Framerates: An observation

FootplatePhil

Trainz Tragic since 2002
Returning after a years absence ... things have changed a bit around here !

Anyway, after a year of Trainz inactivity due to one of those forks in the road that life sometimes presents, I finally applied SP1 to my TRS2006 and fired up the abandoned WIP 2006 update to my old WeddinNSW layout.

Dismay ! Neither 2004 or 2006 ever ran like this. Whats happened to my frame rates? While never startling, they were at least acceptable. I'm now down in 'slide show' territory... back to the days of Original Trainz on antiquated graphics cards.

I'm using all the 'tweaks' I used to, so what's changed?

Background tasks !

I used to run my Trainz machine as 'standalone' playground. Since I last ran Trainz I have connected my laptop to the outside world. Firewalls, antivirus, wireless connections, etc.. they certainly seem to have taken their toll.

Looks like I'm an now in the market for a new standalone playground. Just got to find the money (and some way to convince Mrs Footplate of the urgency !)

Phil

PS: Wazzer, Colin, Peter, Dave - you guys still out there? - are Trainzer meets and TOTR still happening? Where did Trainz community go?
 
Since the previous forum crashed, we're still doing a lot of reconnecting.
I guess since the forums were down for so long some people just got out of the habit of dropping by.

:cool: Claude
 
Returning after a years absence ... things have changed a bit around here !

Anyway, after a year of Trainz inactivity due to one of those forks in the road that life sometimes presents, I finally applied SP1 to my TRS2006 and fired up the abandoned WIP 2006 update to my old WeddinNSW layout.

Dismay ! Neither 2004 or 2006 ever ran like this. Whats happened to my frame rates? While never startling, they were at least acceptable. I'm now down in 'slide show' territory... back to the days of Original Trainz on antiquated graphics cards.

I'm using all the 'tweaks' I used to, so what's changed?

Background tasks !

I used to run my Trainz machine as 'standalone' playground. Since I last ran Trainz I have connected my laptop to the outside world. Firewalls, antivirus, wireless connections, etc.. they certainly seem to have taken their toll.

Looks like I'm an now in the market for a new standalone playground. Just got to find the money (and some way to convince Mrs Footplate of the urgency !)

Phil

PS: Wazzer, Colin, Peter, Dave - you guys still out there? - are Trainzer meets and TOTR still happening? Where did Trainz community go?

did you reinstall TRS as directed in the instructions

regards

Harry
 
To the letter (installing software used to be part of my job, and I know the importance of following instructions). I do not believe the upgrade is the cause of my performance issues, or else I would have posted in the Maintenance of Way -TRS2006 forum.

I posted because I thought it was interesting that changes outside of Trainz can have such a large effect on Trainz performance, confirming a number of other posts I used to see about this on the old forums, but also raising doubts in my mind about all the posts which advocated tweaking this and that in trainzoptions.txt. I tried many of those, across various versions of Trainz, with various effects - from nothing through to marginal improvements. Nothing improved my performance on the scale that it is has dropped since I have opened my Trainz machine to the world (and before anyone asks, as far as I can tell I have not picked up a performance zapping virus !).

Phil.
 
Not kinowing your specs, I might suggest that you check your RAM. I found the same issue after installing 06 and SP1, Upping my ram to 2 gigs cured the issues and it now runs flawlessly. (as much as that is possible)
06 is a memory hog.
 
Basic Specs:

XP SP2
Pentium M 1.86 Ghz Laptop 1280*800
1 Gig DDR2
5400 RPM Hard drive (too slow !) - defragged as per SP1 instructions
ATI X700 128M DirectX 4xAA 8xAF (drivers are old, but used to work fine, and are unchanged during performance slump)

These are unchanged over period of performance slump, and before my year off these specs used to provide reasonable performance by my standards.

mechnx, are you saying you saw an appreciable slump after you upgraded from 2006 to 2006 SP1 ? If so then I may try uninstalling and reinstalling 2006 without SP1 to so if things return to something near the performance I had a year back. (And if so then maybe I have posted in the wrong forum).

Thanks for the feedback.
Phil
 
Hi there

My only idear, is disable all those extras, don't really need them in trainz, only need the Internet if your going to use Iportal or getting updates then try running Trainz, if it runs ok it the extras, if not it has to be your computer, a

What setting are you using for performance as well, maybe your set them too high, if there on default well nothing much to add.

Tom
 
Tom, thanks for responding. I have tried disabling antivirus, turning of the wireless switch on the laptop. Didn't seem to help much (does this blow my background tasks theory ?). As for settings, I have been using pretty well the same settings for a number of years. They have not changed. Performance has. But here they are...


Performance Settings

Ground texture passes 1
detail level 3
draw dist max
Scenery draw dist max
Spline Detail max
Trains pollies max-3
Good weather fog 3
Particle effects middle


Trainzoptions.txt
-DepthBits=24
-StencilBits=8
-fullscreen
-Jet=bin
-cabinfov=65
-driverfov=55
-DefaultAutoMip=none
-showkuids
-disablecarz=0
-width=1280
-height=800
-resourcememory=512
-framerate=22 (and I used to get it, but now checking with FRAPS shows I'm rarely getting half that !)
-loadingtime=4
-framestoaverage=16
-arealimit=400
-sectionlimit=20
-allownoctrlrightclick
-intro=disable
-nolog
 
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Turned Jetlog back on and ran some 'benchmark' tests in Driver:

* 2006 SP1, std background tasks running: 10.88 fps

* 2006 SP1, background tasks shut down 12.34 fps

* Unstalled 2006 SP1, reinstalled 2006, std tasks running (did not defrag) 10.61 fps

My Conclusion: My performance problem does not seem to be related to SP1. Some change in my Laptop config over the last 12 months has sucked up about 10 fps.

Where to from here: quite frankly, I don't know if I can be bothered. I will see how I feel when I've cooled off, but it may be back to G Scale for me I think.
 
Running Tasks

Before the "crash" some kind person posted a method for allocating minimum tasks to run Trainz. You could then launch programme using this. Perhaps the poster might care to repost.
 
Reload OS ??

Footplatephil:
Looking at your specs, we have roughly the same machine. Although I do use the X850 video card. Over the past year, I have installed many incidental programs. Also the inevitable internet garbage has managed to creep in.
My trainz programs have suffered accordingly. Last week I bought a new HD
for use as my "C" drive. I re-installed my OS ( Win2K) from the ground up.
Trainz now runs like lightining !!! :D
 
OK, I'm over the dummy spit.

ess1: Yes , I seem to remember there was something one could set up to run before Trainz which shut down non-essential stuff. I also remember seeing a link to some documentation on Windows tasks which could be safely shut down in various situations. We certainly lost a lot of valuable documented community knowledge with the crash of the old forums.

Hot_Box_Detector: When I first brought my laptop I was pleasantly surprised to find how well Trainz ran on it. Your suggestion is something I have been contemplating - rebuilding from the recovery partition. However it seems pretty drastic (quite a bit of work to subsequently reload everything), with no guarantee I won't end up in the same space by the time I reload everything I use.

I'm also wondering if I have picked up some nasty which my Anti-virus (ZoneAlarm) has missed.

More thinking to be done yet ......
 
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Hi Phil

Have you run the Trainz Diagnostic Tool found in ..C \Programme Files\Auran\TRS2006\Bin folder?

This will give you a general idea if Trainz will run ok ;)

Cheers

Ron
 
Hi Puffingbilly. Saw you on TV last night. Yep, Trainz Diagnostic Tool ran after I did the install for for SP1. All 'Passed'.

Xcom: Many thanks for the links - thats the stuff. 'enditall' sounds like it does automatically what I have already tried manually. I made some gains, but nothing like what I've lost. And on consideration it seems unlikley I am going to get back what I have lost just by shutting down a few mostly dormant tasks (which were probably already running back before my performance degradation).

I don't understand what has happend (no great surprises there !), but I've basically decided to do a clean install of XP from my recovery disk. I'm now backing up my stuff to a secondary hard disk and trying to work up the courage to start. Will then re-install the programs I really want, starting with Trainz SP1, and run a few Trainz benchmarks as I go.

If anyone has any better ideas before I start would appreciate if you posted them, as this approach is something of a last resort.
 
Perhaps your registry is a mess.
I use RegCleaner and it sometimes helps.
You might also try EasyCleaner or Registry Mechanic.
Though I now have one gig, it ran well with 1/2 gig of RAM and XP home.
 
I've read that games don't perform well on laptops (Unless it's Alienware) because they say Desktops are alot more powerful no matter what the system is on your laptop. I've tested TRS2006 on my sister's new laptop that has more than the minimal requirements of TRS2006 and it runs the same as I run on my 6 year old Desktop - 25 FPS. Also: it could be a setting on your video card. I noticed once that TRS2006 kept freezing for 2-3 seconds every 10 seconds until I found out it was a setting that I "botched" on my video card and then it stopped freezing. Also: people have had issues where TRS2006 worked fine and the SP1 patch caused alot of problems. You might want to try to re-install TRS2006 without the SP1 patch. In conclusion: It might be that your laptop just can't handle programs like TRS2006 or your video card is on a bad setting or the SP1 patch is bad on your system. -Chris
 
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Hi Chris. Thanks for your thoughts. Your pretty right about the desktop/laptop thing - the power drain for high end performance doesn't do much for the battery life of a laptop, so generally they're designed to be much more sedate.

I've tried with and without SP1 - same result. Same laptop with TRS2006 (pre SP1) ran at twice the frame rate 12 months ago. And while no doubt some would consider an avg of 22-25 fps pretty ordinary, I was quite happy with it (also matched my old desktop).

Off to check Superfudd's registry idea...
 
Running Trainz in diagnostic mode

Hi All,

There is a very simple way to get trainz running with best performance your computer is capable of.

LC START, run MSCONFIG, select diagnostic startup click ok then reboot.

This will start only the nessessary system functions and nothing else.

Cheers,
Bill69
 
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