Large Layout Limitations??

[treblesum81]

edion2... you've brought up a very important point. I do have an extreme computer (birthday / holiday / hard work present) with a Quad Core 2.37GHz CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a dual GPU video card with 2GB of video ram, all running Windows 7 (still may go back to vista though) x64. This not only means that my computer will not have the 2GB limitation, but that it will be able to handle much more complexity than many others... Something to keep in mind when I'm putting down detail and objects.

As far as the route, I don't see any reason not to start on a massive route as my first, especially if I'm going to break it down into more manageable sections. I'm definitely not going to start at one of the major termini because I imagine Chicago or LA are going to be pretty hard to model, even in less than accurate detail. Instead I'll probably start with one of the midway points like Albuquerque or Garden City, which will give me an opportunity to develop my skills as I work outwards in each direction, until I'm ultimately able to really whip out a good layout near the end, and then I'll probably go back and rework the original few layouts for better detail. Also, don't forget that if I'm going to break it up into 12-15 smaller layouts, then thats really 12-15 routes to work with which will just happen to fit together rather than one massive 2,300 mile route...

 

[geophil]

Trainz is a 32bit process. The 2GB limit will apply regardles of your environment.

 

[SuperFudd]

Allow me to correct my earlier post:
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Using portals? verryy interesting. That way you could have a 2000+ mile route without buiding all 2000+ miles. Of coarse you could use the model railroad trick and compress it but that would mess up the schedule, the running time between points, and reducing the speed limits is un-cool. With portals however, you can use them to replace long boring parts with no turnouts. Just set the time until re-apearing at the next portal to the running time for the "missing" section. That could work.
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If at a later date you wanted to add the missing boards, you could.

 

[wreeder]

Hi Greg,

The texture limit in TS2009 has changed from a total of 255 textures per route to 255 per baseboard so that should not be a problem. There was a very big problem with using HOG and the HOG textures with TS2009. I'm not sure that it has been fixed. For my money, TransDEM Trainz Edition is the only way to go. It comes with full tutorials that makes it very easy to understand the process from beginning to end and supports the use of Google maps and Google Earth images. Performance in TS2009 is much better if you are running in Native mode but at the moment this limits the number of assets available to build your route with unless you plan to build all the content yourself. Running in compatiblity mode with give you slightly better performance than TRS06 in most cases but not all. Also there is still a bug in saved sessions that has been around since TRS04 that can cause problems with restarting a session that you saved in Driver. This mainly affects the AI drivers and industries. Lastly be sure to save your route often and in multiple versions using incremental file names because Trainz has been known to corrupt files during saving large routes. Good luck.

William

 

[treblesum81]

Hi Greg,

The texture limit in TS2009 has changed from a total of 255 textures per route to 255 per baseboard so that should not be a problem. There was a very big problem with using HOG and the HOG textures with TS2009. I'm not sure that it has been fixed. For my money, TransDEM Trainz Edition is the only way to go. It comes with full tutorials that makes it very easy to understand the process from beginning to end and supports the use of Google maps and Google Earth images. Performance in TS2009 is much better if you are running in Native mode but at the moment this limits the number of assets available to build your route with unless you plan to build all the content yourself. Running in compatiblity mode with give you slightly better performance than TRS06 in most cases but not all. Also there is still a bug in saved sessions that has been around since TRS04 that can cause problems with restarting a session that you saved in Driver. This mainly affects the AI drivers and industries. Lastly be sure to save your route often and in multiple versions using incremental file names because Trainz has been known to corrupt files during saving large routes. Good luck.

William

I've been looking more and more at TransDem, though I've managed to DEM about 200mi of Northern Arizona using MicroDem so far. One reason I'm more interested in TransDem is that you can use it to place track splines already, something that would be a very helpful tool when dealing with so much distance. I'm just not sure I'm really to drop $40 on a tool like that, even if it is the golden goose of layout making. For the time being, I'm just collecting DEM maps of the route (at the 20kbps limit imposed by GeoCommunity that is taking forever...), so I've got some time to think about it, though, as the route gets longer and longer, I'm starting to think I might be stupid not to do it.

One thing to mention though is that not all older content is incompatible with native mode in TRS2009. When I try shutting off compatibility mode, many buildings work just fine, as well as other track objects. Trees are of course the big tripping point right now, but they are becoming more available as time goes on and, at the rate things are going, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find workable scenery by the time I'm ready to really start dropping any detail into the route. That being said, I'll be using TRS2009 material everywhere I can so that the route will be as visually interesting as can be and perform as well as possible.

 

[SuperFudd]

I created Niles, Hinton and Winchester for TRS2006 ( on the DLS) and ported it to TS2009 SP1a and it worked fine in compatibility mode. I did try native mode briefly and the only odd thing I noticed was the trees. The layout uses only stuff that comes with TRS2006, except perhaps the Sunol station. It is on the DLS (Station Sunol).

 

[cascaderailroad]

What is the limit ?

I am wondering in either versions, 04/06/09/10, how many assets is too much for a route ?

If you had a 10,000 baseboard route, with every freightcar and loco known to US & Canada, all spread out on it, and every US & Canada building, and every tree & texture, would this cause the game to fail ?