horacefithers
New member
I noticed when looking at the dependencies for my BC&SJ route that a number of assets had newer versions available. Many of these were PBR TextureEnv assets.
So being foolhardy and adventurous I loaded up the new asset versions, fired up Surveyor, and clicked Edit Route.
Not the best idea I'd ever had. Performa was extremely laggy to the point of unusability!
Subjectively, it felt like about 2 or 3 frames per second or lower with massive jerking when ever I tried to move the camera around. Strangely, the Trainz Profiler showed about 28fps!
A disaster for sure.
I shut down Trainz, rebooted the computer and restarted Trainz and Surveyor. Same thing!
In desperation I hit ctrl-F2 to switched to driver mode.
Now camera movements behaved smoothly! Huh?
I hit ctrl-F1 and it still behaved smoothly...
I exited and restarted Trainz with Edit Route and was back to Electric Laggy Land (with apologies to Jimi Hendrix...)
I saved the route as a new version in preparation for some drastic experiments and exited.
Upon restart and Edit Route (of the newly saved version of the route), now Surveyor worked smoothly when I moved the camera around.
So like wow! What caused that? I was guessing that one of the assets I'd version updated was somehow causing the problem.
Some time (several days or maybe a week?) went by and I noticed more PBR TextureEnv assets had new versions available on the DLS. I threw caution to the winds and downloaded the new versions from the DLS.
Note: I believe that the new versions of the TextureEnv assets I'd previously uploaded were displaying MUCH better far distant LOD color rendering - previously some textures that were a joy to behold up close and personal had grossly different color when viewed from extreme distance resulting in some really ugly scenery - N3V assured me there was nothing they could (or would) do about this issue and that it was up to the texture creators to fix the issues - I really wanted the better distant LOD behavior so I went ahead and updated the textures. I can't be sure of this, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it...
Upon Edit Route I found myself back in Electric Laggy Land again.
Holding my breath, I saved as a new version of the route, exited, restarted Trainz, restarted Surveyor with Edit Route, and the lagginess was once again gone.
There's something in those new PBR textures and my route and 106618 that apparently need some behavioral counseling before they'll all "just get along".
I was amazed that the FPS shown in Profiler seemed reasonable while the apparent frame rate couldn't have been more the 2 or 3 frames per second.
This indicates that either I'm hallucinating about the frame rates or the problem isn't in the rendering code, but in the figuring-out-what-should-be-rendered code.
Iirc, the PBR textures that I version updated the second time had upload timestamps of May 5th. In any event, to see them, go to Content Manger, set the filter to "PBR", then sort by date with newest dates first. The first five PBR textures shown are the ones that I updated (unless more PBR textures have been updated since then).
I looked at the config.txt files for the before and after version of a couple of textures and checked the stats in the asset preview but didn't see any obvious differences between them.
One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother N3V gives sometimes have interesting properties (with apologies to the Jefferson Airplane "White Rabbit")
I'm just happy that resaving the route appears to solve the problem.
Has anyone else noticed this happiness with build 106618?
Horace Fithers
And now for something completely different, a man with three buttocks! Excuse me sir, is that chair (er... texture!) comfortable?
So being foolhardy and adventurous I loaded up the new asset versions, fired up Surveyor, and clicked Edit Route.
Not the best idea I'd ever had. Performa was extremely laggy to the point of unusability!
Subjectively, it felt like about 2 or 3 frames per second or lower with massive jerking when ever I tried to move the camera around. Strangely, the Trainz Profiler showed about 28fps!
A disaster for sure.
I shut down Trainz, rebooted the computer and restarted Trainz and Surveyor. Same thing!
In desperation I hit ctrl-F2 to switched to driver mode.
Now camera movements behaved smoothly! Huh?
I hit ctrl-F1 and it still behaved smoothly...
I exited and restarted Trainz with Edit Route and was back to Electric Laggy Land (with apologies to Jimi Hendrix...)
I saved the route as a new version in preparation for some drastic experiments and exited.
Upon restart and Edit Route (of the newly saved version of the route), now Surveyor worked smoothly when I moved the camera around.
So like wow! What caused that? I was guessing that one of the assets I'd version updated was somehow causing the problem.
Some time (several days or maybe a week?) went by and I noticed more PBR TextureEnv assets had new versions available on the DLS. I threw caution to the winds and downloaded the new versions from the DLS.
Note: I believe that the new versions of the TextureEnv assets I'd previously uploaded were displaying MUCH better far distant LOD color rendering - previously some textures that were a joy to behold up close and personal had grossly different color when viewed from extreme distance resulting in some really ugly scenery - N3V assured me there was nothing they could (or would) do about this issue and that it was up to the texture creators to fix the issues - I really wanted the better distant LOD behavior so I went ahead and updated the textures. I can't be sure of this, but it's my story and I'm sticking to it...
Upon Edit Route I found myself back in Electric Laggy Land again.
Holding my breath, I saved as a new version of the route, exited, restarted Trainz, restarted Surveyor with Edit Route, and the lagginess was once again gone.
There's something in those new PBR textures and my route and 106618 that apparently need some behavioral counseling before they'll all "just get along".
I was amazed that the FPS shown in Profiler seemed reasonable while the apparent frame rate couldn't have been more the 2 or 3 frames per second.
This indicates that either I'm hallucinating about the frame rates or the problem isn't in the rendering code, but in the figuring-out-what-should-be-rendered code.
Iirc, the PBR textures that I version updated the second time had upload timestamps of May 5th. In any event, to see them, go to Content Manger, set the filter to "PBR", then sort by date with newest dates first. The first five PBR textures shown are the ones that I updated (unless more PBR textures have been updated since then).
I looked at the config.txt files for the before and after version of a couple of textures and checked the stats in the asset preview but didn't see any obvious differences between them.
One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother N3V gives sometimes have interesting properties (with apologies to the Jefferson Airplane "White Rabbit")
I'm just happy that resaving the route appears to solve the problem.
Has anyone else noticed this happiness with build 106618?
Horace Fithers
And now for something completely different, a man with three buttocks! Excuse me sir, is that chair (er... texture!) comfortable?