Tuning the Engine

Other than the default presets, some tinkering in the advanced graphics options can create a little more of a balance regarding compromise of visual features, and GRID allows plenty of room for tweaking.

Headlights - This setting changes the complexity of the light source from headlights for night races - there's minimal difference between high and low, and only the midnight touge and Le Mans 24-hour races utilise them.

Wind - Wind affects the movement of smoke and dust generated by cars. There's a minimal difference between on/off.

Shadows - This alters the detail in track and car cast shadows, differing from full self shadowing cars, debris and track features, down to no shadows at all. I’d recommended you leave this set to at least medium, and certainly don’t turn it off - it gives the impression that the cars are floating!

Particles - The Particles setting alter the level of detail in smoke given off from wheel spins, skids, and crashes. There is very little difference in performance between no smoke and full detail, and the effect adds a great deal to the game, looking very realistic. I’d advise against turning this off.

Mirrors - Switches the rear view and side mirrors on. Only really of use if you drive from the driver’s helmet view, but has negligible effect on performance.

Crowd - Switches off the lines of crowd lining the circuit. The amount of crowd in GRID is a significant step up from DIRT, with literally hundreds of fully 3D rendered spectators on some of the larger circuits. All that extra rendering does mean a drop in frame rate of around five frames per second, so if you’re struggling for performance, consider disabling the crowd.

Ground Cover - Alters the level of detail on ground effects like grass, dirt and gravel.

Vehicle drivers - Allows you to completely disable the in car drivers. Like the mirrors, this is only really of use if you drive from the helmet cam, or want to show off some replays. Feel free to turn it down to low to save on a couple of fps, but don’t turn it all the way off - driverless cars just look wrong.

Vehicle LOD - This setting alters the distance at which the game renders other cars with a higher level of detail. Setting it to low means other cars texture quality drops off pretty quickly the further they get from you. Obviously the opposite is true for increasing this setting, with cars maintaining high texture quality at distance. As your PC will chug the most on the starting grid, where all the cars are close enough to be rendered at higher quality, there doesn’t seem much point in altering this setting.

Trees - Alters the texture details of the off track trees. As this is track driving and not rally driving, you’re never really close enough to notice any discernible difference, so feel free to set this to low.

Reflections - This alters the quality of reflections from your beautifully waxed, shiny new car (until the ten car pileup at the first corner turns it into a dented pile of scrap). Disabling this will save you a few frames per second, at the cost of some nice reflection and lighting effects.

Motion Blur - The marmite of racing games, here motion blur has a very small effect on performance. Personally, I leave it on.

Skid Marks - This is a nice effect that allows you to disable skid marks on the track left by your tyres - this has a very minimal affect on performance.

Cloth - Changes whether the game renders track side flags and banners as static boards or moving fabrics. Has minimal difference on most tracks, but looks particularly good on the Milan circuit.

Damage level - Alternating between low, medium and high, this setting changes the complexity of the damage model on the cars. However, it would be a crime to play with anything less than high - the standard of work put in by the developers in how the cars deform, break and get generally destroyed is astonishing.

Obviously this is a very versatile and scalable engine, not to mention absolutely beautiful when pushed to ultra. Perhaps the only thing really missing is the inclusion of weather and weather effects, but for that we’ll have to wait for Codemasters’ new Formula One licence, which we can confirm will be using a modified version of this graphics engine.