Ongoing Investigation: SP6 Route Performance & Redraw Issues

[JCitron]

The problem here is that it doesn't work smoothly anymore in this route... when it always did up to SP5.

I'm seeing the opposite with my cluttered routes including the very large one.

There could be other things going on that are causing this. Is TRS Plus still caching content? I've had that ruin framerates.

 

[HPL]

No caching ongoing.

 

[JCitron]

No caching ongoing.

One more thought on this. In addition to high polygon assets, scripts can impact performance. If you have some older scripted assets, it's possible that the scripts are doing things that aren't quite Kosher as far as Plus thinks, but they worked perfectly fine in early versions of Plus and of course TRS19 and below. To find out if this is in fact an issue, close your route back to the Launcher. Click on Trainz Settings and then the Dev tab. On the Dev tab, check the box next to Show script exception notifications.

What this will do is show the red bug in Driver and possibly Surveyor if Surveyor isn't paused. Clicking on the red bug will bring up a list of errors. Double-clicking may give you more details on the script.

Fixing the script bugs isn't for the faint of heart and is relegated to those that know what they do. What you can do is highlight the text, right-click and choose copy. You can then paste the text in the forums - use Code formatting to keep it together, for us to look at. Those that know how to fix that kind of stuff may be able to help.

 

[HPL]

Tried this but not seen any red bug in 10 minutes.

 

[nugget2225]

One more thought on this. In addition to high polygon assets, scripts can impact performance. If you have some older scripted assets, it's possible that the scripts are doing things that aren't quite Kosher as far as Plus thinks, but they worked perfectly fine in early versions of Plus and of course TRS19 and below. To find out if this is in fact an issue, close your route back to the Launcher. Click on Trainz Settings and then the Dev tab. On the Dev tab, check the box next to Show script exception notifications.

What this will do is show the red bug in Driver and possibly Surveyor if Surveyor isn't paused. Clicking on the red bug will bring up a list of errors. Double-clicking may give you more details on the script.

Fixing the script bugs isn't for the faint of heart and is relegated to those that know what they do. What you can do is highlight the text, right-click and choose copy. You can then paste the text in the forums - use Code formatting to keep it together, for us to look at. Those that know how to fix that kind of stuff may be able to help.

The only way to solve this current issue would be for all problem assets and scripts to be reomved from the download station and 3rd party trainz sites, And be fixed. Thats is not an option. We shouldn't have to pick and choose what we use in our routes to meet a very small vram and system ram requirement. This is insane. I am using very little Vram as well on a very capable videocard. This would be like microsoft flight simulator keeping everyone on medium settings regardless of what hardware you have, Or Amd and Intel keeping us all at 4ghz when alot of us can go higher. I haven never objected in trainz as much as i have since SP6 was dropped. This is bad for all pc Users.

 

[whywon]

As long as the program works smoothly, I don't care how much computer is being used. The fact that my video card CPU run a lot cooler with this version is not such a bad thing compared to SP5 and below.

I'd be in this boat too if it weren't for the fact that my program isn't working smoothly. With TRS22 SP5 and older I was getting much better framerates and next to no stuttering. I want to say that SP4 and older ran even better than SP5 but back then, I had no problems so I had no need to investigate. The SP6 hotfix fixed the slow/non-existent rendering, but my framerate is still atrocious. Many of the routes I typically play are close to unplayable but I'm trying to chug along since there's nothing else that fills the niche of Trainz.

 

[pware]

Clicking on the red bug will bring up a list of errors. Double-clicking may give you more details on the script. ... Those that know how to fix that kind of stuff may be able to help.

Here's an example that has "bugged me" in Trainz Plus long before SP6 arrived.

- <NULL> : File cdhelper.gs, Line 253, ER_NullReference
  ; <NULL> : Script callstack
    ; <NULL> : function $void@cdhelper::AddMenuIcon(), line 253
    ; <NULL> : function $void@cdhelper::UpdateMenuIcon(), line 215
    ; <NULL> : function $void@cdhelper::RegisterMenuItem(GameObject,string,string,string,bool,bool), line 135
    ; <NULL> : function $void@cdhelper::RegisterMenuItem(GameObject,string,string,string), line 140
    ; <NULL> : function $void@NamedObjectsCacheLibrary::OnWorldModuleInit(Message), line 313

It gives no indication as to which asset (if any) is responsible. If that info was available I could possibly deal with it. A few other possible relevant points:-

• It occurs in Trainz Plus but not in the identical route and session in TRS22PE (both programs have the script notification setting on in the Dev tab).
• It occur at the very start of the Trainz Plus session before any action has started - and there are no AI trains running.
• There has been the odd occasion where the red bug has not appeared at all but I cannot pin down what was different.

A long standing mystery.

EDIT: Added a new observation.

• When running in Driver and switching, via the UDS, to Surveyor and then back to Driver again without making any changes, the same bug is flagged again.