thanks for the advice guys. Actually - watkins glen isnt suffering any fps issues - monza is dreadful especially at Parabolica.
The GFXS card is an AGP and my board is limited to AGP-4. The only good thing with this PC is its a 2.8Ghz P4 with 1 Gb ram.
BTW i used to have a G$ 4200 TI and it rocked GPL... shame it went up in smoke!

ahh yes, the old joypad experiment... ahem...
no, this time i have a wheel ( thrustmaster ferrari gt bought to play GT4 on a ps2) and have managed to get everything setup pretty much to my liking... just been doing some practice runs at the glen and am lapping around 1:09 and starting to get back in the groove a little.
One question i have is over frame rates .. i`m having to use an old tnt2 32Mb gfx card and its struggling a little, i think due to the circuit updates that that new installer thingy has put in - is there any way to reverse those updates?
In the mean time i shall go investigate gfx cards and try to justify the cost......

Hi Guys.
I used to be a regular in UKGPL around 2002-2004 but have not played GPL since. This evening however i found my old CD and thought, you know, for old times sake and all that... and now i REALLY want to get back in this! I`ve installed gpl using that all new installer thingy, and it all seems to work ok, so i was wondering what is the state of the community these day? do people still use vroc for open pickup races or is that just sooo last decade!
Anyhow, i need to go get some practice in ( still wobbling around 20+secs off my old lap times!) so i`ll see you all around soon!

the kind folks in the GPL chatroom in vroc pointed me to a uitil called dxtweak2 that alters the pads output data to something more user friendly - immediately able to hold the car together for several laps and took 3 secs off my best-on-a-pad of 1:12 at the glen
i think with some further tweaking this might just work for me

Hi folks.
 Years ago i used to be a respected member of the ukgpl league (always bottom division though), racing with my trusty sidewinder non-ff wheel.
When i moved house 2 years ago, the wheel went missing and my gpl days were over, or so it seemed. The lure of the track was too strong however and i recently caved in and re-installed GPL once more, playing on the keyboard.
Keyboard controls however lead to serious finger cramp after just a few laps so i needed a controller. A wheel was out of the question (expense/space/kids likely to mess around with it- this is a familly PC with 3 users atm, soon to be 4 once the baby learns to type!)  so i bought myself a joypad.
and very good it is too, except for the steering in GPL is waaay to direct! even with the steering ratio set to 20:1 the car bucks around owing to the lack of fine control in pads.
So, to my point - anyone know how to  set sterring ratio to even less responsive or are there any other .ini settings that would reduce the games repsonsiveness to stick inputs?
if i can get this sorted i`ll be ready to make a return to ukgpl

many thanks in advance.

Jason/Blito

Hi Clive
you can add me to that list - i`m wobbling my way round the 67 papy tracks on my keyboard atm