A little summer horror story for those who have ears.
Hottest day of the year, a bit of headache.
I had a quick-race preset on rt_sonoma with 28 cup cars using the Ferrari355 by Velo 1.3 forked by CF1.
Fire & Forget (TM), flawless fun.
I just grabbed a random ext_config line that sugarcoats cars' bodies and slapped it on the Ferrari via ext_config, here it is:
[INCLUDE: common/materials_carpaint.ini]
[DEFAULTS]
CarPaintMaterial = body
CarPaintVersionAware = 4
[Material_CarPaint_Metallic]
Materials = body
UseDiffuseAlphaAsMask = INVERT
ColoredSpecular = 0.9
FresnelMax = 0.5
FresnelC = 0.08
AmbientSpecular = 1
AmbientSpecularEXP = 5
SpecularBase = 0.4, 10
NormalsNoise = 0.03
NormalsNoiseUV = 500
FresnelMax = 0.4
FresnelC = 0.04
SpecularSun = 0.1, 1000
BrightnessAdjustment=0.5
UseMetallicReflections = 0.2
Why, oh why? The car feels nice and the CF1 modifications really make the cockpit view shine but the skins are definitely not the hottest ones around so I wanted to try some simple trick to bring peace to my mind.
Doesn't look too bad with the ext_config applied, right?
The first test with the 28 cars' grid has been a disaster, I just get a black screen and the sound of idle engines.
Deleted 8 cars, new test, another disaster. No black screen this time but a framerate in line with 8bit computers of my youth, 1 frame every 4 seconds, absolutely unraceable and prone to crash.
I then stopped the testing.
Some vague figure popped in my mind. By adding further shading via ext_config you can loose more or less 30% of the performance on a per-car basis, even on older not-that-good-looking cars.
Yes, I mean the car's ext_config and not the skin's ext_config. (tried that too, no changes)
So if anybody tells you "YOU HAVE TO PAY THE PRICE TO RACE THE MOST ADVANCED MODS EVAH!!!" you just answer...
"It's not really a question of physics, bye bye".
P.S.: tested on few other not-so-hot older cup cars, same results.