Does anyone remember when...? Nothing has changed even a decade later.

[sparky15]

What version of Trainz were you using when you bought the DLC?
Does that content still work as advertised in that version?*
I'm no N3V fan and despise DRM. Seems you are beating a dead horse beyond death. Good, bad or indifferent, the software changed two years after you bought your content. Grab the version that tickles you without DRM and run with it.*
It all worked to your liking at some point.*
If not, dump the video game and move on. Its a video game, not a career investment.

 

[haddock56]

I'd like to throw in my two cents and state that Adobe is an entirely different
company from N3V. I would rather see the developers work with the Trainz community
and find a middle ground where everyone is comfortable with the product than take
the other route. I've kept with Trainz 2010 since its worked just fine since the
first time I used it.
Now I generally do not reply the way I'm about to, but this is enough of
spewing this DRM crap all over the forums. RRSignal, please stop spewing bullsh**
all over the forums, and if you want to have a heated debate about the ins and outs
of DRM, send a frigging message to someone instead of shoveling this pile of horse
manure out onto the rest of us. Someone close this thread before another flame
war starts and the rest of the DRM fanboys come out of hiding.................

****My apologies to the community and the mods, i hardly ever fly off the
handle here on the forums. Just another case of too much craziness, and
the fact that one thread about DRM is quite enough since it seems to be such a volatile topic****

 

[ianwoodmore]

I'd like to think a few things have changed in 10 years.

Pre TRS2004 I still had 32K dialup. I had a 17in Asus Aspire Notebook. Top of the line. I can remember some very frustrating times in trying to load Trainz in the early days.

I've purchased every update and new version since.
When I bought Trainz Classics I was lucky if I exceeded 12FPS. Redraw was a nightmare. I still run SnC under TS12 SP1. Two of the dislikes I originally had were galloping track and Telegraph/Power Lines splines.

New techniques

James Moody has just started a new blog TrainzDev (pity we lost the TRS2009 Trainzdev forum, there was a goldmine of info there) on new ways to do splines. Ocemy has a demo route. This is using TS12 SP1 TB 3.7 assets. I was getting close to 200FPS using the Blue Comet consist on a top line computer with dual GTX460 graphics cards, Win 8, Intel i7 CPU, 32GB quad channel RAM, OCZ Vector RAID0 dual SSDs in c:drive and 3 monitors.

Many routes and sessions run at FPS far lower than that and may have very little stutter, yet the stutter albeit reduced is still present at 100FPS+. I think we make too much noise over low FPS when it is smoothness of the simulation that is more important. 15FPS is probably the lower limit due to integration of movement as perceived by eye and filtered by our brains. 200 FPS is far too high and can cause overheating of computer. In any case VSync rules the day at the moment. So 60Hz dictates 60FPS actual. One of the major causes of stutter in the game is asset.tdx backup and rename to assetx.bku. Smaller stutters occur when game writes to its database. Why do we need to do this in the middle of the game? Surely all relevant assets should be in cache or main RAM. Of course even with SATA 6Gbps HDD you are still limited by spindle speed. And Trainz cache is with the programme on your HDD. If you have a very large TAD (almost 1TB) as I do then it is not an option to mount Trainz on an SSD because of cost. And you will still get the stutters.

STUTTERING

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6857/a...-roadmap-fraps

A topical treatise on one of graphics problems.


The Gamer's Graphics & Display Settings Guide

[Page 5] Graphics Settings - Frames Per Second

http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_5.html


[Page 9] Graphics Settings - Vertical Synchronization

http://www.tweakguides.com/Graphics_9.html

Multiplayer

Multiplayer came in with TS2010 SP4. Not one of my favourite innovations. While it served a niche market need I dislike the fact that you can only use DLS or builtin assets that are unmodified. Bit of an oxymoron really considering that many assets on DLS have to be modified to get them to work properly. I further dislike that you can only test it by uploading an MP version to DLS. We are getting overwhelmed by MP WIP cluttering up our downloads. Many finished MP are nice routes/sessions but when you try to explore them you cannot run in single player mode.

However, I have found a very intriguing and exciting variation for those of you who would like an MP experience without having to rely on others to either host or join a session.

For those of you with high end computers with multiple monitors you can start an MP session as host then:

a. Run multiple instances of the same MP route session on the same monitor but preferably on separate monitors.
b. Control several trains separately on different computers. Mine are LAN connected but the MP hosting is still through the internet.
c. Control several instances of the same train on different monitors or computers each in a different camera view (cab, chase altitude shot, and map view). If on same computer you can use Raildriver to control a single train simultaneously in different views. A sort of CTC. You can also feed a VCR or DVD of real trains onto a monitor to give more realism to the experience.

And that is just for starters. We couldn't of done that a decade ago because the hardware wasn't available.

 

[JCitron]

Ian,

I agree that a lot has changed technology wise, but the people haven't.

John