Graphics glitch

[sniper297]

Dunno exactly when this started, but something that seems to be getting worse, or possibly I'm just noticing it more, not sure which. Slow loading of scenery, and the strangest part, when changing from internal to external (or external to internal) or jumping to another part of a route, the textures are blurred - for a second or two, sometimes longer, then they jump into focus. Not sure if the video driver is at fault or I got a bad card, it's less than a year old and the temp monitors are normal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ew7Mvka16M

Short video showing the odd effects, trains popping up a few cars at a time, sometimes the trailing engine and several cars toward the back then the lead engine and a few other cars then the rest of the train, sometimes taking 5 or 10 seconds to show a 40 car train. Then the textures sharpen, then the headlight comes on, stuff like that.

Sys specs;

Operating System: Windows XP Media Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 3
Model: Dell DXP051
Power supply: 550 watts
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.40GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 2GB Crucial Ballistix 800mhz (throttled down to 633 because Dell sucks)
Video: NVIDIA GeForce GT430 1GB
Sound: SB Audigy
Hard Drives:
C:Western Digital WD5000AAKX-001CA0 462.0 GB 7200rpm
F:SanDisk SDSSDH120GG25 114.5 GB solid state drive

Running TS2010 off the solid state drive and have the Windows swap file on the SSD as well, but even on the WD other games load scenery fast enough. 1 gig of video RAM I really shouldn't be seeing this.

Driver is 285.58, I've downloaded 306.81 but haven't installed it yet.

 

[shaneturner12]

Blurred graphics is normally a result of a low antistropy/antialias setting, or a low texture/train quality setting. As for the 'jumping in', that may be due to the data being loaded in.

Shane

 

[sniper297]

Look at it again, Shane, blurry after loading then popping into focus. FSAA and Anisotropic or quality settings don't have a time delay fuse.

 

[shaneturner12]

They can do on some - mine for example does that unless my graphics settings are set to optimal.

Shane

 

[WindWalkr]

The "blurry" effect is the result of a low-LOD texture being displayed too close to the camera. This can happen when the camera jumps from place to place rather than moving gradually. The game will immediately initiate a load request for the higher-resolution textures but since the entire scene is changing at the same time it takes a while for the hardware to catch up. How long the effect lasts depends on the complexity of the scene and the performance of your PC. You'll see the same effect from many other games- generally speaking the best way to mitigate it is to avoid sudden camera changes.

kind regards,

chris

 

[tomurban]

Sniper: For comparison purposes, I have TS12 running from a 7200 RPM HD, an Intel I5 at 3.2GHz, nvidia GT430 (1GB slightly OC @ 800MHz) and 4GB of RAM. Changing scenes or going from one end of a long route to the other typically takes 5+/- seconds for full draw-in. Given the vast amount of data to be processed, I don't consider this to be a problem.

 

[norfolksouthern37]

this happens on everything. the slower your computer performance, the longer this will appear. it is not a glitch.

 

[sniper297]

Hmmm, LOD would explain the externals, but the internals;

No LOD in that mesh, it's the main.im console from the original gen_sd cab, about 600 polys. My concern here is that it seems to be getting worse instead of better, the fact that it's easy to get a before and after screenshot of the effect at all is a problem, and sometimes it lasts a lot longer.

When I first got TS2010 I had a 375 watt PS, Pentium D 2.8, an ATI X550 128mb video card, and a Maxtor L360 hard drive. Now I'm running with a 550 watt PS, Pentium D 3.4, an Nvidia GT430 1024mb video card, and a solid state drive. Unless something is seriously wrong with my motherboard or something is configured wrong it should be better now, not worse.

 

[norfolksouthern37]

it is texture LoD it is handled automatically by the type of texture files. when you import a texture into cmp, it is coverted to DXT .texture files, they contain mip levels internally. it is just like DDS files or ACE file in the other sims you know about. they will do the same thing. as we have pointed out, it would depend on your system performance and where exactly in the route you instantly snap to for how long it remains visible. simply put, you do not have good system performance.

 

[sniper297]

Mipmap, thanks, that explains that one. As for the old system I understand that, we covered that before, but going from a low quality 7200rpm Maxtor to a solid state drive, and from a really ancient 128mb video card to a 1gb GT430, you would expect the performance to get better, not worse, right?

Still running tests, but here's what I've done this morning;
1. Booted into safe mode, uninstalled 285.58
2. Ran driversweeper 2, only a dozen or so orphans in the system registry, mostly physX.
3. Installed 306.81 with custom options, chose not to install HD audio drivers - since when did a video card become a sound card? Apparently happened quite a while back, shows you how much attention I've been paying.
4. Ran 3D mark06, got an error. Rebooted, disabled McAfee realtime scanning and tried again, ran fine.

Comparison, I know 06 isn't the latest and greatest, but with the hardware I had 2 years ago the first "return to proxycon" benchmark averaged 3-5 FPS, now it averages 20-30 FPS.

Again still running tests, I've heard that SSDs wear out quickly, but best I recall I've had this one less than a year, and Oblivion and Silent Hunter IV run just fine from the SSD with full detail. Next step is a clean reinstall of TS2010 on both the Western Digital and the SDD, possibly there's something really corrupted in the working copy I've been using for development here. Not showing anything faulty and I ran an EDR on it last month, but who knows. The whole SSD thing is new to me, but from what I'm reading you're not supposed to defrag the little beasties.

 

[sniper297]

Next!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53vyw0KE1RA

Can't do a direct comparison of the first part because I failed to duplicate the same timings, also decided to check the cab gauges. Second part you can actually see the difference, instead of taking 25 seconds from jump to full generation of the C&NW scoot (green and yellow F7 with the bilevel coaches) it takes about 15 seconds. Still seems kinda long for a solid state drive and 1 gig video card, but the new driver does improve it.

 

[stouthm]

Sniper297 - I get the same results you got before updating your driver. I thought it was normal. I assumed it was doing this because everything was trying to load at once. Thoughts any one?

 

[sniper297]

Worst trouble is it's a matter of perception - it did it before, but I didn't pay much attention, so I never timed it before. It "seems" to be a lot worse now than it was last year, but "seems" isn't something you can actually measure. What I'm trying to find out here, is with the above hardware and the Nvidia control panel set for performance instead of quality, and TS2010 set for OpenGL with the sliders about midrange, is 20-25 seconds average normal for that kind of jump? Dell BIOS is nothing like the Phoenix BIOS I was used to years ago, there's very little to actually play with - the FSB for the mobo is 800mhz, so I bought 2 gigs of 800mhz Crucial Ballistix, and when I installed them I discovered the Dell BIOS is set for 677mhz RAM with no option to change the speed. Could that be the bottleneck getting the info from the SSD to the video card? The 3D mark results are somewhat odd in that it's not detecting the GPU correctly;

Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GT 430
VendorPNY Technologies, Inc.
# of cards 1
SLI / CrossFire Off
Memory 32 MB
Core clock 0 MHz
Memory clock 0 MHz
Driver version 6.14.13.0681
Driver status Not FM Approved

Processor Intel Pentium D 950
Processor clock 2283 MHz
Physical / logical processors
1 / 2
# of cores 2

General

Operating system
32-bit Microsoft Windows XP (5.1.2600)
Motherboard Dell Inc. 0YC523
Memory 2048 MB
Module 1 1024 MB Crucial Technology DDR2 @ 400 MHz
Module 2 1024 MB Crucial Technology DDR2 @ 400 MHz

3DMark Score 6661 3DMarks
SM2.0 Score 2962
HDR/SM3.0 Score 2961
CPU Score 1699
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 25.45 FPS
GT2 - Firefly Forest 23.91 FPS
CPU1 - Red Valley 0.54 FPS
CPU2 - Red Valley 0.85 FPS
HDR1 - Canyon Flight 29.7 FPS
HDR2 - Deep Freeze 29.53 FPS

0mhz for the video core clock, VRAM, and memory clock is obviously wrong, so I don't know if I should believe what it says about the 3.4ghz CPU running at about 2.3ghz, or the memory running at 400mhz. If that IS correct than something is wrong someplace, altho according to the online benchmark comparison my system scores in the highest percentage for similar systems. Dunno if I should be skeptical about that either, most people have an awful lot of fluffware running in the background when they run those tests. But the pure CPU benchmark tests do have the lowest FPS and performance scores.

 

[norfolksouthern37]

going from a low quality 7200rpm Maxtor to a solid state drive, and from a really ancient 128mb video card to a 1gb GT430, you would expect the performance to get better, not worse, right?

while it is possible, it isnt something i would bet money on. you can get data out of storage as fast as you like but that doesnt mean it can get through the rest of the system hardware in a timely fashion.

Oblivion and Silent Hunter IV run just fine from the SSD with full detail.

I have SH4 from 2007 and i find it quite remarkable that you can run it full detail with the video hardware you have listed. i used it on my previous system from the time and iirc it has many post processor shading effects that can slow video hardware, but then again, it would be a user definition of what is 'running just fine'. apart from that, dont forget, SSD doesnt make your system faster, it allows it to get data from storage faster. doesn't mean that data is going anywhere fast if it simply cant.


for this next post...

Jim, I do not wish to offend you. Your above post seems to indicate a fundamental misunderstanding of how the hardware works. I would suggest getting advice from a professional in the hardware field to better help you understand some of the things you typed above. I am not sure how better to put it to you.

What I'm trying to find out here, is with the above hardware and the Nvidia control panel set for performance instead of quality, and TS2010 set for OpenGL with the sliders about midrange, is 20-25 seconds average normal for that kind of jump?

at first i thought i was going to be able to answer this little part, but then i realized i didnt really understand what the question was.

adjusting the texture quality in the video card and even in trainz will have an effect on the time it takes for your low level mips to load into higher ones when jumping from one area to another. also, in order to get the most consistent results with this test, you have to move from point a to point b exactly every time, and have exactly the same items loaded in the entire scene. it is not likely you could produce any meaningful results another way.

 

[sniper297]

Yeah, at my age trying to remember what I had for breakfast takes some thinking, that's why I'm not really sure if the slow loading is new or it was always there and I just never noticed it. I am working on a different route and doing a lot of testing AI traffic patterns, it could be that it's more noticeable to me now simply because I'm doing a lot more jumping from train to train during the tests. Anyway I got a couple benchmarks with the videos now, so I'm not gonna worry about it unless it seems like it's getting worse, then I'll have something to time it against.

As for SH IV, the main difference between running it from the SSD rather than the WD disk is the sudden "brick wall" pause when I'm running in accelerated speed and sonar picks up a contact - that doesn't happen with the SSD, it just drops to normal speed with no pause at all. Can't really compare it to a train simulator since the max you'll get is about 20 "vehicles" (ships) in view at one time, nothing like what a train simulator has to process.

 

[NickyVeee]

Yeah the processor and RAM are just too outdated and minimal for Trainz to run smoothly. SSD is nice, video card is so-so, but the rest of the computer needs a bit of an overhaul.

Sorry, I know I'm like the 3rd person in this thread to break it to ya.

 

[sniper297]

That ain't gonna happen for quite a while, need a new CPU I'd need a new mobo to plug it into, get a new mobo I need a new tower case since industry standard mobo screwholes wouldn't line up with a Dell tower case. Gonna be a few years before I can scrape up that kinda money.

 

[clam1952]

Apparently from checking on Google, that motherboard will run but doesn't fully support all the functions of a Pentium D. Bit like some AM3 boards will accept an AM3+ chip but gain no benefit from it even with a bios update.

Assuming what I'm looking at is the correct mobo it has four ram slots, I'd be inclined to put 4GB in it and use the /3GB switch as Trainz 2009 upwards is Large Address Aware, may not solve the problems but it might ease them. Or guessing you have upgraded the ram at some point, add whatever you took out back in, may have to run at a lower speed but usually adding more ram outweighs dropping the speed.

 

[sniper297]

That might be doable, the original two 512k sticks went into the empty slots on my son's computer so he would have 2 gigs, but if I can pick up a couple more sticks cheap I might do that. Main concern is it's been so many years (god I'm getting old) that I don't remember what's what, combined with the fact that "what" has changed so much. When DDR first came out you had to configure the BIOS just so, and set assorted jumper pins on the mobo - with Windows and the new plug and play gizmo there's apparently no more jumpers. If you had the wrong configuration or the wrong RAM type for the FSB, the "double" part of DDR was disabled and you would get only one cycle, essentially throttling the 66mhz DDR down to 33mhz if it worked at all. That's why I'm wondering about the "400mhz" thing in the 3D mark report, is my 800mhz RAM running at 800mhz, 677mhz, or 400mhz? And does it really matter, instead of dumping more money into this with whatever the best RAM for it is, I should just save my nickels until I can get a new bare bones system with at least an i5. The last store bought computer I had back in the 90s was a Dell 486DX-66, ran like a dream, easily upgradeable, and the tech support was fabulous. When the Pentiums came out I always built my own, usually AMD based. When I moved in 2005 I had some cash left over and very little free time, so I ordered two identical Dell XPS400 systems - and I've been learning my lesson on how much Dell has changed since the 90s. It was too late for me when that "Bend over dude, you're getting a Dell" article came out, but everything it in was true and I keep finding more and more places where Dell cut corners to make it cheaper to produce. The mobo is merely the latest in a long line of new things I've found to be deliberately crippled, I'll never buy another Dell.

http://www.ripten.com/2008/07/07/bend-over-dude-youre-getting-a-dell/

 

[frogpipe]

I always thought that Dell = custom form factor (Screw holes don't line up) but found out that this changed at some point. I have an AMD Athlon II x4 630 mobo from Dell in a standard case (got it for a song and it was better then my P4) so you might not have to get a new case...

Just sayin'