Setting Aside TS2012 - Stutters and Pausing

Just to come full circle, there are many N3V Trainz customers that are not computer literate to a significant degree. These people are often denied the full enjoyment that they paid for when they purchased Trainz. Fiddling with various fields, backups, copies, repairs, etc. sometimes lead this sub-set of customers into a black hole. If the product is properly designed for the customer's use then all that fiddling should not happen. A well designed product, that does not rely on customer technical involvement, can be costly. Thus we have Trainz, a poor evolution of multiple product variations, mostly designed to get more sales. A TS12 that introduced a series of new issues and eliminated the display of old assets to promote the new direction of the product. That story continues to this day.

The younger generation is faced with the same buggy software as the "elderly". However, they have lots of empty brain cells and curiosity coupled to a strong need to succeed. Thus, they take the time to learn the system so they can independently enjoy it to its maximum capability. The older folks went through variations of this with various products, cars, appliances, etc. but now they (me) want to just use the products they buy. It is time to relax and enjoy playing Trainz. Alas, low budget software still needs a customer's technical attention. So, instead of enjoying their purchase they are faced with the same old continuing need to DIY the product involving hours of time FIDDLING. We now have the latest round of HotFixes and yet more customers wasting time chasing a problem whose solution may lie way beyond their capabilities. It never ends!
 
Robert2d6 said:
Well actually P3D is FSX that has been worked on a bit to eliminate some of the bugs and problems in FSX. It's no pot of gold either. If you want something that actually flies like a real aircraft ( I am a licensed pilot) give MS Flight a whirl. I have flown sims that cost around $20 million dollars ( Airline Level D sims in Airline Training centers) and MS Flight is pretty realistic. Shame MS dropped it cause it didn't have enough bells and whistles for the PC sim addicts.
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G'day, downloaded it and WOW it is fantastic, I would suggest N3V download it to see what a real sim goes like. Oh by the way it was free for the initial trial.
Regards
Barrie
 
boc61 said:
Isn't comparing Lockheed-Martin's capabilities and resources to a small company like N3V a bit unfair?
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G'day, MS Flight is by micro dollars and the demo is free, try it and be blown away.
With regard to Lockheed-Martin's P3D, the fully featured version is $200 and look at what you get all the tools bells and wistles. I would pay $200 if trainz performed like this and had tools like that.
Regards
Barrie
 
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It requires activation, and only offers a limited number of those at that, so I decided long ago that I'm not going to try it, let alone buy it. I'm not impressed.
 
gremlin1812 said:
G'day, MS Flight is by micro dollars and the demo is free, try it and be blown away.
With regard to Lockheed-Martin's P3D, the fully featured version is $200 and look at what you get all the tools bells and wistles. I would pay $200 if trainz performed like this and had tools like that.
Regards
Barrie
Click to expand...

You would, I...might, but how many others would? From the postings here Trainz users include a lot of older people as well as young people, neither with a lot of disposable income in many cases. they are hard pressed to spend $20 for some payware let alone a couple of hundred for a game itself. Trainz isn't perfect, there is plenty that can be improved, but it does have to walk a balance between playability, ease of use, affordability and wide range of hardware configurations.
 
I do not see that as an obstacle. I have had P3D since its early days and find it an improvement and stable. Activations are not a problem. I chneged the mother board and an email gave me a new code. Much the same as Microsoft.

The point illustrated by P3D is the professionalism of the product (still in early stages) and they way the manage interactions that are of value. Unless a message on their forum is the usual 90% childish banter of the Internet, a designer will solve the customer's problem. This is appreciated by customers. Yes there are some minor issues but Ver 2.0 should soon be out.

Another smaller company that follows this practice is Orbx who produces high quality scenery for flight simulators.

Here in the train world the major players are dedicated to producing games for the masses as some customers desperately hope for a simulator. Both Trainz and Railworks are now advertised as games by their owners. The support and technical development of Trainz has begun this transition. The degree is yet to be determined. RailWorks has completed its transition to a game. There has been no functional development for over a year. Only addons for revenue.

Let's see how long it takes N3V to clean up the latest mess with stutters and other issues. Will this debacle only serve to inspire management to move to the pure gaming model where complex technical changes almost never happen. Support costs are low (use Facebook) and customers know little or nothing about railroads and thus will accept almost any set of pixels that looks and moves like a train.

Watch closely to see if N3V continues the gaming path or maybe they will stay with the more technical simulator path despite their new naming.
 
boleyd said:
I do not see that as an obstacle. I have had P3D since its early days and find it an improvement and stable. Activations are not a problem. I chneged the mother board and an email gave me a new code. Much the same as Microsoft.

The point illustrated by P3D is the professionalism of the product (still in early stages) and they way the manage interactions that are of value. Unless a message on their forum is the usual 90% childish banter of the Internet, a designer will solve the customer's problem. This is appreciated by customers. Yes there are some minor issues but Ver 2.0 should soon be out.

Another smaller company that follows this practice is Orbx who produces high quality scenery for flight simulators.

Here in the train world the major players are dedicated to producing games for the masses as some customers desperately hope for a simulator. Both Trainz and Railworks are now advertised as games by their owners. The support and technical development of Trainz has begun this transition. The degree is yet to be determined. RailWorks has completed its transition to a game. There has been no functional development for over a year. Only addons for revenue.

Let's see how long it takes N3V to clean up the latest mess with stutters and other issues. Will this debacle only serve to inspire management to move to the pure gaming model where complex technical changes almost never happen. Support costs are low (use Facebook) and customers know little or nothing about railroads and thus will accept almost any set of pixels that looks and moves like a train.

Watch closely to see if N3V continues the gaming path or maybe they will stay with the more technical simulator path despite their new naming.
Click to expand...

The problem with P3D is that the flight physics are pretty much a copy of FSX. To me, FSX does not fly like a real aircraft, especially the light aircraft models. MS Flight does, but since it doesn't have AI aircraft, autopilots, and all the other toys that the FS pilots demand, it wasn't accepted. Shame....
 
boleyd said:
I do not see that as an obstacle. I have had P3D since its early days and find it an improvement and stable. Activations are not a problem. I chneged the mother board and an email gave me a new code. Much the same as Microsoft.
Click to expand...

That's great until you run out of activations, the company decides to stop supporting the product, goes out of business, whatever. Happens all the time.

Frankly, it's not really worth it to me to get try out a product - let alone very likely to become a content creator or contributor - with that possibility/probability.
 
My computer is around four years old. Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600. Windows 7. 4Gb DDR2 RAM. Nvidia GTX550 Ti. Recently updated to SP1 and it stutters just the same as it did before I added any updates or patches. For that I can only blame my computer. I also only play on the East Coast Mainline route which hammers my computer (which I would expect seeing how large and detailed it is).

I cloned the route and then deleted everything north of Doncaster plus everything south of Peterborough. It now runs quite nicely with nowhere near as many stutters or missing track. I perform regular disk defragments, clean the registry and all the other boring stuff and this keeps my old computer running quite well. I get a new i7 computer this week and I wont be trimming down the route on that. I expect it to run quite nicely.

I play FSX, X Plane 9, Arma 2 and of course TS12 and they all run acceptable so long as I adjust the settings. On all of these games the biggest thing that saves me is reducing visibilty (add mist/fog) and not having lots of clouds floating around. I cant have my scenery object settings on maximum but thats my fault for not getting a better computer sooner. I am also a fanatic at stopping Windows services and processes that are not needed when playing, that seems to help so long as I dont turn off the wrong one!


From my very limited knowledge of train simulators (flight sims are more my addiction) I think TS12 is a very nice game to play on my old computer. I expect to be very impressed when I put it on my new machine. I have spent literally thousands of hours on flight simulators and in my experience they take alot of messing around with to get them running right on your machine. I started out with FS2004 on this computer but then upgraded to FSX. I recently upgraded the graphics from a Nvidia 8800 GT and thats what I will base the following on. It took 3 years of tweaking, experimenting and sharing ideas with other people until I finally got the best out of it. The difference in looks and performance from when I first installed is amazing and my computer had not changed, only my knowledge had.

What I am trying to say in a rather long winded way is, although I think customer support is mostly shocking from the software companies whose games I play and they release things full of bugs, over time the problems can be sorted. We all have different hardware and software combinations and it must be a nightmare for someone to create software that is expected to work flawlessly on every single computer.

If it does not run very well on my new computer then I shall come back and post my complaint. :cool:

P.S. On the flight sim subject; FSX looks nice but the flight dynamics leave alot to be desired. I fly helicopters mostly and the only one that impresses me is the Dodosim Bell 206. If you want realistic flying then it has to be X Plane all the way in my humble opinion. I have never flown a real helicopter but I know a few people who fly now or have flown and they say the only thing missing is the movement of the aircraft. I have had fixed wing PPL lessons and I say exactly the same thing. I would come back off a lesson and recreate it on X Plane. The only thing missing was the movement. The graphics are not as good as FSX but thats changed with X Plane 10.
 
Yes, if you trim down a route by only leaving items visible from trackside it is possible to get the stuttering down to flutters instead of pauses. Defraging disk I think is a big item. My belief is that disk accessing during a train ride is the culprit. Or it could be bad code that waits on a thread it does not have to.

I really hate to strip a route. Thise little "off-track" towns are fun to create and then drive through in your ALT-Y car. The probable load culprit is the dreaded speed-trees. Few really like them but N3V management "knows best". I foolishly spend time occaisionally trying to track down some specific faulty action but it is probably a waste of electricity. N3V management seems to be saying if it can't be duplicated in-house the customers software loads or their hardware is probably the issue. Regardless, Trainz is more functionally realistic than RW. I spent several hours trying to get a particular signal to work and I would rather fiddle the stutters problem than begin to change scripts.- unless I get paid to do it.
 
TheIlkestonFlyer said:
My computer is around four years old. Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q6600. Windows 7. 4Gb DDR2 RAM. Nvidia GTX550 Ti. Recently updated to SP1 and it stutters just the same as it did before I added any updates or patches. For that I can only blame my computer. I also only play on the East Coast Mainline route which hammers my computer (which I would expect seeing how large and detailed it is).

I cloned the route and then deleted everything north of Doncaster plus everything south of Peterborough. It now runs quite nicely with nowhere near as many stutters or missing track. I perform regular disk defragments, clean the registry and all the other boring stuff and this keeps my old computer running quite well. I get a new i7 computer this week and I wont be trimming down the route on that. I expect it to run quite nicely.

I play FSX, X Plane 9, Arma 2 and of course TS12 and they all run acceptable so long as I adjust the settings. On all of these games the biggest thing that saves me is reducing visibilty (add mist/fog) and not having lots of clouds floating around. I cant have my scenery object settings on maximum but thats my fault for not getting a better computer sooner. I am also a fanatic at stopping Windows services and processes that are not needed when playing, that seems to help so long as I dont turn off the wrong one!


From my very limited knowledge of train simulators (flight sims are more my addiction) I think TS12 is a very nice game to play on my old computer. I expect to be very impressed when I put it on my new machine. I have spent literally thousands of hours on flight simulators and in my experience they take alot of messing around with to get them running right on your machine. I started out with FS2004 on this computer but then upgraded to FSX. I recently upgraded the graphics from a Nvidia 8800 GT and thats what I will base the following on. It took 3 years of tweaking, experimenting and sharing ideas with other people until I finally got the best out of it. The difference in looks and performance from when I first installed is amazing and my computer had not changed, only my knowledge had.

What I am trying to say in a rather long winded way is, although I think customer support is mostly shocking from the software companies whose games I play and they release things full of bugs, over time the problems can be sorted. We all have different hardware and software combinations and it must be a nightmare for someone to create software that is expected to work flawlessly on every single computer.

If it does not run very well on my new computer then I shall come back and post my complaint. :cool:

P.S. On the flight sim subject; FSX looks nice but the flight dynamics leave alot to be desired. I fly helicopters mostly and the only one that impresses me is the Dodosim Bell 206. If you want realistic flying then it has to be X Plane all the way in my humble opinion. I have never flown a real helicopter but I know a few people who fly now or have flown and they say the only thing missing is the movement of the aircraft. I have had fixed wing PPL lessons and I say exactly the same thing. I would come back off a lesson and recreate it on X Plane. The only thing missing was the movement. The graphics are not as good as FSX but thats changed with X Plane 10.
Click to expand...

The physics in MS Flight blows X-plane away, in my opinion. And you don't have to mess with anything on MS Flight to make it work, it just does. No copters in MS Flight, however.
 
X Plane(commercial version) is certified by the FAA in America allowing you to add hours to a real world log book. I dont know much about MS Flight because the things I have heard are telling of it being a more user friendly, X Box arcade type flight simulator. Compared to flying a real aircraft how does it compare?
 
TheIlkestonFlyer said:
X Plane(commercial version) is certified by the FAA in America allowing you to add hours to a real world log book. I dont know much about MS Flight because the things I have heard are telling of it being a more user friendly, X Box arcade type flight simulator. Compared to flying a real aircraft how does it compare?
Click to expand...

I have about 600 hours in light aircraft. In my opinion and several pilots that I know that have tried Flight, it is the only current sim that when flying it behaves like a real aircraft. I have flown Full Motion 767-400ER Airline Sims made by CAE, and they spend probably upwards of a million dollars or more just making sure that the sim feels like a real aircraft to the pilot training in it. If it does not, the FAA won't certify it, so it becomes a $25+ million arcade game rather than something useful for training pilots. The X plane Sim is mostly used for instrument training but requires a complete package including hardware matched to the sim in order to log the hours. This can run an additional 5-500 thousand dollars for this cockpit hardware, to make the X-plane sim capable of logging hours according to the FAA regulations. I don't think that anyone claims that a student pilot could get their primary flight training using X-plane and then climb into an aircraft and solo. On the other hand, I think that someone that has never flown an aircraft would get much more of the sensation from flying MS Flight than they would from FSX or X Plane. I have thousands of hours on MSFS and never thought that it flew like a real aircraft, and I had hundreds of payware aircraft. I have about 8 hours in an R-22, but have never found a flight sim that felt like a real copter.

MS Flight is the farthest thing from an arcade type sim, and if you feel that it is, I would guess that you don't have much time at the controls of a real aircraft.
 
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TheIlkestonFlyer said:
X Plane(commercial version) is certified by the FAA in America allowing you to add hours to a real world log book. I dont know much about MS Flight because the things I have heard are telling of it being a more user friendly, X Box arcade type flight simulator. Compared to flying a real aircraft how does it compare?
Click to expand...

According to X-Plane.com, that's not true:

http://www.x-plane.com/desktop/for-pilots/

If things have changed, it's news to me, though I've been out of the game a few years. FYI, back when I did most of my training, in the mid- to late-90's, you could use a certificated sim towards some of your instrument flight training. You can use certain simple sims to do IFR refresher training. However, all of these required, at least at the time, at least some mock-up of a real-world aircraft; a Logitech yoke and pedals wasn't enough to cut it. I remember doing a refresher about 10-12 years ago using, I think, a derivative of MSFS, but the hardware was still a desktop box ($4000+) that more or less imitated the basic instrumentation and controls of a small single.

Although the quality of the sims themselves have improved, environments supplied by such sims have not, since it's pretty much as expensive and difficult to simulate a real-world cockpit in 2013 as it was in 1993. Pausable sims, being able to spread your sectional or low-altitude enroute chart all over the desk in front of you, things like that can't be done in a real sim let alone a real cockpit. Thus, the reality factor is missing. The environment does make a big difference.
 
Yes I knew that you did need the correct controls for making it the correct version for the FAA. I have not tried MS Flight so I am only going on what I have read and heard. The helicopter pilots who I know have racked up quite alot of military/commercial hours so I trust what they say about X Plane representing rotary flight.

Like I said about fixed wing, I have had a few PPL lessons(not qualified yet) and I thought that X Plane really felt like I was flying the Cessna 150 whereas the same aircraft from the same developer (Carenado) in FSX seemed unrealistic.

Not trying to be a know it all, just relating my experiences from using the flight sims and the information from real world pilots (personal friends, not Walter Mittys I met on the internet who I cant verify) and that does not mean I am calling any of you a Walter Mitty character :) just verifying my sources.

Original poster; Sorry for getting into the whole flight simulator topic. I will cease now.

Trainz is great. :wave:
 
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