Maybe someone skilled can help out with this

[mchone2012]

okay, i am creating a route of my own for once and couldn't help but ask this since it isn't usual to happen, i have a very big route and one town on my route turns to be invisible and i can't see any of the trains that i run through the town ... every other portion of the route continues on to do quite the greatest. Now, since this may be a glitch perhaps i can update trainz to my laptop's specifications. having said that i would question the frame rate? what is the usual frame rate for trainz to be running appropriately because i would like to know when i open my trainz folder and go to options.txt i need to know what all of these should say in order to be running my trainz program accurately thank you.

 

[RRSignal]

I'm not sure what you mean by "can update trainz to my laptop's specifications". If you mean to tweak Trainz to run better on your existing laptop, sure, there is probably a lot you can do - namely, disconnect from the internet, disable firewall and anti-virus completely, etc.

There is no target framerate. Basically, if you can get a STABLE framerate at or above 24 fps*, the game will appear to run smoothly. It's variations in framerates that cause Trains to appear to stutter. There are options you can put in your trainzoptions.txt file - specifically, framerate= and framestoaverage=, though I don't recall offhand what values are best. There is a fairly recent thread in the TS12 forum with some good guidelines.

*This is based on a historical assumption used by the movie industry. 24 fps is where most people's eye detects smooth motion, assuming the framerate remains constant. As the saying goes, Your Mileage May Vary.

 

[Dermmy]

framerate=XX - the lowest value you find acceptable, but importantly a framerate that is possible on your machine at the worst place on a route. 22 and 24 seem popular choices.

framestoaverage=16 - the '16' is NOT the target framerate, it is the highest value on a scale of how rigidly Trainz attempts to maintain an even framerate.

As RRS says, a relateively low but smooth framerate is more visually attractive than a high fps but 'stuttery' display.

Not sure though how much this will help the OP, reads to me like an integrated graphics laptop running out of crunch....

 

[clam1952]

Some have found it works better Windowed on low spec machines.

However that sounds a lot like the bad splines problem. Enable the Onscreen Developer Stats in Developer options, look at the worst buffer count, this is for splines, anything over 100 is not good, some are up to 600 and will cause large chunks of board or other things to vanish.
Fix is replace with a 2010 compliant spline or quick and dirty fix add the following line to the config. Anywhere will do so long as it's not in a container.:

uncached_alphas              1

 

[frogpipe]

15 fps - cheap animation (fewer frames = less $$$ to make), you can see the steps of motion, but it's fairly easy to ignore
25 fps - good animation/some movies smooth but not as good as...
29.9 (30) fps - real smooth.....

Anything over 25 is of questionable use, anything over 30 is a total waste of CPU cycles. Better to lock it down and let that "headroom" be used for other things.

 

[NSWGR_46Class]

25.5fps is the world wide standard for movie projection as in what you see in a cinema - so why not stick to this standard - it works

15 fps - cheap animation (fewer frames = less $$$ to make), you can see the steps of motion, but it's fairly easy to ignore
25 fps - good animation/some movies smooth but not as good as...
29.9 (30) fps - real smooth.....

Anything over 25 is of questionable use, anything over 30 is a total waste of CPU cycles. Better to lock it down and let that "headroom" be used for other things.

 

[frogpipe]

I agree, I think 29.9 came from Television, not sure, but that's what I meant by "anything over 25 is questionable"

 

[colourlight]

It is also possible that your problem is caused by a faulty asset in that area. You should not automatically assume it,s your laptop thats the problem unless it occurs on other routes in built up areas.

 

[Robert2d6]

I agree, I think 29.9 came from Television, not sure, but that's what I meant by "anything over 25 is questionable"

29.97 is the NTSC vertical rate, or US standard for interlaced color TV frame rate. Motion is pretty smooth at over 25 FPS, is probably what he meant, in fact that is the PAL vertical frame rate in Europe and other places. Movies of course are 24 FPS, but now that digital movie projectors are spreading, ( I taught training classes on these projectors a decade ago) there is a gradual shift away from 24 FPS to 30 FPS in that industry because the extra cost of film for the extra 6 fps is not an issue with digital storage. This makes it easier to convert a 30FPS movie for TV broadcast too, without 24-30FPS artifacts. Anyway, most folks have been happy for generations with the motion in a movie theater, so 24 FPS seems to be a good goal for a steady frame rate. Notice, that this has nothing to do with the monitor refresh rate which is an entirely different issue.