Starting today we are enforcing a potentially controversial new rule that requires all PC and Mac players to play the game at or below 144FPS as we have decided that it is too unfair of an advantage to play above that while competing against players who are playing on the Console versions which sometimes struggles to maintain 30FPS and can occasionally even eat inputs due to frame drops on certain courses. In addition to this new rule, we will be requesting that all future top level PC and Mac runs have a visible FPS counter in the recording to avoid suspicion.
To change your FPS, go to the S&SASR Configuration Panel as seen below and select "Resolution". There you will be given a huge list of all the possible resolutions which you can play the game at including the refresh rate. The amount of things that will appear depends on your monitor specs, but all you need to know is that you are no longer allowed to play the game at any value above "@ 144Hz". The actual resolution of the game (such as 1920x1080) does not matter, just the refresh rate.
We believe that because the community is as small as it is and that this game is not exclusively on PC, that the last thing we need is to allow people to have impactful hardware advantages that cause players on Console (and even PC) to need to put in significantly more effort to set times that PC players playing on higher FPS can do with less. That being said this is an experimental rule which we may reverse in the future depending on how things play out.
Playing the game at higher FPS means the game runs significantly smoother and therefore you have more time to react to things, it also means your inputs will be significantly more precise which lets you have better control overall. These may seem minor but at top level everything matters and we don't want to upset the flow of things by allowing this to continue. At this time we are also not 100% sure that playing the game at certain framerates actually keeps the physics the same, currently there hasn't been any evidence to suggest otherwise, but this is also not a risk we want to take, even if the differences are minor. This is something that we will be investigating soon but regardless of the outcome we request that everyone plays at or below 144FPS going forward as it is not too different from just playing at 60FPS. 60FPS is the default on PC so therefore it will always have an advantage over Console unfortunately, but it isn't enough to ruin things and we think 144FPS is a fair compromise. At the time of writing this there are only 3 top level PC players who are known to be playing the game above 144FPS, so we do not think this will even matter to 99% of players anyway.
Runs that previously were set above 144FPS will remain valid for legacy purposes.
Starting today we are enforcing a new rule that requires all PC and Mac players to set their "Low Detail Models" setting to "Four Player" in the S&SASR Configuration Panel, as seen below.
This is because when it is set to anything below "Four Player", it changes the track geometry in ways that can sometimes grant unfair advantages, such as less bumpy/slippery terrain and slight adjustments to walls/hazards. Setting it to "Four Player" will make the game play identically to the PS3 and X360 versions, which is essential to level the playing field. We are enforcing this now to prevent an inevitable situation where someone using the incorrect settings (unintentionally) sets a remarkable time.
"Texture Resolution" and "Shadows" can be set to anything, because they only change how the game looks. While not required, we do highly recommend that you at least set "Shadows" to "Low" instead of "Off".
In the event that you change your graphical settings to anything below "High", it is highly recommended that you provide an image of your graphical settings in your run notes if it's your first time submitting a run to avoid suspicion.
Runs that previously didn't use "Four Player" Models will remain up on the site however.
Starting today we are enforcing a potentially controversial new rule that requires all PC and Mac players to play the game at or below 144FPS as we have decided that it is too unfair of an advantage to play above that while competing against players who are playing on the Console versions which some