Things Not to Do When Creating a Route

[mrscsi]

As I've been playing with the Avondale Yard I decided to skip making the Union Pacific yard prototypical and decided to create a fantasy yard instead. It was at this point that a lesson I learned years ago was reinforced and it's a lesson that new users should take heed of.

Alongside a huge container yard I placed 21 mile and a half tracks absolutely straight, made nice entrances and exits and it was just a beautiful yard. Now it would hit the frame rate if I was looking across it and had the container yard in view as well in the background.

Then I decided to put 21 trains on the 21 tracks, each with three highly detailed JointedRail locomotives and about 30 highly detailed cloakedghost's empty well cars. I put track markers and triggers and had the first two go load and as they came back they trigger the next two etc. sounded to me like a pretty slick AI route.

And it worked fine, problem was even with my above average hardware and especially my above average video card, having 21 tracks, 21 trains and huge container yard all in view at the same time brought frame rates down to single digits. Now I will admit that in doing some testing I could experience frame rates as low as 20 and it still appeared smooth and not jerky, but single-digit frame rates just absolutely brought it to its knees.

Now the reason I write this is that so newer users won't create something that outlandish and experience those results and somehow think that Trainz is at fault, the fact is you just have way too many assets in view all at once and you really need to plan your route a little smarter and avoid just completely overwhelming the 3-D engine and your hardware.

The old adage "less is more" always tends to ring true...

 

[bl4882]

You make valuable observations that we all should take to heart. But we all have a tendency to get carried away, I think.

To avoid that I like to use FRAPS, available here http://www.fraps.com/, while working in Surveyor. It gives some indication of the kind of impact what you are doing will have on frame rates.

Bernie

 

[mrscsi]

You make valuable observations that we all should take to heart. But we all have a tendency to get carried away, I think.

To avoid that I like to use FRAPS, available here http://www.fraps.com/, while working in Surveyor. It gives some indication of the kind of impact what you are doing will have on frame rates.

Bernie

Well there is a video capture built into MSI's afterburner (the video card controlling program my card uses) but in surveyor I get huge frame rates compared to in driver...

Now when I am not getting stupid and putting 21 trains and a container yard in the same point of view that is...

I took out 9 of the tracks and only put 4 trains on the route and from the same perspective was getting 40fps...

 

[Vern]

To mis-quote Tony Blair, "Optimisation, optimisation, optimisation".

I have learned a similar lesson on my rural route project. Copying and pasting 1000's of tightly packed trees out to 2km either side of the line to create a dense forest will bring a Cray to its knees. Thin those trees out by 50%, maybe trim the distance to 1500m and it looks just as good but doesn't eat up anything like the same FPS!

 

[JCitron]

I made the same mistake as well. I had a large, very long yard loaded with rolling stock, an engine servicing fascility, a very close urban area, and mainline running next to the yard. Driver would be fine until the yard came into vew, then it was chop, chop, chop, stutter, stutter until I moved out of the way.

After thinning out some track and quite a number of buildings, which were not seen, everything picked up again to a more reasonable rate.

I like the Fraps idea. I may try that myself.

John

 

[Expyker]

Copying and pasting 1000's of tightly packed trees out to 2km either side of the line to create a dense forest will bring a Cray to its knees.

LOL!!! I learned that the hard way. Ended up scrapping the route and starting over.

 

[Lots_Trains]

Lods Lods Lods make a huge difference

Cheers

Lots

 

[rweber95]

If you want to fill the inactive part of the yard with lo poly dummies, try the track splines by Wiley4 and Magicland. They all have railcar names that end in rail such as B&O hopper rail,<kuid:58843:38057> or CB&Q box rail,<kuid2:45203:668:1>

Bob Weber

 

[tolansherwood]

Guilty! However, so far I am getting away with the crime by making the route extremely large. I have the densely packed forest, but have split it to two areas outside their 5k meter mark, which gives the illusion of a very large forest by having two halves that are not aware of one another. Each has trees that are fairly densely placed as far as 5k meters from the tracks.

Between the two forest parts is where I have my forest related industries located, with the exception of one logging operation in each forest portion. Then, my route moves to a sparsely decorated, but well textured desert and gets my old west theme park out of range of either forest portion.

Past the park is more sparsity with nothing but crop paint and a few agricultural resources, which gets my airport out of range of the theme park.

The madness continues from there to include two industrial sections separated like the forest, and a seaside village and port that are out of range of everything else.

The Main town's buildings are all going to be fairly low poly, and well scattered between the two industrial sections. The hard part to integrate there will be the tram lines.

The program seems to prefer thousands of boards to thousands of trees--over 4500 boards are involved so far with a few more possible, since I am going for the wide horizon look to the whole thing. That is, no visible map edges from any tracks where the user may travel, with the exception of the aircraft tracks.

So far, the only time my frame rate has been any trouble is when I fly over the forest. I have to slow my aircraft to under 300 miles per hour for that, or watch things go a bit blinky.

I am nowhere near finished with all this, but I do have 2/3 of the forest planted, and the remaining portion is the sparsely forested area between the two heavily forested ones.

The theme park has all its cowboys moving, and a very short old time locomotive circling it, along with about every animated carnival ride on the dls present. There's only textures and creosote to add to the desert in which the park is located.

The airport and air rails are finished, but the airport needs some military equipment on its small secondary runway.

No town buildings are on the map, but all industry except for some grain production stops are in operation. The harbor has yet to be added, but it is going to be out of range of everything else, with the exception of the tram line. My hope is to add a few drivable watercraft to that portion, and possibly vulcan's marvelous aircraft carrier (for my grandson) if that does not send the whole thing to the bottom of the sea.

In retrospect, I could probably have done better by reading up on portals and using those to link all these areas on separate routes, but it looks very much like I may get away with it all by simply being very careful to put lots of textures and sparse low poly items only spaces between all the high poly count or heavily animated bits. Besides, with portals, I could not enjoy a fly over of the whole thing.

I shall soon see how the port and cityscape affect things, since that is what I am placing now. Once that is placed, then there's just the matter of finishing the paint job and setting up the sessions.

My hope is that my video card will gobble up the massive texturing I have planned. If it won't then out goes the route with my lesson learned. Textures seem to trump high poly counts though when it comes to maintaining frame rates.

So unless a very large selection of textures makes my machine balk, I may very well be committing the perfect Trainz crime

The important thing though, is that I have been having a good deal of fun trying to get away with it!

P. S. Even if the buildings and/or port prove to be too much, the route is salvageable as it is at this point. More screens will be on their way in the next couple weeks as I get more places textured enough to be presentable. I am going to place a couple of shots today.

 

[cascaderailroad]

What not to do ?

Don't try to be the "Hand Of God" and create a huge monsterous HOG DEM, that is a major gargatious portion of he Earth ! As it will take you forever and a year, to finish.

And never use multi-track splines (Quad & Double Track is for initial track spacing templates only) ... use single track, as it makes better curves.

 

[Vern]

And another one...

Don't get distracted by R......ks...!

 

[mattm]

And another one...

Don't get distracted by R......ks...!

Sorry, don't get it!

 

[edion2]

Hello everyone,

One of our constant battles for us is to keep our frame rates up enough so that our various massive route creations does not bring the frame rate into the single digit domain. Unfortunately its not just the frame rate that causes issues, although, most of the time the sluggishness is evident in the frame rate. In some areas I run into performance problem even when the frame rate is in the upper teens. Usually evidenced by glitchy video performance.

Well, my series of three routes, which acts as one via I-Portals to each other, is still suffering from severe performance issues in some areas. In TS2006 I had to break up my route into 3 routes so I can get back the ability to SAVE my routes. If your routes get too big (file size wise), TS2006 runs into a strange “unable-to-save” anomaly. While this was a situation only encountered by very few of us.

Then came TS2009. Much better than TS2006 for extreme builders.

Then for better or worse, some long time basics got changed. One was to stop support for “blended alphas”. I don’t understand what that is, except that it made all the previous trees look ugly. All alpha surfaces that are too close to each other started “flashing” because the computer can’t decide which surface is closer to the point of view when SOME blended-alpha trees were placed too close to each other. Other “vegetation” can be seen “through” others. Others objects like the “chain-link fence alphas” will only make “solids” be seen through them.

Another annoying thing introduced in TS2009 during the Beta Testing phase is a software “anti-crash mechanism”. For some reason when TS2009 senses “danger”, it severely cuts down the “draw distance” to within 1000 to 2000 meters. It still has a bug in it because in some cases, the distant objects keep cycling through appearing and disappearing. I can live with minimum draw distance but appearing and disappearing objects I can not. It just destroys the whole experience.

It seems its time for another major OVERHAUL. An area on one of my routes has started to “cycle” the distant objects. I have been doing work in areas close by but visually separated by “high hills”. Unfortunately these areas are still “close by” as far as the computer is concerned. Virtual visual barriers does not make the objects just on the other side of the hill “distant enough”. The computer still calculates everything within the set draw distance diameter.

This was my “novice” mistake I made in the early years of route building. Too many “intense areas” too close to each other with just a “virtual visual barrier” in between. The key word is “VIRTUAL”. You have all the space you want ! Keep all the areas of intense areas more than 5000 meters away from each other. My “intense” areas are in the range of “extreme”.

I love trees . . . LOTS OF TREES. BUT . . . Avoid LOOPS and HORSESHOE CURVES. If they are small enough . . . say less than 2000 meters . . . then you should be OK. Mine is not small enough to be able to see the other side . . . unlike the Tehachepi Loop or another famous Horseshoe Curb out east. My horseshoe is about 3000 meters ( about 9000 feet) in diameter and covers an elevation change of about 60 feet. My loop is just about 5000 meters (about 3 miles) in diameter with a good number of 400 and 500 foot radius turns, resulting in an elevation change of about 90 feet.

I know that my Loop and Horseshoe is a frame rate killer because in another part of the same route similar amounts of trees and textures and still my frame rate is above 30 FPS. Its all that “stuff” concentrated within the “viewing” area that is killing my frame rate. I know now that Trainz will calculate and place ALL the trees within the viewing distance . . . wether you can ACTUALLY SEE IT on the screen or not. Hey . . . You might suddenly decide to zoom all the way out and view from an bird’s pont of view.

I am having to move things around. After 4 years of intense building . . . the amount of work I need to do is at least 6 to 10 month’s of work. If I knew HALF of what I know now . . . I would have laid out my routes quite differently.

A “S-T-R-E-C-H-E-D O-U-T ROUTE “ is better than a “compact” route if you intend to do some intense and realistic scenery.

Remember . . . “Virtual Distance” IS NOT THE SAME AS “Actual Baseboard Distance”. You just might be able to avoid any late stage OVERHAULS.

Hope this helps.
Ed

 

[Vern]

Sorry, don't get it!

= Railworks, aka Railfail aka Kujunk...:wave: