How does PLR file Work and what information is in it?
This file contains a whole lot of info - some of it is designed to be modified by the user to make you game experience more suited to your tastes. This post will try to guide you through the file section by section, pointing out those variables that seem to be the most useful.
DISCLAIMER: you modify this file at your own risk. It is strongly suggested that you make a copy of this file before you modify it, so you can easily undo any "uh-ohs" you may produce.
SCENE - leave it alone. Game will modify as needed to stay current.
DRIVER - leave it alone. Game will change it each time you enter.
CHAT - Here, you can modify the autochat lines to read as you wish. These are associated to keystrookes as you've assigned them in your controller mapping (usually, numbers 1-9). Don't ask me why they give you 12...???
DRIVING AIDS - most of these will reflect settings in your control panel, difficulty and rules settings, etc. Usually there is no need to change anything here.
MECHANICAL FAILURES - can be set ingame
RACE CONDITIONS - there are a few lines here that you may wish to modify for offline play, but most of this will be set by the server for online. Its largely self-explanatory.
SOUND OPTIONS - You can customize the sounds but remember: changes here make GLOBAL changes (ie, to every mod you have) so think before you tinker... the lines I have found to be particularly helpful to me are:
Vehicle Scrubbing VolMult - increase this by maybe a factor of 10 to increase tire scrub noise. Adjust to taste.
Vehicle Skidding VolMult - same as above, only hearing the car skid. I've just barely moved this one.
Vehicle Roadnoise VolMult - again, slight increase (factor of 10 maybe) to hear road noise better.
GRAPHICS OPTIONS - another target-rich environment, but you can quickly reach the limits of your graphics card/system by getting overzealous. Some likely candidates:
Rearview Width and Height - changes dimensions of rearview mirro. Careful here - you can quickly make it unrecognizeable.
Self In Cockpit Rearview="0" Gains some FPS. You dont see your own car (deck lid, roll bars) in the rearview.
Head Physics and Exaggerate Yaw - you can turn these down to decrease the head movement and vibration effects.
GAME OPTIONS - a few here that might help:
Cockpit Vibration Mult1="0.00000" // Primary vibration multiplier affects eyepoint position (base magnitude is in VEH or cockpit file)
Cockpit Vibration Freq1="0.00000" // Primary rate of vibration affects eyepoint position (higher framerates allow higher rates)
Cockpit Vibration Mult2="0.00000" // Secondary vibration multiplier affects eyepoint orientation (base magnitude is in VEH or cockpit file)
Cockpit Vibration Freq2="0.00000" // Secondary rate of vibration affects eyepoint orientation
Relative Fuel Strategy - Set to "0" for the incar pit strategy menu to show the total amount of fuel you wish to carry after a stop, or change to "1" if you wish the menu to shouw you how much fuel will be added on a given stop.
Show Extra Lap="1" Give you the lap readout in terms you are used to (ie, the lap you are ON!)
One Lap To Go Warning="3" Avoids some infuriating DQs.
Pitstop Description="1" // Gives extra info about what's taking time in pitstop