Sound quality and hardware acceleration?

[RocketGuns]

Hi,

Just have a quick question here. I love the sounds in GRID, however, I can't seem to put it on "High" quality, just medium. When I put it on High, and save it,... restart the game as is required, I just find it back being set on medium again. How come?

Also, I cannot use "hardware acceleration", why is that?

My sound card is a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

thx!

[dakn]

I have the same sound card and it works fine hardware on on high quality.

Have you set the X-Fi to gaming mode in the creative control panel? I have found that GRID sometimes doesn't keep the settings and needs to be done a couple of times but once it has then it's fine.

[RocketGuns]

I have the same sound card and it works fine hardware on on high quality.

Have you set the X-Fi to gaming mode in the creative control panel? I have found that GRID sometimes doesn't keep the settings and needs to be done a couple of times but once it has then it's fine.

hey that's a good idea. I have set it to entertainment mode, because I think it sounds better for movies and especially music.... as it says in the description. however, I'm gonna go see if game mode makes it work. hold on :)

[dakn]

It will, you HAVE to set it to gaming for the use of EAX and acceleration

[RocketGuns]

so I did what you said, put it in Game Mode. Now is in fact was able to put on hardware acceleration and I once again set the sound quality on High,... but when I saved it and restarted the game it still was reset to "off" and "medium". It seems to reset the sound settings... maybe something else overrules it?

Ideas? :S

[dakn]

Yeh I said I found the same thing. Try it again, then try saving your profile too

[Uncle Chewy]

Hi,

Just have a quick question here. I love the sounds in GRID, however, I can't seem to put it on "High" quality, just medium. When I put it on High, and save it,... restart the game as is required, I just find it back being set on medium again. How come?

Also, I cannot use "hardware acceleration", why is that?

My sound card is a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

thx!


We are investigating this now.

[Uncle Chewy]

Hi,

Just have a quick question here. I love the sounds in GRID, however, I can't seem to put it on "High" quality, just medium. When I put it on High, and save it,... restart the game as is required, I just find it back being set on medium again. How come?

Also, I cannot use "hardware acceleration", why is that?

My sound card is a Creative Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

thx!


We think this could be due to old sound card drivers. Could you try updating these? If you then still have a problem, please let us know in this thread.

[dakn]

It's simply down to not selecting Game Mode in the creative control panel. The issue is the game not saving the settings once selected.

[RocketGuns]

Hi Uncle Chewy, awesome. Hope it can be resolved soon, because I'm nearly 100% sure that I have the latest soundcard drivers, but I'll recheck in a min.

As dakn just stated, it just doesn't save the settings I think.

---
Btw Uncle Chewy - this is a bit off topic - but do you think you guys can add an ingame scoreboard feature so you can see who's still in the race while racing? And perhaps a possibility to chat while spectating and the ability to see server names when finding a custom race in multiplayer .. I don't think the servers are given names. edit: and btw, the game is awesome. I LOVE the mustang race, it's totally wicked.

[RocketGuns]

I downloaded the latest drivers for my soundcard and when installing it said that I already had this version on my pc. I continued anyway to reinstall the current installation, but I don't think it will resolve the problem.

It just won't save in GRID. Also, it'd be nice if the 'hardware acceleration' button is also activated even though I put the creative settings on "entertainment mode" instead of "game mode", since I listen to more music than I play games these days, bit busy. :)

I also never noticed this in other games, but someone mentioned in the forum that GRID is stated on 'low' priority in the task manager, is that normal? I can put it on 'high' manually, but I'm not noticing much difference. Also, sometimes when I alt-tab back to the game, it just closes GRID and returns me back to windows in an eyeblink.

[mastertab]

Same problem like RocketGuns I have X-Fi XtremeMusic with newest drivers from soundblaster.com and game doesn't save my sound settings if I select Hardware on and quality high they back to HA: off, q: medium.

[dakn]

it'd be nice if the 'hardware acceleration' button is also activated even though I put the creative settings on "entertainment mode" instead of "game mode", since I listen to more music than I play games these days,
This has nothing to do with GRID. With any game unless you select Gaming Mode you can't use the hardware setting in game, that creative setting is there for a reason! Same as if you want to make music you would need to enable Audio Creation mode or you will not get ASIO support in music applications.

[RocketGuns]

This has nothing to do with GRID. With any game unless you select Gaming Mode you can't use the hardware setting in game, that creative setting is there for a reason! Same as if you want to make music you would need to enable Audio Creation mode or you will not get ASIO support in music applications.

that may be so for GRID, but I'm positive that I've turned on hardware acceleration in other games without putting it on game mode. Dunno which games, perhaps bioshock and/or crysis, not sure! anyways, its not much of a problem, i could just switch some times. main thing now is that grid should save the sound settings ;)

[dakn]

There was an application you could get that runs in your taskbar and you can add programs to it and it will switch modes automatically. Can't remember what it was now, it was XP only then so I stopped when I moved to Vista.

Edit: Found it! http://www.freewebs.com/spectra9/xfmc.html

And with a quick remote back into my home PC from work I find that it now works in Vista! :D nice

[RocketGuns]

There was an application you could get that runs in your taskbar and you can add programs to it and it will switch modes automatically. Can't remember what it was now, it was XP only then so I stopped when I moved to Vista.

Edit: Found it! http://www.freewebs.com/spectra9/xfmc.html

And with a quick remote back into my home PC from work I find that it now works in Vista! :D nice

awesome thanks :D I'm gonna try that. sounds great. thanks a lot for the link. I've always played games so far in entertainment mode. Recently I also found out about the crystalizer or something and wow, what an improvement. Sound is even better now. (speakers: logitech Z-2300 THX :D)

[Uncle Chewy]

I downloaded the latest drivers for my soundcard and when installing it said that I already had this version on my pc. I continued anyway to reinstall the current installation, but I don't think it will resolve the problem.

It just won't save in GRID. Also, it'd be nice if the 'hardware acceleration' button is also activated even though I put the creative settings on "entertainment mode" instead of "game mode", since I listen to more music than I play games these days, bit busy. :)

I also never noticed this in other games, but someone mentioned in the forum that GRID is stated on 'low' priority in the task manager, is that normal? I can put it on 'high' manually, but I'm not noticing much difference. Also, sometimes when I alt-tab back to the game, it just closes GRID and returns me back to windows in an eyeblink.


GRID lowers it's priority when running in the background to make a lighter use of resources on lowest spec(mainly single core) machines. When brought to front it raises the priority.

[Stonekeep]

i have the same problem.
i have the lastest driver for my audigy player with xp and i c'ant choose harware acceleration

[RocketGuns]

There was an application you could get that runs in your taskbar and you can add programs to it and it will switch modes automatically. Can't remember what it was now, it was XP only then so I stopped when I moved to Vista.

Edit: Found it! http://www.freewebs.com/spectra9/xfmc.html

And with a quick remote back into my home PC from work I find that it now works in Vista! :D nice

dakn, do you also know something about the THX Setup Console? Can't seem to find it on my pc but the website of creative says my soundcard supports it, as it has a THX certification. can't find a driver either. *searches some more*

and no, it's not on my driver disc that came with the sound card. well, the disc is vista-only... how stupid

[dakn]

dakn, do you also know something about the THX Setup Console?

No I'm afraid I don't. I would think that that is application specific.

[Uncle Chewy]

I have the same sound card and it works fine hardware on on high quality.

Have you set the X-Fi to gaming mode in the creative control panel? I have found that GRID sometimes doesn't keep the settings and needs to be done a couple of times but once it has then it's fine.


From one of our interface programmers:

Ok after investigation it seems that when you change the quality setting, the game forgets that it will need to save the acceleration setting if the user changed it.

As a temporary workaround I recommend we tell users that wish to ensure their settings are saved to specifically only change one option at a time.

This bug isn't present in the full game.

[RocketGuns]

No I'm afraid I don't. I would think that that is application specific.

no its not, look, same audio card and he/she has such a console:
http://img180.imageshack.us/my.php?image=thxconsoletc1.jpg

I found it, I downloaded a legal image (posted on creative forum, so I assume it's legal) of the same disc that came with the soundcard, but now working with windows XP. the driver is not downloadable separetely, but it is on the disc I see when choosing setup items. I'm gonna try it out :D

[RocketGuns]

From one of our interface programmers:

Ok after investigation it seems that when you change the quality setting, the game forgets that it will need to save the acceleration setting if the user changed it.

As a temporary workaround I recommend we tell users that wish to ensure their settings are saved to specifically only change one option at a time.

This bug isn't present in the full game.

thanks for looking into it, that's alright. rock on man :)

[TommyW]

I cant select hardware acceleration (or high quality) either using my Audigy 2 ZS. I don't appear to have an option to engage 'Gaming Mode' or 'Entertainment Mode' etc like some of you guys either

[ECH]

Same here, I have my X-Fi already set to Game Mode and it's grayed out for me. All I can do is use software mode.

[ECH]

Same here, I have my X-Fi already set to Game Mode and it's grayed out for me. All I can do is use software mode.


OK, I fixed it. I had to go use Grid's "safe mode" executable to turn Hardware acceleration on (this time it's an on/off option not software option). Decline to reboot. This will save your settings. Then I went into Video settings and made the necessary changes. Declined to restart the game, again settings saved. Then went back to the main menu, exited and restarted the game using the regular version of Grid (ie: not safe mode). I noticed right away the added instrumentals in the introduction. Then confirmed that Hardware acceleration is enabled set to High.


Side note:
I use a video card that also has built in audio, HD 2900 XT. I have to be careful to make sure that windows actually has X-Fi selected as default. Or else you can run into problems. Although it was already defaulted for the X-Fi. I cannot figure out why it was grayed out.

[Dodgysod]

i also have no hardware option , i use an asus xonar 7.1 sound card. any help would be appreciated. how do you get to boot the game in safe mode?

[TommyW]

So can you only use hardware acceleration with an X-Fi soundcard? That's a bit bizarre isn't it? This will be the first game that doesn't support my Audigy 2 if so :( Right now I'm probably losing quite a few FPS because I'm stuck on software mode