Anonymous edits have been disabled on the wiki. If you want to contribute please login or create an account.

Colin McRae: DiRT

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Colin McRae: DiRT
Colin McRae: DiRT cover
Developers
Codemasters
Engines
Neon
Release dates
Windows June 15, 2007
Reception
Metacritic 84
IGDB 81
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Controls Direct control
Genres Racing, Simulation
Vehicles Automobile, Off-roading
Art styles Realistic
Themes Contemporary
Series Colin McRae Rally
Colin McRae: DiRT on HowLongToBeat
Colin McRae: DiRT on IGDB
Colin McRae: DiRT on MobyGames
Colin McRae: DiRT on Wikipedia
Colin McRae Rally 1998
Colin McRae Rally 2.0 2000
Colin McRae Rally 3 2003
Colin McRae Rally 04 2004
Colin McRae Rally 2005 2004
Colin McRae: DiRT 2007
Colin McRae: DiRT 2 2009
DiRT 3 2011
DiRT Showdown 2012
Colin McRae Rally (2014) 2014
DiRT Rally 2015
DiRT 4 2017
DiRT Rally 2.0 2019
DIRT 5 2020

Colin McRae: DiRT, also simply known as DiRT in North America, is a singleplayer and multiplayer racing game developed and published by Codemasters. It is part of the Colin McRae Rally series and use the Neon engine.

The game was released on June 15, 2007. It was later released on Steam on February 13, 2009.

Multiplayer servers for the game were shut down, before the game itself was delisted from Steam in November 2012 due to licensing-related reason.[1]

General information

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
StarForce 4.7 DRM.[2] Removed in Patch 1.22.
Windows
Steam (unavailable)
Icon overlay.png
Windows

Demo/free trial

Demo is available

Essential improvements

Patches

Patch 1.22 requires the installation of patch 1.21 first.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Codemasters\DiRT\hardware_settings_config.xml
Steam <path-to-game>\system\
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/11440/pfx/[Note 1]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Codemasters\DiRT\savegame\
Steam <path-to-game>\savegame\
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/11440/pfx/[Note 1]
Location can be changed in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Codemasters\DIRT\

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
OneDrive
Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.
Steam Cloud

Video

Graphical settings.
Graphical settings.
Graphical settings continued.
Graphical settings continued.

Field of view (FOV)

Use FOV Changer[citation needed]
  1. Search in the installation folder for cameras.xml.
  2. Select all files (47 in total), right-click and open properties.
  3. Untick the read-only option and click OK.
  4. Download and extract Dirt3FovChange.
  5. Run Dirt3FovChange.exe as administrator.
  6. Specify the base installation folder.
  7. Adjust the settings to your liking and click start.
    • Vertical FOV: a larger number will translate into a wider field of view.
    • Adjust FOV for: selects the in-game camera or cameras you want to edit.
    • Head Offset: affects the position of the head-cam (cockpit view). A modification of 0.1 will yield a noticeable change. It is to be noted that the point of view can be placed outside of the car.
      • X: affects the lateral position. A positive value will move the point of view to the left.
      • Y: affects the vertical position. A positive value will move the point of view upward.
      • Z: affects the front/back position. A positive value will move the point of view closer to the dashboard.
    • Head Tilt Change: affects the vertical angle of the camera. Compared to the position values, the tilt value works on a different scale: a modification of 1 will yield a barely noticeable change.
      • A positive value will tilt the camera up.

Notes

Modifying certain settings may not be supported and can cause errors.
Modifications made during a race require quitting and restarting the race.

Windowed

Change config file setting[citation needed]
  1. Go to the configuration file(s) location.
  2. Open hardware_settings_config.xml.
  3. Change fullscreen from true to false.
  4. Save the changes.

Input

The game support D-Box haptic/motion platforms through a proprietary protocol.[3]

Controller Support

Supported devices are based on what was found in the devicesetup.xml file.

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
7.1 supported[4]
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
EAX 5[5]
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
German
Hungarian
Hungarian retail release only.
Italian
Polish
Polish retail release only, UI translation available
Russian
Spanish

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Notes
Local play
LAN play
Online play
The official multiplayer service was shut down.

VR support

3D modes State GG3D Notes
Nvidia 3D Vision
See Helix Mod: Colin McRae's DiRT.
iZ3D
vorpX
G3D
User created game profile, see important tweaks to get the game running with vorpx here.
Devices
TrackIR
Supports: Yaw, Pitch, Roll, X, Y, Z.

Issues fixed

Game crashes after the race finishes loading

Edit file[6]
  1. Go to <path-to-game>\system\
  2. Open hardware_settings_restrictions.xml in text editor
  3. Replace system/workerMap8Core.xml with system/workerMap4Core.xml
  4. Save the file

Fix Lag in Races in CPU 4 Cores + 8 threads (like i7 4790k)

Set affinity[citation needed]
  1. Go in windows task manager, right-click on DiRT.exe process
  2. Define affinity for 7 CPUs threads (unmark one).
Method may work on other CPUs

Making changes permanent (setting affinity in task manager only lasts until you exit the game):

  1. Edit your preferred shortcut for launching the game (desktop and/or start menu)
  2. In the target field, set the following (just put the default contents in double quotes and prepend cmd.exe /C ...):
  • For a 4/8 (core/thread) CPU cmd.exe /C start "" /affinity 7f "<path-to-game>\DiRT.exe"
  • For a 6/12 (core/thread) CPU cmd.exe /C start "" /affinity 557 "<path-to-game>\DiRT.exe"
  • For a 8/16 (core/thread) CPU and higher cmd.exe /C start "" /affinity 1555 "<path-to-game>\DiRT.exe"
Verify correct affinity by launching the game and checking affinity in task manager (see beginning)

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9.0c
Shader Model support 3.0
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio OpenAL
Cutscenes Bink Video
Multiplayer DemonWare

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz
AMD Athlon 64 3.0 GHz
System memory (RAM) 1 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 12.5 GB
Video card (GPU) Nvidia GeForce 6800
ATI Radeon X1300
Shader model 3.0 support


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/11440/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (11440) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References

  1. Verified by User:Mars icecream on 2016-11-25
    Email received from Codemasters customer service.
  2. i.imgur.com - last accessed on May 2023
  3. DiRT - D-Box Catalogue - last accessed on November 5, 2023
  4. Sound Blaster Gaming: Turbo-charged audio in DiRT - SoundBlaster.com (retrieved) - last accessed on May 2023
  5. EAX Featured Game: DiRT - SoundBlaster.com (retrieved) - last accessed on May 2023
  6. Colin McRae DiRT 1 - how to fix the game if it crashes when starting a race — Codemasters Forums (retrieved) - last accessed on 2023-05-08