We've been discussing this in the Trainz Dev over the past few days on how best to keep the rest of the community up-to-date on the goings on in the Trainz Dev forums. We know that the information there can be a bit daunting and overpowering to understand as it is a bit on the technical side which it has to be, so asking the rest of the community to go read the information is not quite what I would want, though many of you are probably quite capable of understanding this stuff.
As a group, we have no timeframe on patches or updates. We are only the lab attendants testing the vials as they come to us for testing. These test builds that we see, are just that, test builds, like those vials of stuff in the lab. What we see may never, ever make it out to a patch, or may appear in the future as part of a new product. There maybe things in here, that will be mentioned, that are just to try out a concept or tweak, which may or may not work. There are also things in here which are really cool too and we hope they do make it to a future build. When is the question? We really, really don't know. By saying this, I hope I'm not laying any expectations on things that may or may not happen as I don't want to disappoint anyone, including myself.
Keeping this in mind, here's what's been going on.
The latest build as of 6 August is Build 77730. This build was issued for us to check various things including the crashes to desktop, continued checking of LOD, CM and other issues. Yes almost unmentionable crashes, those bugger things which have been killing all of us and eating our data, or worse corrupting our routes we have had open at the time. This current build is by far the most stable in this respect. Many of us were able to work for hours in Surveyor and drive many kilometers with no crashing. Now even though I didn't experience any crashes, it doesn't mean they won't exist as Murphy is right there to ensure that so we're continuing to test for these.
In this regard, I spent 99% of my time, this time around, in Surveyor doing exactly what caused the retail version to crash, performing such things as replacing textures, assets, zinging around the route quickly, zooming in and out as I worked on an actual copy of my 500-mile merger route I brought over from the retail version. Yes, I did a complete clone of the database so I have everything, including stuff I imported from TS12 to work with so I can keep apples to apples comparisons instead of working with only a bit of test data.
There have also been some nice additions to the replace assets tool, which I surely hope appear in the future. In this build there is the option to delete assets. Yes! It's a percentage slider, but assets can be removed. Simply drag the asset to be deleted in to the replace asset box from the Surveyor asset-tabs on the right, set the slider to 100% and hit the Replace button... All gone - banished to bit heaven!
On this same interface, there is now a progress bar too so we know how much is being done and the program hasn't gone off to visit a dead relative somewhere else.
Other things include a random asset placement tool. Pick a tree for example, and let it do its thing. You'll find these objects placed randomly on the route or in areas. Oh I forgot. On the replace assets tool too, there's that option to select a baseboard, whole route, and now a selected area. Nice!
The performance overall has been tweaked. I set my system to 8000m, high details, textures, trees, and medium shadows, plus the other advanced 'developer' settings, which I need to focus on more to learn more about them. The good news with these settings, I saw excellent frame rates, at least in the 30s and 40s on my pretty heavily forested route, and higher in the open areas. The temperature was quite reasonable too, meaning the code has been optimized. Yes, there was a spike when data is first loaded, but once everything is in place, the fans kick in and the temperature moved down into the high 50s-to mid 60s instead of remaining pegged at the maximum of 83C for my video card. This is the same setup as on my retail build so I felt pretty good with this.
There are bugs too, more than before like weird things in the preview window when looking at assets in surveyor asset tabs where assets hang to the right side. In driver and surveyor, the red and green junction lever arrows are missing. The switches work fine, but there is no indication which way they're facing. Other things too such as slower and slower performance too. Things start off really great then get a bit piqued by the end of the day. I will say I was replacing a gazillion trees on this 500 mile mega merger route, one that takes a full 4 hours to drive. I think this maybe the route that's at fault here as there is a lot of content. Further testing and confirmation is needed...
Content Manager has gotten hotkeys. Yes, we can Ctrl-something instead of mouse-clicking everything. These still need a bit of tweaking but the ones I tested worked fine. I'll let others report more on this. There are also more errors reported in this build that weren't in the previous one, or even in the retail build. There are numerous areas here, but mostly LOD-related errors which are in some cases false reports along with other false error reports.
In general there has been more testing is being done with LOD and this is still ongoing.
People are probably wondering why this is important. LOD really is important when it comes to performance as well as visually within the simulator. LOD helps eliminate the stuttering and stumbling we're so used to seeing in T:ANE now and in previous Trainz versions. LOD, aka Level of Detail, means an asset will have multiple meshes that sit in the same place, like those boxes in a box, inside a bigger box. Unlike those real boxes, each smaller version has less detail on it. Eventually, there is nothing more than a flat image to represent the train car or building the farthest away from the main object. These different objects are called targets that are placed invisibly and called up automatically at specific distances from the main object. What this does is allow for objects to render smoothly over distance. Without this objects will pop up suddenly, which causes stuttering and other performance issues. Besides, it looks awful too when buildings or trees suddenly appear in view, for example. But this has to do with more than just fixed scenery objects. Track and others splines, especially are really affected by this. How many of us have downloaded track that causes such awful performance and jumps into place. The same with grass splines, telegraph poles, fences, and other things. By requiring the targets be there and the placement enforced, unlike in other versions of Trainz where the content creator neglected them or did them poorly, this will ensure much better performance than ever.
And finally, other discussions, all on going, on attachment point issues, mesh stitching, performance, scripting (with lots of extra details) and even super elevation.
I am very sure my teammates in the Trainz Dev will have more to add to this, and hopefully we can continue with the updates on a frequent basis. Yes, T:ANE is moving along in the right direction even if it doesn't appear that way.
John
As a group, we have no timeframe on patches or updates. We are only the lab attendants testing the vials as they come to us for testing. These test builds that we see, are just that, test builds, like those vials of stuff in the lab. What we see may never, ever make it out to a patch, or may appear in the future as part of a new product. There maybe things in here, that will be mentioned, that are just to try out a concept or tweak, which may or may not work. There are also things in here which are really cool too and we hope they do make it to a future build. When is the question? We really, really don't know. By saying this, I hope I'm not laying any expectations on things that may or may not happen as I don't want to disappoint anyone, including myself.
Keeping this in mind, here's what's been going on.
The latest build as of 6 August is Build 77730. This build was issued for us to check various things including the crashes to desktop, continued checking of LOD, CM and other issues. Yes almost unmentionable crashes, those bugger things which have been killing all of us and eating our data, or worse corrupting our routes we have had open at the time. This current build is by far the most stable in this respect. Many of us were able to work for hours in Surveyor and drive many kilometers with no crashing. Now even though I didn't experience any crashes, it doesn't mean they won't exist as Murphy is right there to ensure that so we're continuing to test for these.
In this regard, I spent 99% of my time, this time around, in Surveyor doing exactly what caused the retail version to crash, performing such things as replacing textures, assets, zinging around the route quickly, zooming in and out as I worked on an actual copy of my 500-mile merger route I brought over from the retail version. Yes, I did a complete clone of the database so I have everything, including stuff I imported from TS12 to work with so I can keep apples to apples comparisons instead of working with only a bit of test data.
There have also been some nice additions to the replace assets tool, which I surely hope appear in the future. In this build there is the option to delete assets. Yes! It's a percentage slider, but assets can be removed. Simply drag the asset to be deleted in to the replace asset box from the Surveyor asset-tabs on the right, set the slider to 100% and hit the Replace button... All gone - banished to bit heaven!
On this same interface, there is now a progress bar too so we know how much is being done and the program hasn't gone off to visit a dead relative somewhere else.Other things include a random asset placement tool. Pick a tree for example, and let it do its thing. You'll find these objects placed randomly on the route or in areas. Oh I forgot. On the replace assets tool too, there's that option to select a baseboard, whole route, and now a selected area. Nice!
The performance overall has been tweaked. I set my system to 8000m, high details, textures, trees, and medium shadows, plus the other advanced 'developer' settings, which I need to focus on more to learn more about them. The good news with these settings, I saw excellent frame rates, at least in the 30s and 40s on my pretty heavily forested route, and higher in the open areas. The temperature was quite reasonable too, meaning the code has been optimized. Yes, there was a spike when data is first loaded, but once everything is in place, the fans kick in and the temperature moved down into the high 50s-to mid 60s instead of remaining pegged at the maximum of 83C for my video card. This is the same setup as on my retail build so I felt pretty good with this.
There are bugs too, more than before like weird things in the preview window when looking at assets in surveyor asset tabs where assets hang to the right side. In driver and surveyor, the red and green junction lever arrows are missing. The switches work fine, but there is no indication which way they're facing. Other things too such as slower and slower performance too. Things start off really great then get a bit piqued by the end of the day. I will say I was replacing a gazillion trees on this 500 mile mega merger route, one that takes a full 4 hours to drive. I think this maybe the route that's at fault here as there is a lot of content. Further testing and confirmation is needed...
Content Manager has gotten hotkeys. Yes, we can Ctrl-something instead of mouse-clicking everything. These still need a bit of tweaking but the ones I tested worked fine. I'll let others report more on this. There are also more errors reported in this build that weren't in the previous one, or even in the retail build. There are numerous areas here, but mostly LOD-related errors which are in some cases false reports along with other false error reports.
In general there has been more testing is being done with LOD and this is still ongoing.
People are probably wondering why this is important. LOD really is important when it comes to performance as well as visually within the simulator. LOD helps eliminate the stuttering and stumbling we're so used to seeing in T:ANE now and in previous Trainz versions. LOD, aka Level of Detail, means an asset will have multiple meshes that sit in the same place, like those boxes in a box, inside a bigger box. Unlike those real boxes, each smaller version has less detail on it. Eventually, there is nothing more than a flat image to represent the train car or building the farthest away from the main object. These different objects are called targets that are placed invisibly and called up automatically at specific distances from the main object. What this does is allow for objects to render smoothly over distance. Without this objects will pop up suddenly, which causes stuttering and other performance issues. Besides, it looks awful too when buildings or trees suddenly appear in view, for example. But this has to do with more than just fixed scenery objects. Track and others splines, especially are really affected by this. How many of us have downloaded track that causes such awful performance and jumps into place. The same with grass splines, telegraph poles, fences, and other things. By requiring the targets be there and the placement enforced, unlike in other versions of Trainz where the content creator neglected them or did them poorly, this will ensure much better performance than ever.
And finally, other discussions, all on going, on attachment point issues, mesh stitching, performance, scripting (with lots of extra details) and even super elevation.
I am very sure my teammates in the Trainz Dev will have more to add to this, and hopefully we can continue with the updates on a frequent basis. Yes, T:ANE is moving along in the right direction even if it doesn't appear that way.
John
