Precaching content taking a while

[jadebullet]

Hello everyone,
Just a quick question. I am currently trying to load up a route and it has been on the loading screen for about 25 minutes now with a spinning square stating "Precaching content." Is it normal for this step to take this long or is this a sign that I need a database repair?

 

[JCitron]

If this is the first time the route has been loaded after a fresh install, then a precache will take a while to complete. A really large route will only compound this and will take a very long time to complete. Once completed, the route will load up much faster the next time it's loaded.

There are some things you can do to help.

If you're running from a regular hard drive, by all means defragment the drive. This really helps a lot.
Ensure you have plenty of disk space as that can slow things down quite a bit.

Finally, you can precache your content prior to running Trainz.

At the Launcher, click on Trainz settings.
Click on the checkbox to enable Dev tab and click on enable advanced debugging tools if you haven't already done that.
Close this window and:

Click on Developer on the menu bar on the Launcher.
Click on Run TrainzUtil Command...

This will bring up a dialog box where you can enter the command parameter you want.

In the space, put in:

prebuild --force --nofail

This process can take a very long time to run, and therefore it's recommended you run this overnight. Once complete, your routes will load up much quicker than they do if they have to precache the data on the first run.

 

[lenlawrence]

Thanks to John for the tip.

Regards - Len

 

[HPL]

Note that the "--nofail" argument doesn't prevent prebuild from failing...

 

[G.M.]

To add to the good advice given
Trainz is very read/write intensive, so the best thing you can do is have your local folder/dir
on the fastest drive you have or can install.
Even cached files/assets have to be read from disk.


Last year I bought a 2T 980pro SSD.m2 NVMe and everything loads faster
and can have almost all at ultra on my 4 year old mediocre system


UserBenchmarks: Game 68%, Desk 93%, Work 67%
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X - 84.1%
GPU: Nvidia GTX 1660-Ti - 72.9%
SSD: Samsung 980 Pro NVMe PCIe M.2 2TB - 353% <<<-------------------
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 2TB (2018) - 66.3%
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3000 C15 2x16GB - 96.6%
MBD: MSI B450 GAMING PRO CARBON AC (MS-7B85)

 

[rwk]

Yes, I'm having this issue after reinstalling Trainz 22 and loading a very large route that is various routes and DEM's of eastern PA and NJ merged together. Several minutes went by and it's still precaching. Maybe I should wait to see if the route loads instead of killing Trainz and possibly being forced to do a DBR. I'll give it at least a half hour or an hour. The CDP size of the route is 145 MB. The route loaded now but when zoomed out, some of the ground textures are corrupted and show colors. But the textures look normal when zoomed in. I have an earlier save of the route I could try.

 

[JCitron]

Yes, I'm having this issue after reinstalling Trainz 22 and loading a very large route that is various routes and DEM's of eastern PA and NJ merged together. Several minutes went by and it's still precaching. Maybe I should wait to see if the route loads instead of killing Trainz and possibly being forced to do a DBR. I'll give it at least a half hour or an hour. The CDP size of the route is 145 MB. The route loaded now but when zoomed out, some of the ground textures are corrupted and show colors. But the textures look normal when zoomed in. I have an earlier save of the route I could try.

Bring up task manager - press CTRL-SHIFT-ESC at the same time and open up performance and select your data drive. You can watch what's going on. When this finishe, it finishes. Don't kill the process.

 

[JimDep]

Bring up task manager - press CTRL-SHIFT-ESC at the same time and open up performance and select your data drive. You can watch what's going on. When this finishe, it finishes. Don't kill the process.

Cool tip ! How'd you find that out ?

 

[JimDep]

Note that the "--nofail" argument doesn't prevent prebuild from failing...

You might be precaching to the choir, but what's the " nofail" argument ?

 

[HPL]

One of the optional arguments (listed here) for the "prebuild" command.

 

[JCitron]

Cool tip ! How'd you find that out ?

The hard way! LOL

I happened to be in a tech forum and saw the key sequence mentioned ages ago and remembered it. The good thing is it doesn't corrupt graphics which sometimes happens when the old CTRL+ALT+DEL was pressed.

The performance tab was added at some point, I can't remember and now I use that to see whose munching away at my hard disks.