury textures.

so it pulls the game visuals down, and no significant performance boost. nice idea, but not very usefull

The textures look bad because your texture setting is set low. Set it to high and it will look better. This tweak doesn't effect the textures at all.

[EliTsai]

 

 

 

 

1. Make your game mod-able. Use whatever method you want. I've included the idiot proof Magic.bat that even you can't screw up.

 

 

It doesn't get any easier than that.

clearly that statement is a lie

[smoking6]

Hi there,

 

@Pixelated

 

Do you think this would ease the GPU or CPU load?

[LSD T]

This is the sh*t we need to work on.

Maybe the next ...update... will remove the file protection and allow us to make this game like we know it could have been, had they spent 5 more minutes on this "put the kettle on love, this port wont take a minute" game.

Seriously the anti-piracy protection they have invested in failed, so hows about unlocking it, freeing us from that RSSC and GFLW then f*cking off the SecuROM and maybe, just maybe, we gets a game that is good, not smothered by the oily veneer of greed and carelessness.

 

all that's missing is 'much love'.

[J0EBUSHID0]

OMG... Somebody pinch me... a tweak that actually worked and added a good FPS boost? And even makes the game look a little better, imo? This is impossible.

 

Thank you!!

[belinda]

since some people don't know the difference between ingame view distance & detail distance and editing the farclp values in timecyc.dat, i will give a little overview here.

 

View Distance Ingame

it defines how detailed the near-range outdoor base geometry (e.g. buildings, bridges) is rendered and textured. i does not change objects or textures in the distant and does not alter how far you can look in the distance. raising it increases video memory usage because higher resolution textures will be used even further away from you, which can lead to stuttering or missing geometry & textures glitches. and it increases processing load on cpu & gpu because higher-polygoned base geometry models will be used even further away. be cautious, start low and only raise in small steps (e.g. 5), play the game for some time (>30min) and watch out for increased stuttering or "delayed" texture & geometry loading glitches.

 

Detail Distance Ingame

it defines the amount of near-range outdoor detail geometry (e.g. simple trash laying around, trashcans, letterboxes, balustrades on buildings) and effects (e.g. lightsources like car headlights, traffic lights) being rendered. it does not change objects in the distant and does not alter how far you can look in the distance. raising it mainly increases cpu & gpu load because more and higher-polygoned extra models clutter up the streets to make it look less lifeless. and the increased range for light sources being rendered puts additional load on the gpu. don't use ridiculously high values, gpu power should make the most difference here.

 

note: ingame view & detail distance sliders are internally connected to a certain degree. some of the above changes are affected by both, but this explanation rounds them up pretty well i think.

 

FarClp in timecyc.dat

it defines the maximum draw distance at a certain time & weather condition (see details here). everything behind this range is not being rendered at all regardless of view and detail distance ingame. inseparable (at least as far as i know) connected to it is kind of a distance fog, which makes this sudden break in visibility less noticeable and works as an athmospheric haze. raising it increases gpu load slighty, because more of the low-detailed lowly-textured distance geometry needs to be rendered.

 

ok, now we have a common base to discuss. this is no magic tweak to double performance or quality without any drawbacks. when you lower detail distance and raise farclp instead, you just trade some near-range detail for some more view distance and a little less foggy athmosphere in the distance. it is just one more setting you can play around with to reach a good compromise between quality and performance on your system. for people with high fps it's a cheap way to gain more view distance an a clearer athmosphere. for people struggling for every possible fps lowering it can help a bit too.

Edited January 20, 2009 by belinda

[Pixelated]

I couldn't have put it better. Though I didn't notice that the buildings were lower texture when using FarClip, I only noticed they were less detailed and didn't render certain "geometry" that the in game view distance does. I figured if you stripped off all the detail that they were lower resolution anyways like 90% of textures in games are. They simply blend high and low res textures where you would normally notice the poor quality.

[chaosmeister]

Its true that this does give you a good fps increase i got around 8 more. Only problem is that when i set the draw distance to 0 or 1 or whatever the lowest was, most of the buildings textures get messed up, lots of criss crossing black lines appear on every building and then when you get to within about 1 meter of it, the building renders itself properly and all is ok. Although this fix does make my game play A LOT smoother, it also makes my game stupidly ugly, not sure if this is a problem with drivers but i updated my drivers when this happened and it didn't solve the problem. So atm i just have to stick with using draw distance as setting that to 30 or 40 is absolutely fine =/

[Gtamacca]

 

 

 

 

1. Make your game mod-able. Use whatever method you want. I've included the idiot proof Magic.bat that even you can't screw up.

 

 

It doesn't get any easier than that.

clearly that statement is a lie

Clearly ur a nub-cake...Look put these on...It might help you to understand instructions ---(0)--(0)--- lol.

 

Btw thx for this tweak...It sure gave me a great boost in fps .

[MrNutjob]

This one deservers to be a sticky much more than that sh*tty "ultimate" performance fix.

 

Before I was playing with: 1280x900, med/low, 20/20/40

Now: 1680x1050, med/low, 0/20/40

 

Too bad I just got to the second island and noticed it's more heavy on my system. There are some roads there that are much bigger than the ones on the first one, with tons of cars.

 

My system: C2D 2.66Ghz, 2GB RAM, 8800GT 512MB

Yesterday I ordered 4GB more RAM, so I'm hoping that'll help some.

Edited January 17, 2009 by MrNutjob

[belinda]

@ MrNutjob

monkeymhz's "ultimate performance fix" is not sh*tty, it does exactly what he describes. but like almost every tweak found so far it's highly dependend on the actual system and ingame setup. some get more fps, some not. and i think your c2d 2.66ghz is not powerful enough to play with car density 40. i know, higher values make liberty city way more lively but reducing that to 30 or even 20 will give you more stable fps, especially in car chases. my athlon x2 3.00ghz is also overstrained in areas with many cars on screen. if you haven't done so try playing with these values in common\data\visualSettings.dat:

 

# Lod distances for vehicles  	car.lod.distance.high	20.00  car.lod.distance.low	80.00  

 

gta 4 uses at least 3 differently detailed models for cars ingame. car.lod.distance.high manages the maximum distance (nico to car) for high quality car models. further away medium detail models are used. car.lod.distance.low manages the maximum distance (again nico to car) for the medium models, further away the low detail models get used. i lowered these values to 12.50 / 50.00 to make car processing and rendering a bit less demanding. and i don't think more ram will help you here much, gta4 is not able to use more than 2gb anyway. maybe on a vista pc with many background software you will benefit noticeably, but not on a well optimized windows xp machine with no other software running in the background.

 

@ chaosmeister

you don't have to set detail distance to 0 or 1. set it to a value your machine is capable of. then you can use the farclp changes to either gain more view distance (lower detail distance to balance the little fps hit) or decrease view distance (with a little fps gain to maybe even raise detail distance a bit). just play around with both values to reach your personal compromise between view distance & detail distance versus performance.

[Malexx]

just registered to say thx.

This doesnt gave me a huge fps increase but the game is now way smoother to play,there is really no stuttering at all now.

 

System q6600 @2,4

4GB RAM

gtx260 @ 712/1458/1269

Vista 64

 

Settings FarClip 3500

 

Draw Distance 32

Detail Distance 60

Vehicles 45

Shadows 0

 

FPS are always about 32,with lot of actions it drops to 25,but still no stuttering etc .....

 

 

Before i used the same settings and had most of time the same FPS,but always with little stuttering wich gave the feeling the game runs slow ............

 

so thank you ...

[RonFTL]

im gonna give this a try.

[San Andreaser]

thanks a lot man

[mkey82]

so hows about unlocking it, freeing us from that RSSC and GFLW then f*cking off the SecuROM

All of this is (unofficially) doable as we speak.

[a-k-t-w]

 

so hows about unlocking it, freeing us from that RSSC and GFLW then f*cking off the SecuROM

All of this is (unofficially) doable as we speak.

WOOP!! RGSC stops my game from starting so I had to make a fix myself. Getting rid of that AND SecuROM would be f*ckING awesome. (they've already killed GFLW YAY)

 

Anyway, do you need another mirror? Ya know, no waiting sh*t, direct link?

 

Edit:

 

Too bad! Here it is anyways GTA IV timecyc.dat Tweak.rar

Edited January 20, 2009 by a-k-t-w

[isogamer]

whats that bag on Niko's shoulder????????

 

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=389897&st=0

 

 

parachute sunshine.

 

ahhh smart man... also freeing up VRAM = great.

 

Im going to try it this evening.

 

Of course you have to install this tweak then lower your Draw Distance to free up VRAM. That's what I meant by that. Using this timecyc.dat tweak with your draw distance set to 0 will allow you to see more and farther then using the in game draw distance at 100 and the default timecyc.dat. It just won't be as detailed as it is using the in game draw distance. It's simply a trade off. Of course you can do both if your PC can handle it.

Okay i followed your instructions, very easy to do, ppl just need to READ these days.

 

But anywyz i do see a slight improvment. The graphics still looks good, but i do get the hickups of framerates here and there when ever there is LOTS going on. Like when i make LOTS of cops come after me. Now my question to you is should i still patch my GTA IV ? I HAVEN't patched it, BUT i did update my graphic card GEFORCE DRIVER which is a 8800GTX 768 MB with a QC CPU AMD 9600, and 2 GB of ddr2 ram. But i still do get some framerate issues here an there. I just want to run GTA IV smoothly at all times. I updated my graphic card with the latest driver the 181.24 driver that just came out. So should i still patch the GTA IV? with the Rockstar offical patch? Cause i did that last time, and it screwed wtih my keyboard controllers, and my menu screen kept going back an forth with the xbox 360 log icons that you normalyl see in a xbox 360 menu.

 

ALSO how do you get tha parachute mod? And many other mods for this game? Plz provide link THANKS!!

[bb_matt]

Thanks for this tweak.

 

It's about the only one that's actually made any significant difference in FPS levels. The trade-off with distance rendering quality is worth it.

I can now play at 1024x768 at more or less the same FPS as 800x600.

[thaCURSEDpie]

Great tweak! love it! Where it was 23 before, it is now 33fps. (but it still drops as low as 16 damn)

[MadKilla]

It works great, I have gained about 6 fps.

[Pixelated]

Yeah it's too bad we have to resort to this kind of thing to get the game to play. Still holding out for a "Performance Patch" but losing hope as I don't think it will matter too much.

[truehighroller]

With this then I should get 70s for a high and low 40s. This is awesome, thumbs up from me OPs friend .

 

 

 

EDIT / QUESTION: I need to know what you mean by saying draw distance specificly because I am unsure of which setting you are talking about. Are you talking about the view distance? I implemented the file successfully but everything seems about the same to me but, my game runs fine however with the clip capture turned off unlike some people who are unfortionate, enough to still have major issues with the game after they turn it off. I still don't feel I get as good as FPS as I could how ever. Thank you for your help.

Edited January 22, 2009 by truehighroller

[thales100]

This is a must have tweak imo, i always play with farclip 3500 + ultimate blur.

 

Click on the pics to enlarge 1680 x 1050.