Good bye to Trainz Railroad Simulator

[diesel9]

To everyone here on the forums, thank you for all the help and support over the years, but now it seems like TRS2006 has finally stopped working completely, I've tried everything. So I have uninstalled it for now. Maybe if I get another computer, I'll reinstall it. I'm not saying farewell to the forums though as I can help contribute and praise people of their upcoming and completed work. Once again thank you and goodbye for now :wave::wave::wave::wave::wave:

 

[cascaderailroad]

TRS2006 works great...any problems re-installing where TRS2006 will not funtion, is usually you own PC's fault or antivirus/firewall. It works on Vista and Windows 7 OS. The DLH-DLS works fine with a speed of 375 kbs or much more with a FCT, and is never down, or server full.

I downloaded 2127 freightcars of Majekears today. My "local" file is well over 60 Gb.

 

[diesel9]

I tried Trainz one last time and IT WORKED!!!!! What I did was delete the faulty routes that I downloaded now it works like a charm

 

[springtransit]

I'd switch to TS 2009 if I was you.

 

[diesel9]

Yea I think I will as I'm suppose to get a new laptop for Christmas before college starts

 

[RRSignal]

Yea I think I will as I'm suppose to get a new laptop for Christmas before college starts

Make sure you get one that supports an add-in graphics card, maybe even one that comes with one. It'll help a lot. Preferably one with Windows XP too.

 

[djt]

Make sure you get one that supports an add-in graphics card, maybe even one that comes with one.

Lol, I don’t think he’s going to have much luck “adding one” if it doesn’t already have a discrete GPU to begin with.

Preferably one with Windows XP too

I don’t think going backwards (Windows XP) will do him much good either. Any laptop today with decent enough specs to run games is going to have at least 4GB of RAM, in which case Windows 7 64-bit is the way to go.

 

[rjhowie]

Like the story of Robert The Bruce and the spider and not giving up!

 

[Ottomum]

With a basic, integrated GPU you will have no chance of getting acceptable frame rates in the Trainz. You must have a good enough GPU to push 120 fps to get a realistic representation of reality...especially the tracks.

My "suggestion" is a 2 x GeForce GTX 480 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 units in a dual SLI configuration, essentially a quad GPU setup. Remember though, you will need a good power supply. something in the "vicinity" of 2000 watts should do the trick, so you MAY want to "SLI" the power supply with another to provide enough watts for the CPU and the 5 SSDs in RAID 1 duplex configuration.

This you will not regret! The track, it looks especially good...

 

[mawilson]

Ottomum, I'm pretty sure you won't find that kind of graphics environment in a laptop anytime soon. Oh, and my Win7 system runs 2006 at max settings without a hiccup on a single gtx285.

 

[FlyingScottmond]

I'd switch to TS 2009 if I was you.

It is pretty good, but I havnt heard a personal opinion on 2010.

Any thoughts?



EDIT: Mawilson, I believe a Toshiba Quosmio would do the trick.

 

[djt]

You must have a good enough GPU to push 120 fps to get a realistic representation of reality...especially the tracks.

If the monitor has a 60Hz refresh rate how would 120 fps provide any more of a “realistic representation of reality...especially the tracks”?

My "suggestion" is a 2 x GeForce GTX 480 (Fermi) 1536MB 384-bit GDDR5 units in a dual SLI configuration, essentially a quad GPU setup.

How would CPU dependent game like Trainz perform any better with multiple GPU’s?

Multi GPU setups (whether it’s Cross Fire or SLI) do nothing to help performance with Trainz. The dated game engine that TS2010 uses can’t fully utilize a single GTX 480 let alone two of them.

 

[paulzmay]

I understood that many if the changes made for TS09/10 utilised GPU capacity more fully. A typical Trainz route involves rendering a lot of polygons in a lot of materials, so a good GPU is essential - it just won't be doing any of the fancy effects that more modern game engines use.

Paul

 

[Ottomum]

Let me say that track detail and resolution is one of the most important aspects of any railroad simulation.

Tell me, what do you see most of in the Trainz cab world...it is the track.

ANYTHING that can be done to help the Trainz with smooth drawing of track should be a priority. A high ratio between the frame rate and the refresh rate is DESIRABLE to provide maximum headroom should extensive scenerys be loaded from disk as one moves to a new tile.

I see that the Microsoft is once again visiting their old stomping ground of flight simulation. Can it be much longer before they once again open the code vault for the next version of MSTS? This time I am hoping that they spend more attention on the track models.

 

[djt]

Let me say that track detail and resolution is one of the most important aspects of any railroad simulation.

First off Trainz is more of a game then a railroad simulation and as far important aspects of a “railroad simulation” goes I’ve spent most of my adult life in the US railroad industry part of which was training so I’ve got a good idea what are important aspects.

As far as track is concerned being able to clearly see switch points ranks right up there as being one of the most important.

ANYTHING that can be done to help the Trainz with smooth drawing of track should be a priority.

Right, but if the game engine can’t take advantage of even one high end GPU then what good would two be?

Again Trainz is primarily CPU dependent.

A high ratio between the frame rate and the refresh rate is DESIRABLE to provide maximum headroom should extensive scenerys be loaded from disk as one moves to a new tile.

The smoothest any game is going to be is when the frame rates consistently matches the refresh rate of the monitor with v-sync enabled (and triple buffering if available). In the case of most LCD’s this would be 60Hz so as long as the frame rate stays consistent at 60 fps or above game play is at its most fluid.

 

[djt]

I understood that many if the changes made for TS09/10 utilised GPU capacity more fully.
Paul

Not a level of GPU utilization that what have Cross Fire or SLI helping.

I’ve had multiple GTX 285’s in SLI and ATI’s Cross Fire with a 4870x2 and neither has done anything to help performance in Trainz over a single high end GPU.

 

[Ottomum]

However the CAPACITY of an SLI setup to enable large textures to be transferred over the PCIe bus along with the RAM available on the cards, in some cases 1.5GB per card, allows for very high TRACK resolution.

As DJT correctly points out, track configuration is of prime importance to the engineer as they travel along the route. Efforts made in this area, especially if it is only a question of HARDWARE, will be well rewarded in making the Trainz a more simulation-like experience.

Also the input/output is a bottleneck that can OVERCOME any level of v-synced, high headroom frames per second equation. An SSD RAID 1 array goes a long way to providing a high sustained transfer rate across the I/O bus. Thus overcoming I/O stutter as one travels into and through HIGH detailed areas.

 

[mawilson]

EDIT: Mawilson, I believe a Toshiba Quosmio would do the trick.

That does appear to be a very capable laptop but, as nice a the GTS 360M is, it isn't a pair of GTX 480 GPUs.

I do have to retract my earlier statement. I just ran into the EUROCOM Panther that loads two GeForce GTX 480M GPUs. Of course it runs ~$5000USD.

 

[djt]

However the CAPACITY of an SLI setup to enable large textures to be transferred over the PCIe bus along with the RAM available on the cards, in some cases 1.5GB per card, allows for very high TRACK resolution.

Again if the software (in this case a game engine) isn’t written to take advantage of the GPU then how is SLI or Cross Fire going to provide any more performance over a single high end GPU?

I’m currently using a GTX 480 in one of my setups that has 1.5GB of RAM and it doesn’t allow for anymore “high TRACK resolution” over the GTX 285 or the ATI 5870 I also have.

The advantage with the GTX 480 (as long as you have the CPU to back it) is “SuperSampling” AA which cleans up image quality without the performance hit that you get with the GTX 285 or ATI 5870.

An SSD RAID 1 array goes a long way to providing a high sustained transfer rate across the I/O bus.

Lol, if you’re talking about setting up a storage solution for performance whether it be SSD’s or mechanical drive’s why would you set them up in RAID 1? RAID 1 creates a mirrored set is for data backup not performance, RAID 0 is for performance.


Here again since Trainz does not fully utilize system resources RAID 0 will provide little to no performance improvement over just setting up the drives with the OS on one and Trainz on another.

 

[mawilson]

Ottomum,

The point you seem to be missing is that you can buildout a system that, in all probability, can produce very credible performance but, all that will gain you is bragging rights if the software isn't capable of exploiting it. As much as I like Trainz, it's graphics engine is a far cry from state of the art.