Maximum route limits - TS12 and T2

[nicky9499]

This is something I have wondered about occasionally, the answers to which would be useful to routebuilders planning route extensions and future plans. What are the absolute upper limits for any route in TS12? These include but are not limited to;

Number of baseboards (in 5m grid)
Number of trackside objects including signals and points
Number of scenery objects and splines dependencies
Amount of track
Amount of interactive assets (ATLS/MIN)
Size of route file

Can a dev kindly shed some light if there is an upper limit for these or is it simply "as big as your machine can handle"?

Next, assuming TS12 routes can be imported without much modification into T2, any ballpark what will these new limits be?

Case in point, I have a route that's not very long but extremely dense. There are lots (understatement) of labeled switches, trackmarks and signals to facilitate rules like SetSignal or SetPath. Already my menus are divided into alphabets, some of which are subdivided into range. This contextual menu system as opposed to a window with a list (ie. container explorer in 3dsMax) does makes one wonder what happens if there are too many?

Cheerio,
Nicholas

 

[amrail2000]

Simply put what your only limited by what your computer can handle. My CSX Florence Division route is around 250 to 300 miles long and it's not complete. And that is not the longest route in trainz.

 

[cascaderailroad]

It is suggested that a route be @ 80-100 miles max ... Sure you can go bigger ... You could do a monsterous DC to NYC, with Phila to Chicago in one huge route ... but your PC is remembering (many times per second) every railcar and loco on the route, keeping tabs on every vehicle where abouts, and whether it is moving, or where bit is parked, as well as remembering every baseboard 10m grid corner height, and is visually seeing every high poly asset within view, not to mention all the splines, grass, twees, buildings, textures ... etc ... So, too big ... is too big

If I were doing a series of routes I would break them down into many, many iPortal, or Portal segmernts.

ie:
NY to Phila
Phila to DC
Phila to Reading
Phila to Harrisburg
Harrisburg to Williamsport
Williamsport to Tyrone
Harrisburg to Enola and Mount Union
Enola to Harve DeGrace
Mount Union to Johnstown
Mount Union to the EBT RR and Robertsdale
Johnstown to Pitrcairn
Pitcairn to Conway

 

[flusi737]

500+ miles in good quality, e.g. so much pofig trees that it looks like a real forest and large cities in between are no problem (already tried that), but there's one important thing: No more than 50 AI trains on the route or it lags, and if you use rulers for the distance in surveyor, DELETE them after using it!! I had this several times, forgot to delete them and after 300 miles and 400 rulers i had 3FPS. After deleting every single ruler, the problem was gone...

As for the route file...the maximum i had was about 548 MB, still working without problems (well the cdp has 180MB then and takes hours to upload if you have a slow connection).

Have a nice day, happy trainzing

Felix Richter

 

[CaptEngland]

Well in TS12, there is the ECML route which goes from London to Newcastle now. About 250+ miles I think plus not counting the routes going off to Boston, Skegness, Lincoln, Hull etc. I think the limit at the moment does appear to be what your machine can handle (up to, I would guess, 3-4 gig (32-bit program)). Please update me if I'm wrong, tech type people! :hehe:.

Regards.
CaptEngland.

 

[itareus]

I believe I'm correct in saying that even the Dev team at N3V don't know what the practical limits, if any, of T2 will be at the moment. One thing can be said for sure, T2 will be a 64 bit application and capable of using multiple cores of the CPU. This means that, as a 64bit application, it can address more than the 32 bit limit of (approx) 3-4 GB of RAM and also run processes (parts of the same program) on different threads in parallel, speeding things up.

Please note that if you are thinking of upgrading your OS from 32 bit to 64 bit and increasing RAM, the physical memory limits vary for different sub versions of Windows - see:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...=vs.85).aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_7

 

[NJCurmudgeon]

I have started working on what I hope will become a rather expansive fictional route with both passenger and freight lines between three terminal cities. The problem is my only computer is a laptop, so performance will become an increasing issue. However, what I envision could be broken down into smaller parts as cascaderailroad suggested. Not to hijack the thread, but since it is related to the original question, are there any good tutorials how to link individual routes into one big one using portals? It sounds like that might be a useful technique for those of us who are computer-power-challenged!

Thanks!

 

[JCitron]

I believe that the actual file size is limited to the 32-bit limit of 2GB. This is in addition to the memory limit of 4GB, which is the theoretical limit, but with the way computers work we end up with 3GB instead due to hardware addressing to I/O devices.

That being said, a route file that's 2GB is going to be quite huge! I can't imagine how long it would take to load or manipulate in Surveyor, let alone in Driver.

John

 

[flusi737]

I believe that the actual file size is limited to the 32-bit limit of 2GB. This is in addition to the memory limit of 4GB, which is the theoretical limit, but with the way computers work we end up with 3GB instead due to hardware addressing to I/O devices.

That being said, a route file that's 2GB is going to be quite huge! I can't imagine how long it would take to load or manipulate in Surveyor, let alone in Driver.

John

500mb is about 10 mins in surveyor/driver, so 2GB would probably be 40 minutes

 

[chrisaw]

I'm sure I saw mention before the great forum crash that there was a maximum number of polygons that could be drawn in one scene, but my memory's not what it was, so I could be mistaken.
Chris.

 

[Vern]

It's all about optimisation. The ECML and Appalachian Coal routes built into TS12 are performance nightmares. Then I've built short routes (the last one Chmura Forest now on the DLS) which choke up in Surveyor and Driver and last year lost a route which was a real labour of love (the Apheronsk narrow gauge) because Surveyor was using so much memory it started perma-deleting ground textures from part of the route. Conversely in the past I've built long(ish) routes (my aborted combined West Highland Crianlarich to Mallaig being over 100 miles) which largely using < TRS2006 assets performed impeccably. One piece of advice if you're attempting a longer route and using Transdem for terrain etc., is go for the option of 5m resolution grid around the track only. Leaving the rest at 10m drastically reduces the .gnd file size and in most cases you won't notice the background scenery is at a lower resolution.

Tempting though it might be to use Speedtrees - both built in and third party efforts - approach with caution, particularly those which when downloaded rack up at >60Mb! Excess use of scenery splines can also have a performance hit, you are often better using individual trees and bushes which are well optimised (such as the new range from clam1952) than stretching out CPU/GPU sapping splines.

The biggest single handicap to long routes is one of time and boredom. Unless it's a very personal project (or you're getting paid for it) even the most enthusiastically begun project can soon wilt after yet another km of drawing out field patterns and knowing you have another 150 to go!

 

[cascaderailroad]

Unless it's a very personal project (or you're getting paid for it) ...

It was related to me that using Transdem, and getting paid for producing a route for someone else is against the EULA, is unethical, and is illegal ... even producing a Transdem route for someone for free is not allowed ... As if one person made all the custom routes for others, for free, or for profit, using Transdem ... then nobody would ever have to buy Transdem anymore ... And the makers of Transdem would be losing many thousands of sales

 

[nicky9499]

nobody would ever have to buy Transdem anymore

Good point. I have a question though, what about the many freely available DEMs on both DLS and third party sites?

Surveyor was using so much memory it started perma-deleting ground textures from part of the route

This sounds absolutely horrific. Please tell me there is a fix for this (more memory perhaps?)

 

[JCitron]

I currently have some whopper-sized routes that I've worked on or were merger and acquisition operations. These huge routes take a long time to load, but once loaded seem okay. The problem with these huge routes when completed is setting up the driver's session. It can take several days to get the session setup and months to troubleshoot because the AI do their goofy bit way out of sight because you can't be everywhere at once. I have also noticed with huge routes that the AI become even more twits because the scripting threads seem to become overloaded due to the shear number of AI drivers needed to keep a route that large operational.

I agree with Vern on the boredom issue with building routes this huge. I have found that the best way to go about this is to chop them apart and merge them together later. It becomes less of a daunting task then to build and fiddle with. My old Enfield and Eastern is going through this right now as I transition from a merger and hand-sculpted terrain to all DEMs placed in their prototypical location. Sometimes even taking a ride or two on the recently laid track gives one fresh motivation to continue on to the end as well as ideas on how to scenic an area. This is one advantage we have as V-scale modelers. We can have both the bird's eye view and the driver's view unlike the other scales using real models.

Those Speed Trees are not the panacea we want them to be. If we were to place them as trees should be in the real world, our machines would crash or worse glow in the dark like an ember from the heat generated while processing them! If we place them for performance, we have a park-like setup which doesn't look right. I have found that a compromise between the newer flip-board style trees, such as those by Clam1952, are great for the distance along with dark textures, and Speed Trees up close seems to fit the bill. The thing is we have to keep in mind that the actors in this play are the trains and not the vast forest we've placed on the baseboards.

Over the years, I have found that as much as I'd like to include a town 14 baseboards away, I can't because of performance and ended up chopping out tons of baseboards on either side of the tracks. Now when I build a route, I keep the baseboards down to about 3-4 on either side of the tracks which works out well given the draw distance and objects we have in the scene. This has to increase a bit more if there are mountains and tall hills because there's nothing worse than cutting a hole in the side of a mountain, which I've done in error. Filling in the hole is possible by patching in the DEM again, but it's a difficult and long drawn out process of cutting and trimming the patch to fit it in.

John

 

[flusi737]

Those Speed Trees are not the panacea we want them to be. If we were to place them as trees should be in the real world, our machines would crash or worse glow in the dark like an ember from the heat generated while processing them! If we place them for performance, we have a park-like setup which doesn't look right.

Hi John....

Ehhm nope. The statement above may applies to the sad looking buildin trees, but definately not to pofigs and other HD trees. I alwaysplace those trees like in reality, including lots of (speedtree) shrubs and grass on the ground. And that forest is 400+ miles long without any problems/low fps

Felix :wave:

 

[sdiesel]

It was related to me that using Transdem, and getting paid for producing a route for someone else is against the EULA, is unethical, and is illegal ... even producing a Transdem route for someone for free is not allowed ... As if one person made all the custom routes for others, for free, or for profit, using Transdem ... then nobody would ever have to buy Transdem anymore ... And the makers of Transdem would be losing many thousands of sales

so if i buy trainsdem i cant release anything i would make onto the dls?

 

[Vern]

It was related to me that using Transdem, and getting paid for producing a route for someone else is against the EULA, is unethical, and is illegal ... even producing a Transdem route for someone for free is not allowed ... As if one person made all the custom routes for others, for free, or for profit, using Transdem ... then nobody would ever have to buy Transdem anymore ... And the makers of Transdem would be losing many thousands of sales

I think you have taken what I said way out of context - my statement was referring to the dedication needed to keep up work on a large route project, regardless of how the terrain is imported into the sim, and getting paid for your work is (maybe) one of those incentives. In no shape or form did I endorse or suggest using Transdem for commercial purposes when you don't hold the relevant permission. In point of fact, for those who wish to use Transdem for production of payware, Roland does offer a commercial use licence to cover this possibility.

 

[Vern]

so if i buy trainsdem i cant release anything i would make onto the dls?

cascaderailroad has taken what I said totally out of context. The whole point of Transdem is to assist in producing freeware routes which is what it would be if uploaded to the DLS, so you're okay. This thread is about maximum route size and as noted above I simply pointed out that getting paid for creating a route is one means of sustaining your interest in a long route project, but of course you would need to ensure the licence arrangements for whatever utilities or items you used (not just Transdem) was appropriate to that course of action..

 

[sdiesel]

cascaderailroad has taken what I said totally out of context. The whole point of Transdem is to assist in producing freeware routes which is what it would be if uploaded to the DLS, so you're okay. This thread is about maximum route size and as noted above I simply pointed out that getting paid for creating a route is one means of sustaining your interest in a long route project, but of course you would need to ensure the licence arrangements for whatever utilities or items you used (not just Transdem) was appropriate to that course of action..

spiffy, kinda made me wonder what would be the use of trainsdem if you cant share anything....i dont really play with trains it seems, i play in surveyor with a 'simcity' mentality, build, build, BUILD!!

back on topic(sorry ><), i have no idea what limit there is to the game. but i have been bored and merging long routes(100miles+ routes) just to see what kinda hell i can make, the last merge will be into the ecml. ill let ya know how bad things are vs reg ecml vs reg long route.

 

[Vern]

I would hazard a route through the plains, or which spends a great deal of its length running by the coast (Florida Overseas for example) would be easier on the optimisation. Flat terrain or ocean with a basic texture under the water is going to need much less .gnd file size than the CP through Kicking Horse Pass (as an example).