Racedriver Grid in FullHD (1920×1080)

 8 Responses »
Apr 142013
 

In my last post I said Grid did not support FullHD mode, but with a little tweaking it does. Grid is an older game, and it probably can’t read all the hardware info from the newer graphics cards. Mine has 3GB of RAM, but the restrictions in Grid won’t allow you to go beyond a width of 1280 when your system has less then 270MB. So Grid must not understand 3000MB.

Here’s how to change the config files. Make a backup of each file first, in case you screw things up.

1) c:\steam\steamapps\common\Grid\system\hardware_settings_restrictions.xml
Find the line containing: 

<res mem="270" maxWidth="1280" />

and change the value of maxWidth to 1920.

2) {userdocuments}\Codemasters\GRID\hardware_settings_info.xml
Add the 1920×1080 resolution by adding the following lines:

<resolution width="1920" height="1080" aspect="normal">
    <refreshRate rate="50" />
    <refreshRate rate="60" />
</resolution>

3) {userdocuments}\Codemasters\GRID\hardware_settings_config.xml
In the graphics_card section, change the resolution settings to something like this:

<resolution width="1920" height="1080" aspect="16:9" fullscreen="true" 
            vsync="1" oldWidth="1920" oldHeight="1080">
    <refreshRate rate="60" />
</resolution>

Start GRID. It should work. It will ask you if you want to keep the new resolution of 1920×1080 and after that you’re good to go. Have fun.

Grid (racing)

 No Responses »
Apr 132013
 

With Grid2 around the corner (May, 28th) I decided to buy Grid (the first one). It’s cheap on GreenmanGaming.com at the moment, so I bought it and installed it by entering the key on Steam.

The controller defaults on Grid are of course the (cursor-)keys, so to use the Fanatec wheel, I had to make a custom setup. Not very difficult, but strange to see a game that is all about realism does not have a default “wheel” setup.

The game is difficult. I did my fair share of Forza3, Forza4, Shift, Shift2 and Forza Horizon, but this game is unforgiving. Like it is in real life of course. Bump into a wall, and basically your race is over, since your front wheels are damaged or maybe worse: you totalled your car. I cranked down the difficulty a bit, but even then the game is very hard.

Probably because it’s an older game, it does not support FullHD resolution. The closest is 1280×800 or 1280×900. Still the game looks great when you modify the graphics details to HIGH.

For the price on Greenman, don’t think twice and buy this game if you’re into racing games. But don’t say I didn’t warn you…