Windows compatibility help with an old game.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

One of the reasons I have maintained a working Windows 7 game is there is an older game called Race Driver GRID (the original first one) that I enjoy playing sometimes. This is one of those older games that had a pre-written "list" of supported video cards in the game's files. When we play the game on later or newer systems with a video card not in the list it defaults to 1280x720, low graphics, makes all the graphics blurry and fuzzy with no LOD/Detail, disables all graphics settings in the graphics menu, etc.

This was a steam game. I say was because it was de-listed from the steam store at some point in time. I do own the steam version here on Steam and you can view it's community forums here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/12750/discussions/

So what I need help with is this: At one point years ago I had found something either in google or searching the game's forums that we can edit the pre-defined list of video cards for the game by opening one of the game's files with notepad and it says something like "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780" and just directly edit that to whatever our current video card is showing as in Device Manager like "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti", save the file and then our current card will be identified and the game will work, enable all graphics settings, look correct and work.

Currently my older Windows 7 computer uses a GTX 780 Ti and that's in the list and I boot that system when I want to play this game and it works. But I would like to be able to use it on my newer computer with my 3070 Ti and Windows 11. All I have to do is figure out which file to edit and where to put the entry in.

I've tried searching their forums on steam and I couldn't find it. I tried searching in google, I couldn't find an answer there. I tried searching each one of their files and I couldn't find it. I tried getting Windows to text-search the game's entire folder and even on an NVME drive the search just ran for like 10 hours and couldn't find anything in the game's folder, eventually I had to stop it and go to sleep.

I wonder if someone could help me figure out how to do this and get this game working? It's something old that has been nagging at me for a long time.

[rawWwRrr]

"C:\Documents and Settings\Admin\My Documents\Codemasters\GRID Demo\hardwaresettings"

That seems to be the folder where the hardware settings are saved.

Maybe this helps?
https://www.gog.com/forum/race_driver_grid/grid_1080p_and_higher_resolution_for_newer_gpus

1) Look for your hardware_settings_restrictions.xml file in your 'system' folder (default for steam version: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\grid\system\), and make a backup.

2) Open the file with Notepad. Scroll down to the bottom, remove the following entry and save the file:

data
res mem="270" maxWidth="1280"
/data

The restriction is now gone and you can play the game at your native resolution.

[Azure Fang]

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Race_Driver:_Grid

I can't find anything about needing to define video cards, but there are a number of crash-handling fixes here and there's an optional launcher that might provide the setting support you need.

[Kage Goomba]

Prob should browse the mod community for fixes too. Always plenty of die hard gamers who love the old stuff.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

"C:\Documents and Settings\Admin\My Documents\Codemasters\GRID Demo\hardwaresettings"

That seems to be the folder where the hardware settings are saved.

Maybe this helps?
https://www.gog.com/forum/race_driver_grid/grid_1080p_and_higher_resolution_for_newer_gpus

1) Look for your hardware_settings_restrictions.xml file in your 'system' folder (default for steam version: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\grid\system\), and make a backup.

2) Open the file with Notepad. Scroll down to the bottom, remove the following entry and save the file:

data
res mem="270" maxWidth="1280"
/data

The restriction is now gone and you can play the game at your native resolution.

Unfortunately that's just for the resolution.. I'll still have to edit the gpu list to get it to display textures correctly. Thank you for trying though. :/

Originally posted by Kage Goomba:

Prob should browse the mod community for fixes too. Always plenty of die hard gamers who love the old stuff.

I didn't see anything about that in there. I'll try having another look later I suppose.

[Komarimaru]

Both rawWwRrr and Azure helped ya out I think. It's not a list of approved video cards, but the resolution limit in the XML file.

Also, if running more then 6? or 8 cores? Get the fix listed on Pcgamingwiki.

[Thermal Lance]

Just how old is this game?

[Kage Goomba]

Originally posted by 🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊:

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

"C:\Documents and Settings\Admin\My Documents\Codemasters\GRID Demo\hardwaresettings"

That seems to be the folder where the hardware settings are saved.

Maybe this helps?
https://www.gog.com/forum/race_driver_grid/grid_1080p_and_higher_resolution_for_newer_gpus

Unfortunately that's just for the resolution.. I'll still have to edit the gpu list to get it to display textures correctly. Thank you for trying though. :/

Careful - older games have trouble coping with our insanely over powered displays/GPU's.

If people back then knew what we had today they'd have a stroke lol.

[Thermal Lance]

Okay its a DX9 game.

Maybe try using DGVoodoo2. Fairly recently it added support for DX9. Maybe you can use it to spoof an older card.

Bit like I did to play mechwarrior 4 on this computer.

[Kage Goomba]

Originally posted by BOTThermal Lance v1.0 RC2:

Okay its a DX9 game.

Maybe try using DGVoodoo2. Fairly recently it added support for DX9. Maybe you can use it to spoof an older card.

Bit like I did to play mechwarrior 4 on this computer.

Ahh Mechwarrior 4 - takes me back.
I miss those days.

[Azure Fang]

Originally posted by BOTThermal Lance v1.0 RC2:

Just how old is this game?

15 years. Released in 2008. The PC version wasn't exactly programmed with longevity in mind, considering it was originally packaged with SecuROM.

[Thermal Lance]

Originally posted by Kage Goomba:

Originally posted by BOTThermal Lance v1.0 RC2:

Okay its a DX9 game.

Maybe try using DGVoodoo2. Fairly recently it added support for DX9. Maybe you can use it to spoof an older card.

Bit like I did to play mechwarrior 4 on this computer.

Ahh Mechwarrior 4 - takes me back.
I miss those days.

MechWarrior 2. Now -I- miss those days...

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by Kage Goomba:

Careful - older games have trouble coping with our insanely over powered displays/GPU's.

If people back then knew what we had today they'd have a stroke lol.

That is another problem. For example: The CPU I have in my dedicated Windows 7 machine is a I5-3570K. It is overclocked to 4.8 Ghz but even with that even 1 core from my Ryzen 5800X CPU is something like +500% faster (I'm guessing, not measuring accurately anywhere, I might be wrong). I did have a problem with this old "Race Driver: Grid" game in that when I did try it on my 5800X and it wasn't detecting the hardware correctly I would get in game and press the forward/gas button on the keyboard and it just spun around in place several times really fast without moving forwards. Even if I get the hardware figured out my newer computer might be too fast for it.

[Komarimaru]

Originally posted by BOTThermal Lance v1.0 RC2:

Okay its a DX9 game.

Maybe try using DGVoodoo2. Fairly recently it added support for DX9. Maybe you can use it to spoof an older card.

Bit like I did to play mechwarrior 4 on this computer.

Interesting.... I play Mechwarrior 4 no issues with a native install on my machine, hmm...

Wonder what the difference is between us, where you needed a layer to play.

[Qbert ⭐]

Just tried using a GTX 1060 and did quite good with textures, also no input lag
https://imgur.com/a/WkFcEpy

I will do some tests in the morning at 1080p, almost 2 AM here lol

[Komarimaru]

Originally posted by 🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊:

Originally posted by Kage Goomba:

Careful - older games have trouble coping with our insanely over powered displays/GPU's.

If people back then knew what we had today they'd have a stroke lol.

That is another problem. For example: The CPU I have in my dedicated Windows 7 machine is a I5-3570K. It is overclocked to 4.8 Ghz but even with that even 1 core from my Ryzen 5800X CPU is something like +500% faster (I'm guessing, not measuring accurately anywhere, I might be wrong). I did have a problem with this old "Race Driver: Grid" game in that when I did try it on my 5800X and it wasn't detecting the hardware correctly I would get in game and press the forward/gas button on the keyboard and it just spun around in place without moving really fast.

Get the fix on Pcgamingwiki

https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/2579-race-driver-grid-6-8-thread-cpus-fix-resolution-fix/