Poor performance with large routes. Topic moved from a Suggestion Boxcar topic.

[suresh_ts12]

Hi, After installing Trainz simulator 12 service pack 1, I can able to create such a large route, But after creating such a large route, the driver session becomes very slow
Even Though I have configuration of 3 GB Graphics card and 4 GB RAM. It is very slow so please give the suggestion to improve the fast and speed movement of
Driver session

 

[JCitron]

Route building is an art and requires a lot of compromises. All versions of Trainz, whether it is TS12 fixed after patches, or even those prior are capable of creating very large routes. I happened to have a route that's over 200 miles long. This has taken me about a decade to get there, but it has also gone through some major renovations along the way.

Anyway back to the topic. You may be able to build very large routes, but you need to be aware too of the resources you are using. Keep in mind that the more assets (objects) you put on your route, the more complex and more resources it will use. Remember that the computer has to draw all these objects, keep track of where they are, and be ready to display them at a moment's notice. Now, if there area scripts involved, this is another thing to watch over too.

There are various techniques out there to create a route as large as mine, if not bigger and still get decent frame rates and performance.

* When creating a forest, there is no need to put trees in over multiple baseboards. Going back a few meters thickly with undergrowth will suffice. If you want to use background trees, you can start limiting their numbers and place them in clusters of 4 or 5.

* Cities don't have to have every street modeled. You can model the streets closest to the tracks, where you will see the action from the train, and use less detailed buildings in the background. Eventually, you can use a row of trees to hide the rest, or perhaps have farmland an open fields dotted with a few buildings, trees, and houses.

* Avoid using numerous splines. Splines are awful frame rate killers due to the way that they are loaded and drawn. Avoid using very long splines and limit their use to telegraph poles and track if you can with streets as needed. Fences should be minimal; the same with walls and hedges, and even grass splines.

* When creating rail yards, don't put in extra long tracks, or a lot of them if you need them. Also, don't load up the yard with lots of wagons. Remember, the wagons are all tracked by the simulator whether they are active or not, and the long tracks are like long splines.

So with these ideas in mind, it is still possible to build a very long route. You want to keep the details closest to the tracks and use small scenes with the details while allowing for big expanses of open fields with patches of woodlands. One of the things you may want to think about in this is what can you see while driving. If you can't see it, don't bother putting it in.

Hope this helps.

John

 

[Roy3b3]

That's good advice John. I've been creating layouts for some years now and it's so easy to fall back into the trap of 'over-decorating' every single baseboard, just because you believe in 'attention-to-detail'. I now tend to focus my attention on what I can 'see' from the top of the consist. I appreciate your comments.
Cheers,
Roy

 

[frogpipe]

Just a note, busy rail yards can be "faked" by using "static" rolling stock (standing stock?) - they LOOK like rail cars, but if you drive onto the track they are on, you can drive right through them.

Personally, I've made "fake" yards, and then simply laid the track so it *almost* looks like a regular switch connected to the "real" tracks, but they aren't actually joined - like an optical illusion - in order to keep me and any AI from exposing the illusion.

 

[justinroth]

This should be a sticky AND a philosophy. Walking into the game and trying to create a route the art iswhat to use and what not to use, and it is very often the decision to leave out that is the most difficult.

 

[oknotsen]

A lot of people nowadays are importing buildings from Google Sketchup without realizing the terrible poly overkill these assets have. If you are not using to much decoration but a lot of these decorative building are imports from Google Sketchup, then this might also explain why your game performance is going down.
Note that you might not have imported these to Trainz yourself; these things are more and more showing up on the DLS. Check if the description mentions Sketchup and avoid these as the plague.

For the record: There are some assets made this way that are nice, but those people making them know what they are doing so usually have also edited the description and thumbnail.

 

[Racn]

After reading through this thread I have to question my idea. I was planning on using tree splines along the outer edges where the geography for a section makes sense for that, but now Im not sure if thats a good idea. Tree spline could 6 baseboards long in some places. Perhaps trial and error is the only way to figure that out, past maps I used far to many speed trees, trees, and rocks which always brought this system to its knees.

 

[JCitron]

After reading through this thread I have to question my idea. I was planning on using tree splines along the outer edges where the geography for a section makes sense for that, but now Im not sure if thats a good idea. Tree spline could 6 baseboards long in some places. Perhaps trial and error is the only way to figure that out, past maps I used far to many speed trees, trees, and rocks which always brought this system to its knees.

I would not go with the splines but I agree give it a try and see. You can get away with fewer Speed Trees placed closer together and it'll work okay. I found that one out recently after I updated an old TRS2004-era route to TS12. I did the replace assets thing and replaced a gazillion flip-board trees with the similar Speed Trees. The end result was a 200% drop in performance and my video card fan shot up as the temperatures started to rise. After I did some forest thinning, the performance came back and the temps dropped.

John

 

[ldowns]

Just a note, busy rail yards can be "faked" by using "static" rolling stock (standing stock?) - they LOOK like rail cars, but if you drive onto the track they are on, you can drive right through them.

Personally, I've made "fake" yards, and then simply laid the track so it *almost* looks like a regular switch connected to the "real" tracks, but they aren't actually joined - like an optical illusion - in order to keep me and any AI from exposing the illusion.

Apropos of this, I've also created large ladder yards and then "broken" the connection to each non-running track a few carlengths away from the switch and placed an invisible stop there. (I do this at each end of the yard). I then fill the yard as needed with the dummy car splines mentioned above. I don't know if this is actually the correct thing to do (any technical gurus out there that can amplify on this?), but it seems to me that the fewer possible alternate routes that the AI has to consider the less likely it is to get tangled up in its own logic. This way the AI sees two through tracks and a lot of dead end sidings, which I assume it will ignore. For me at least it did seem to help (this is a 90 mile+ route from Birmingham to Montgomery, Alabama complete with extensive yard and industrial trackage on each end). I do still get occasional misrouted trains, but a lot fewer than before.

By the way, I've also cloned some of the switch stands and turned them into trackside scenery objects, so that the AI doesn't see them as junctions. I use these on switches in segments of track that aren't actually connected into the network because of the gaps and stop signs described above. This provides the look of a yard complete with switch stands without adding actual junctions to burden the AI. I was half-expecting to get "junction missing lever" messages when I tried this, but it seems to work fine as long as there's no possible connection to an actual running track.

This is all trial and error; try it at your own risk...

--Lamont

 

[frogpipe]

Just to clarify, I use static cars that are "trackside scenery" and "snap" onto the track, like switch stands. I adopted this because of the claim that "splines kill frame rates".

I also have isolated disallowed routes using a derail I uploaded to the DLS. Unlike other derails, it isn't a switch stand in disguise, rather it's a "track end" signal in disguise. It will derail any train that tries to cross it, and stop AI from trying to pass it.

You can see examples of both in my "Maryland and Pennsylvania Terminal Railroad" route. The M&Pa tracks have interchanges with the B&O and Pennsylvania. You can't drive onto the B&O or Pennsy tracks because of derails, and there are yards on both the B&O and Pennsy that are built with static cars and disconnected tracks so AI trains can run across the route without getting caught up in the yards, and of course to avoid the game using physics it doesn't need for the "scenic rollingstock" in the yards.

 

[Racn]

These suggestions and ideas are fantastic, thanks. You gents with the multiple years of Trainzing with all the different versions listed have likely forgotten more then I have learned.

 

[bsnteng]

RACN, on the subject of large routes, unless you like driving trains through a lot of unpopulated trackage between stations, cities, yards or industries here's a trick I learned years ago with TRS2004 (which I still use most of the time). If you don't really need all that trackage and scenery between stops then break your layout up into several different layouts featuring the stops - stations, cities, yards and industries then use (in 2004, Lars Ljungberg's ePortal) or 2006's, and above, iPortal to connect these smaller layouts into one or several larger layouts.

You can load train cars on one layout, drive into an ePortal, or iPortal, and, depending on how you have setup the portal, the same train comes out of an ePortal, or iPortal, on another layout. Of course, you can only have one layout installed at a time so after running the train into the portal on one layout you must exit that layout and load another layout where the train will emerge from a portal.

I usually run between yards, that is collect loads from various places and trains on one smaller layout and bring these trains to a marshalling yard where I make up the train that I want to send to another layout. This train, on the current layout, departs the marshalling yard and drives "around the bend of a sceniced hillside" and disappears into the portal.

I do the same thing on the receiving layout. The train emerges from the portal and drives "around the bend of a sceniced hillside" into a marshalling yard to be broken down.

Tips, you can not use Trainz regular portals to do this, they will only work within a layout. You must use either the ePortal or the iPortal to do this. I also usually have several such portals on any one layout to connect to several other layouts. To be truly connective, each layout should have at least one each arriving and departing portal.

Hope you find this helpful.
Dale, at BSnT Engineering

 

[Racn]

Thank you sir, very informative. Potrals, that is yet another feature in Trainz which I haven't explored yet. So much can be done with this software, really quite amazes me.