Links 2003 receives improved GPU compatibility

[dwg]

I noted that this wrapper provides Mouse sensitivity settings.

I have tried a couple of values and it indeed works, this may be helpful for those that find the mouse response either too sensitive or not sensitive enough.

Des

[Mailman]

I noted that this wrapper provides Mouse sensitivity settings.

I have tried a couple of values and it indeed works, this may be helpful for this that find the mouse response either too sensitive or not sensitive enough.

Des

Yes this is my next port of call. RTS swing is too slow and feels insensitive in-game ATM (with accompanying lack of good clubhead speed at RTS) so I will be indeed looking at seeing the mouse sensitivity parameters being applied. That and getting Links to output as higher a resolution as it possible before scaling to the monitor. I may experiment with both fullscreen and windowed to see what looks best. Sunday will see a good testing session.

Links still splutters getting into life on loading but the number of re-starts is lower so I'll be toying around with the LinksMMIII.exe settings as well. ATM all settings are plain vanilla in both the configuration file and in Links so that is my baseline to work from.

[Tweed & Whisky]

Providing you can control your mouse hardware I've found settings of 800dpi and polling/report rate @125hz is the sweet spot for RTS (Elite skill level difficulty).

I've noticed that resolutions higher than 1280 x 1024 makes RTS feel less intuitive, I wonder if this was the highest res the game was originally programmed for and RTS calibrated to?

[Mailman]

Providing you can control your mouse hardware I've found settings of 800dpi and polling/report rate @125hz is the sweet spot for RTS (Elite skill level difficulty).

I've noticed that resolutions higher than 1280 x 1024 makes RTS feel less intuitive, I wonder if this was the highest res the game was originally programmed for and RTS calibrated to?

Actually seeing the stuff about mouse senstivity dpi and what is meant by 'native' (that is one of the settings in the configuration ini) it had me looking at my Razer Deathadder and the numbers I was setting within Razer Synapse. To cut a long story short I've decided to use 800dpi (or a multiple of it i.e. 1600/3200). So for Links (and for Perfect Golf) I'm using 3200 dpi and this feels right on my monitor and more importantly appears to involve no 'interpolation'. Maybe a placebo but the recent session I've just finished has seen CHS of between 110-120.3 mph in Links 2003 with the driver.

I also had to set the resolution in the Links registry back to where it should be @ display mode 14 (1920x1080) and it has scaled up to fill my (2560x1440) monitor nicely now with a 1.33 scaling factor (no black bars). Also managed to work out the fade/draw for the RTS swing after all these years - yell if anyone wants details

[dwg]

Pete posted a way to achieve fade and draw on RTS.

It would be interesting to see how you are doing it so we can compare and contrast.

[Tweed & Whisky]

Providing you can control your mouse hardware I've found settings of 800dpi and polling/report rate @125hz is the sweet spot for RTS (Elite skill level difficulty).

I've noticed that resolutions higher than 1280 x 1024 makes RTS feel less intuitive, I wonder if this was the highest res the game was originally programmed for and RTS calibrated to?

Actually seeing the stuff about mouse senstivity dpi and what is meant by 'native' (that is one of the settings in the configuration ini) it had me looking at my Razer Deathadder and the numbers I was setting within Razer Synapse. To cut a long story short I've decided to use 800dpi (or a multiple of it i.e. 1600/3200). So for Links (and for Perfect Golf) I'm using 3200 dpi and this feels right on my monitor and more importantly appears to involve no 'interpolation'. Maybe a placebo but the recent session I've just finished has seen CHS of between 110-120.3 mph in Links 2003 with the driver.

I also had to set the resolution in the Links registry back to where it should be @ display mode 14 (1920x1080) and it has scaled up to fill my (2560x1440) monitor nicely now with a 1.33 scaling factor (no black bars). Also managed to work out the fade/draw for the RTS swing after all these years - yell if anyone wants details

What got me thinking along these lines was noticing the Microsoft B75-00001 IntelliMouse Explorer featured in the Links manual: a 400dpi, 1500fps, 125hz model (released in '99 apparently). I assumed the programmers were using them in development.
Being as they now fetch a pretty penny I've gone down the Kmart path and found a cheap mouse which can be programmed to those specs (at 400dpi, RTS feels great but navigating menus is cumbersome). Usually these mouses have multiple steps of resolution so you can cycle DPI's for different tasks.

[Mailman]

Pete posted a way to achieve fade and draw on RTS.

It would be interesting to see how you are doing it so we can compare and contrast.

I've just PMd Pete and his method is the same - playing a FLOP shot in click mode (in practice round), selecting a club, unchecking this shot only, changing the stance etc. Next time you start (changing to RTS mode) with the same player, selecting the FLOP shot gives the parameters shot previously in the click mode.

[dwg]

@Mailman

I've been using the method for a while now, it provides for a good stock fade and draw shot, very useful with some courses. Of course with the settings you do have with RTS you can still set up for a flop or punch shot on a shot by shot basis, so you lose nothing.

I created a golfer, with the settings, then just copied the golfer between machines, as well as saving a copy. The only thing we cannot do is set a different name for the shot.

Des

[Mailman]

Some results which might be of interest:

• I still need multiple re-starts to get Links going with this new wrapper but it can be first time up to about 10 so better than before

• Links launched via MMIII.exe (on the taskbar) rather than the launcher

• Links MMIII set to run as administrator AND High DPI scaling checked ( and set to application)

• Nvidia control panel set to defaults for global settings - Links is as per global

• Links now set to displaymode 15 in registry ('i.e 1920x1200) ouput to a 32" monitor resolution of 2560 x1440

Wrapper In game settings via SHIFT+F11

• DisplayAspectRatio changed to 'display' rather than 'app' so this stretches the display to remove the black bars so the output of 1920x1200 is scaled (by stretching) up to 2560x1440 borderless fullscreen. Hit EXPORT button to save to the configuration file. Now Links 2003 starts at a resolution of 1920x1200 but now stretched so no black bars. May or may not be to everyone's liking. But the Nvidia Control Panel not involved in the scaling process it seems.

• The other only settings I have changed have been to set both mouse settings (MousePollingRate and MouseSensitivity) to 'native' and now the mouse behaves better as per the Razer native settings I'm using with it. Again EXPORT to save these settings as before.

I'll no doubt muck around in the coming weeks but this is probably going to be as good as it gets for now. When I get round to it I shall see what happens when I output Links to my secondary monitor instead (which is a 27" 1920x1200 resolution Dell) Will update if anything changes

[dwg]

I had some discussions with the developer.

Yes the wrapper does do scaling it has a number of options for the way it is done, this is set through DisplayFilter.

As you have found the wrapper can stretch output or use black bars. The consensus seems to be to set the mode in Links that has the same aspect ratio as your monitor as that usually has the best outcome. I am referring to full screen mode naturally.

This wrapper is working much better for me than dgVoodoo. I spent about 10 hours using it with "problem" courses and all worked well. This was with an Intel Embedded GPU. The one thing I cannot experiment with though is high res monitors, mine top out at 1920 x 1200.

I briefly tried it on my Nvidia system but saw no real benefit there.