F1 2001 1.0.2.4 Readme ====================== MINIMUM SPECIFICATION ===================== In the event of any problems, ensure that your PC meets the minimum specification as stated below. Operating System Microsoft Windows 95,98, ME, 2000, XP Processor 333 Mhz or better Intel Pentium II or 100% Compatible Memory 64 mb or better Hard Drive At least 500 mb free after installation. CD/DVD Drive 4x or better 3D Accelerator 16 mb or better Direct X 8.0 compliant. Sound Card Direct X 8.0 compliant. Game Controllers Direct X 8.0 compliant. DIRECTX ======= If you try to run the game without DirectX 8.0 installed, F1 2001 may not run correctly. For your convenience, we have included DirectX 8.0 on the F1 2001 CD. The game will check for your current version of DirectX during installation. VIDEO CARDS =========== When running F1 2001 we recommend that your video card setting in Windows Display Properties is set to 16 bit colour depth. If you increase the settings of your display options and experience graphical problems and/or decreased performance and have the latest drivers, we recommend setting your Display options back to their defaults. On some video cards, you may encounter problems using Windows multi-task keys (Alt-Tab etc.) to switch between F1 2001 and other active applications. This is because F1 2001 is highly demanding on video memory, therefore we strongly recommend against any form of Windows multi-tasking. We do not recommend running F1 2001 in high resolutions and/or with hardware features such 4x anti-aliasing enabled (only really feasible on fast 64mb+ cards, eg Geforce 3) unless you have 256mb of ram and your AGP aperture size set up correctly (a good place to start would be to set it to 128MB and then experiment to find the optimum setting for your PC). Users should also be aware that at this resolution the frame-rate is likely to drop to significantly due to the memory bandwidth limitations of the AGP bus. Even a 4x AGP bus can only transmit around 1.2GB/s of graphical data to the system memory, compared to around 7Gb/s internally on a fast video card such as the GeForce 3.) If you are unfamiliar with this terminology or are not confident in your ability to modify your AGP aperture size, we do not recommend you attempt this process. Due to the potential harm possible from incorrectly modifying settings in your BIOS, Electronic Arts Customer Support will not be able to assist you in modifying this setting on your system. The following cards have been tested and have been found to work very well with F1-2001: Matrox G400 Matrox G450 Nvidia GeForce 2 family Nvidia TNT/TNT2 Nividia GeForce 3 The following cards tested have shown some problems with these details: PowerVR Kyro/Kyro II: Some users may find that certain features in the game may display incorrectly, such as mirrors or car shadows. We recommend updating your drivers to the latest release to see if these issues have been solved. 3DFX Voodoo 4/5 series: 4 sample FSAA is only supported on resolutions up to 800x600 with this card. With 4x FSAA enabled at 1024x768 or above, some users may find the game appears to hang after the intro movie. Pressing ALT+TAB to minimise the game, and then maximising it again will clear the problem, but it is still recommended that users either stick to a resolution of 800x600 maximum, or turn FSAA off. ATI Rage 128 Users with this video card may notice the mouse cursor flickering in the front end of the game. This is not a solvable problem, but the game should function normally apart from this. The following cards do not work with F1-2001: 3DFX Voodoo 1,2 and 3 series (including Voodoo Banshee cards) 3D labs Permedia 3 S3 Savage 3D, 4, 2000 Please note : This game requires a 100% Direct X8 compatible card which means that the Voodoo3 (although popular) is not supported and does not work with this game. AUDIO & MOVIES ============== While this game has been tested on an extensive range of sound cards, and should work without problems - we have noticed issue's on some low end PC's (P2-400 and below) where the intro movie may slow down and/or stutter. This does not affect game play and can be bypassed by pressing while the movie is playing. GAME CONTROLLERS ================ Certain game controllers may not be detected consistently by your operating system. In any case that you are unable to get a certain game controller to function in F1 2001, first check that the controller is reported to be OK under your operating system. If the controller is reported as OK then ensure that you have it selected under Options. If the controller still fails to respond once selected, enter the Controls page from Options and remap the controls for your device as described in the manual. REPLAYS ======= Not all visual or audio events are saved when replays are recording. Furthermore, viewing the same replay multiple times may lead to visual inaccuracies particularly with regards to damage. If you have problems with saving and recording replays, it's possible that you will need to free up some hard drive space to accommodate the data saved as you play the game. For best performance, it is recommended that there is at least 500Mb free hard drive space available. MULTIPLAYER =========== In order to play multiplayer games you must ensure that all components are installed. In order to do this ensure that you select the Custom install option and tick the box for every selectable component. Prior to making a full install, we recommend that you ensure you have at least 750 MB of free hard drive space. With regards to the data rate setting in multiplayer games, please note that whilst higher data rates provide smoother looking races, the amount of data being transferred can lead to games losing synchronisation more easily, especially on slower networks. If you experience synchronisation problems, try reducing the data rate setting. There are a few settings of note in the player's .PLR file that can be modified to alter the flow of network traffic to accomodate the users setup. >> "FlushThreshold" value range: 0-1024 default value: 472 HotPacket will lump together non-guaranteed messages generated by F1 2001, and send them out in larger chunks in order to increase the application data to message header ratio. This value sets the largest allowed size for an accumulated message. If, while generating an accumulated message, an incoming piece of data would push the current message above this size, the current accumulation is queued to the HotPacket internal outgoing queue. A setting of 0 will send each message out individually, with no accumulation. The default of 472 is probably best in most situations, but if a user knew that their network was prone to losing either large or small datagrams, they could adjust this setting accordingly. Also, if the MTU (maximum transmittable units) size is known for a network and its clients, this value can be adjusted accordingly. Please note that the MTU value includes the UDP and media headers which are not included in the FlushThreshold value. The default value of 472 is actually based on the default MTU of 536, minus an arbitrary 64 bytes for the system added headers. >> "LazyFlush" value range: 0 or 1 default value: 0 Normally the network output operations occur in several stages. As the server receives data from clients it is set to be forwarded to other clients, then the server explicitly flushes the output queue. The server then does its dynamics computations for that frame, and the local events generated are then accumulated and then explicitly flushed. So it looks like this: 1. Receive events from clients 2. Place processed client events into outgoing queue for forwarding to other clients 3. Flush output 4. Process dynamics locally 5. Generate local outgoing events 6. Flush output Lazy flushing will skip step 3. This allows the locally generated events to be clumped together with the forwarded events. The result is less bandwidth consumed, but an amount of client-to-client latency induced equivalent to the time it takes the server to process its local dynamics. This latency is not really noticeable on fast servers. The bandwidth savings only comes into play when client messages are being forwarded to other clients, so unless there are 2 clients along with the server this setting will have no effect. Please note that lazy flushing is automatically used if the network data rate on the server is set to 8 or less. LEGALESE ======== Software and documentation (c) 2001 Electronic Arts Inc. All rights reserved. Electronic Arts, the stylised "EA" design, EA SPORTS and the EA SPORTS logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the US and/or other countries. EA SPORTS(tm) is an Electronic Arts(tm) brand. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. "Formula One", "Formula 1", "F1" and "FIA Formula One World Championship" (together with their foreign translations and permutations) are trademarks of the Formula One group of companies. An official product of the FIA Formula One World Championship licensed by Formula One Administration Limited. Uses Bink Video. Copyright (C) 1997-2001 by RAD Game Tools, Inc. Uses Miles Sound System. Copyright (c) 1991-2001 by RAD Game Tools, Inc.