Really Bad Advice

M

Mick_Berg

New member
There was a thread recently about how to improve frame rates, which included a youTube video. I can't find it, so I can't reference it here.

It suggested deleting the "speedtree.dll" file from the plugins folder. It said that in TS2012 it would disable the Speedtree movement, but leave the trees intact.

I thought I'd try it, but fortunately I have enough experience to not delete the file, but move it to somewhere safe.

The result was, as you might expect, that all my Speedtrees disappeared. There was no improvement in the FPS of my Trainz, despite the fact that the Speedtrees were gone!

Of course I had to restore the .dll file. If I had followed this person's advice and deleted the file, I would have been "screwed". Maybe I would have had to reinstall my Trainz.

Just a warning that some people are not as clever as they think.

Mick Berg.
 
Yes ... the file could have been sent to, and safegaurded in, your PC Documents file ... virtually deleting it from the Trainz program.

Sending it to your desktop, only makes a shortcut pointing to the file.
 
Pretty sure deleting the dll was a crude hack that worked in TS10 but was 'fixed' to not work in TS12. There is however a utility somewhere that totally kills the wind and animation effects which is reputed to lift fps with speedtrees. The thing is though that the way speed-trees are implemented even vast numbers of the things (if properly made) have almost no fps impact. I assume your issues are with the built-ins which are certainly not the best examples of the genus around, I'd be swapping them out for Jan's or Pofig's and leaving the wind etc alone. I think you will like the result....
 
Mick_Berg said:
There was a thread recently about how to improve frame rates, which included a youTube video. I can't find it, so I can't reference it here.

It suggested deleting the "speedtree.dll" file from the plugins folder. It said that in TS2012 it would disable the Speedtree movement, but leave the trees intact.

I thought I'd try it, but fortunately I have enough experience to not delete the file, but move it to somewhere safe.

The result was, as you might expect, that all my Speedtrees disappeared. There was no improvement in the FPS of my Trainz, despite the fact that the Speedtrees were gone!

Of course I had to restore the .dll file. If I had followed this person's advice and deleted the file, I would have been "screwed". Maybe I would have had to reinstall my Trainz.

Just a warning that some people are not as clever as they think.

Mick Berg.
Click to expand...
Hello,

That was my video. If you want, I can do a follow-up because someone in the Trainz Videos thread in the Screenshots section said that there is a replacement file that keeps the trees but deletes the movement.

My experience with deleting the .dll file was that the speedtrees remained. I'm disappointed others haven't had the same success.

Kieran.

EDIT: Here's my Plugins folder, and then a picture taken from the Settle & Carlisle line. The trees don't move at all.



Click to enlarge.

I have my detail sliders down to minimum too.
 
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To confirm; the SpeedTree DLL provides the actual tree-rendering functionality. If it's not installed, you will not have any visible SpeedTree assets whatsoever.

chris
 
captainkman said:
EDIT: Here's my Plugins folder, and then a picture taken from the Settle & Carlisle line. The trees don't move at all.
.
Click to expand...

Erm...... I hate to tell you this but that screenshot is not of Speedtrees, those trees in S&C are from the Treez pack and are static 3d models not SpeedTrees, they don't even look like SpeedTrees and they won't move ever with or without the SpeedTree.dll

It seems as invariably happens when people who do not know what they are doing, start messing with the internal workings of programs on incorrect advice given by others who also don't know what they are doing that two seperate "Hacks" have become one mythical magic cure.

Hack 1.
Deleting the dll was to remove speedtrees not turn off the animation, there is no magic replacement file for the SpeedTree.dll, heaven knows who dreamed that one up!

Hack 2.
This was a hack to switch the SpeedTree Animation on or off using a bat file and changing "whatever" that I'm not going to detail on here.
Not sure if it was blocked or simply no longer worked due to the code getting modified during one of the patches. In actual fact and as I suspected it made zero difference to my FPS when I tried it out, at a guess it may have helped on a 256MB ancient graphics card with little or no shaders, what it did do and what it I suspect it was intended to do was stop the frantic leaping around of the trees that we initially experienced.

As Dermmy says Speed Trees have very little effect on FPS as they are not rendered by the CPU, they are rendered by the GPU alone. Wind speed, in TS12 if you turn it down, it's difficult to see much if any movement so that problem is in my book solved, no need or point in messing with anything, just avoid the builtin trifyds.
 
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I'll defer to your greater knowledge on the subject Malc, but not being a great route builder myself, and not owning the S & C, I can see where he made the error. They certainly look like Speed Trees to me!
 
The Speedtree hack by Otto works in TS2012 and the Mac version. It goes into the SpeedTreeShader folder.*
It doubled the framerates on built in routes of both versions of trainz for me.

Dave.........
 
Euphod said:
I'll defer to your greater knowledge on the subject Malc, but not being a great route builder myself, and not owning the S & C, I can see where he made the error. They certainly look like Speed Trees to me!
Click to expand...

It's happened before with someone who bought the Treez pack thinking the Speedtrees were broken, I don't think I was able to convince him that they were not SpeedTrees.

If you ever had the Treez Pack you'd spot the difference instantly. :hehe: http://images.auran.com/microsites/treez/screenshots/full/treez1.jpg

There is a mix of Treez and a few SpeedTrees, about 4 or 5 varieties on S&C, at a guess captainkman hasn't noticed the small amount of speed Trees that are missing, that particular shot was definitely a Treez tree not a SpeedTree. I do have S&C and the Treez pack here, not that I use them now we have pofigs, gawpo50's and mcquirels proper looking SpeedTrees.
 
Thanks for illustrating the difference. I suppose the planes, when seen "on edge" resemble the "spikes" of the Speed Trees enough to fool anyone, they certainly fooled me. Now I know better!
 
Like Malc I replaced many of my Treez with STreez when they came out. I did one thing different, though. I kept the treez shrubs or bushes. They're a great size and fit an area where I needed them. What's good is you can easily mix these two in a route and they work well, unlike the old 2d flipboard trees which face the camera when driving by and are note changed by the lighting.

John
 
cascaderailroad said:
How come other video games on the market, don't have these awful looking monstrosity twees, too ? :hehe:
Click to expand...

It's because of the scaling which I was going to bring up in another thread. Why are the STs so big, even the smaller ones? STs are way too big even to crowd together along the tracks like they are in real life. Instead with the STs, we have to place them as though they're in a park or planted garden.

John
 
It wasn't bad advice at all, and if you also looked that thread , thats mean you probably also using a low - end laptop with 0,05 Ghz performance. I've followed captainkman advice, deleted speedtree dll, and will delete every useless assets which slows down the framerates. But... in the near future, I advice to everyone who wanna play simulator games on laptop, first check the system requirements, and make a comparison with yours. These games won't run well, ( altough I recently purchased the Scania Truck Simulator from Auran store, ) and it run well on my laptop, ONLY BECAUSE THE CPU has the requirement. Yes , don't worry you can always REINSTALL the game (TS12) , Im already not playing trainz until I will have a 4.5 Ghz High end top powerhouse computer, coz I have enough with the lots lag and the graphical settings are in the lowest I hate it. For a decent game, need a decent computer. Thats it. Altough some games runs with lower CPU's , we have to choose those games. So Keiran advice was only HELP with good intention. It wasn't obligation to delete any files. Speedtree or not speedtree this is the question... Haha. Bye.
 
I'm sorry for the confusion my video has caused. It now has a large warning if you view it on the YouTube page. I mostly use SnC in TS12, and I don't use much else, so I didn't notice any missing trees on other routes.

At least I have the Beta Tester copy, and I can just copy the .dll file from that.

I also want to say that all the confusion I have caused by the first part of that video is purely unintentional. I did not intend to mess up other people's copies of Trainz. I hope i am forgiven.

I'll see if I can chop the first part out. I don't think I have to re-upload it as YT has a new editing feature. If that would be a good option I'll go ahead and give it a try. I assume the second part works and can be left as-is.
 
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JCitron said:
Like Malc I replaced many of my Treez with STreez when they came out. I did one thing different, though. I kept the treez shrubs or bushes. They're a great size and fit an area where I needed them. What's good is you can easily mix these two in a route and they work well, unlike the old 2d flipboard trees which face the camera when driving by and are note changed by the lighting.

John
Click to expand...

Actually I made some bushes based on the same principle used with the ones on the Treez pack, basically it's the same as making a billboard tree using pure black an white alphas but with the addition of a lot more planes, bit time consuming darker coloured textures work better than lighter ones in game. Doesn't work very well on larger items such as trees though. I sort of forgot about them when pofigs bushes started appearing.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/402/clam1952201207310000.jpg/
 
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HI all,

Been away awhile due to illness, but fighting back now...

But to take a bit of pressure off captainkman,who we all know, thought he was doing us all a favor and helping us out...

There is away to stop these speedtrees in TS12 and i did it for a friend awhile back..when TS12 was'nt out that long ....and yes it works 100%.

Dave aka...sparky15 is correct

Regards
Brad
 
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