SP1 =New Poll= What is your favorite version of Trainz -An Honest Poll SP1

[weevil]

After recent route building attempts in TANE I would like to be able to vote:

For Driving TANE
For route building TS12 by a mile

Stuart

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

For Driving TANE

Why?

For route building TS12 by a mile

Why not?

Also, fwiw, Classics at 21% is fascinating. In terms of sales, it was the smallest by a landslide margin (something like 10% of TS2009 numbers).

 

[Vern]

I voted TS2010, all the content from previous versions (including Classics 1 & 2 but not 3/S&C). Runs out the box without any real need to patch it and enough default content to satisfy most basic route building needs without touching the DLS. Compatibility mode so the 95% of trees available to route builders display without transparency issues. Only downer is that most of the track splines are of the older flat kind or don't look suitable in a western Northern Hemisphere setting, but hey ho.

Tony - re Classics, depends which version you are referring to. TC3 would have sold well on the UK market as it's an iconic route (some would argue more iconic than ECML and would have been a better choice as a default route in TANE) a fabulous selection of UK steam and diesel motive power plus passenger and freight stock. Most of us ended up buying it twice due to exclusion from TS2010 when it was refurbished and re-released as S&C2009. If you want a rapprochement with those of us still skeptical about TANE, getting S&C (and to some extent Murchison 2) upgraded to work would go a long way to restoring some goodwill.

 

[weevil]

Why?
Why not?

There is no doubt that Tane is smoother, faster and prettier. In driver that puts it firmly in the lead.

As a route builder however, with thousands of assets at my disposal, management and selection of them is key. In TS12 I could add keywords to assets in CM and then call them up in Surveyor allowing an infinite number of pallettes of assets to work from. Ratings and favourites also helped as did the pick list.

In Tane there is only the pick list and I can't access it from CM, only in Surveyor. Add to that the occasional crashes (crashdumps have been sent) and T:ane is not a patch on TS12 from a route builder's perspective.

Stuart

 

[maruffijd]

Afraid I did!

Ditto. Gave it a passing grade despite the current hiccups.

 

[Tony_Hilliam]

We're working on dlc routes and ts12 routes ready - it all takes time and resources and those are both limited.

Picklists etc are on the list too - thanks for the feedback as it makes it much easier to solve when knowing the exact issues

 

[Smileyman]

I'm not surprised to see TS12 top of the list.
From the people I talk to, it's generally that or TS10, with a few not quite giving up on T:ANE just yet.

And of course the poll isn't foolproof.
Very little is, especially on the web.
Still turned out to be a pretty accurate poll though, according to my own findings, despite some people admitting to voting for T:ANE several times. :hehe:

Brian.

 

[wilts747]

I voted for T-ANE but needed to purchase a better graphics card to get the most from it. TS12 practically ran on anything Window based and I have TS2009 working well on Linux which I much prefer as an OS. Peter

 

[AnalogOldguy]

I would vote for Trainz 2004 and Classics 1&2. They run very, very solid and enjoyable for me, especially in the sound department.

2006 SP1 lost the sounds of locomotives (through 3 different sound cards) and had sounds heard all over the map. Sound is very important to me. And the lack of headaches (for me) with the program, content and Surveyor and very good distance drawing, is why I consider them as the ideal Trainz .

Bob P.

PS, I did not vote using the poll mentioned here.

 

[martinvk]

... but I can't find a single person who even remembers voting, I figured I would make my own poll. ...

You'll have to look a bit harder. I remember voting in that poll and voted for T:ANE (once) in this one.

On my laptop, even without the top of the line GPU, I still get decent FPS, even with shadows on high in SP1. No more CTD since beta testing either.

 

[jacksonbarno]

Voted once (unlike some people wishing to skew the results) for TS12.

It's going to be interesting to see how a third party poll turns out, but I just hope that some selfish people don't ruin it for everyone.

Also, I never saw ANYTHING about a poll in the newsletter.

 

[lego207]

Also, I never saw ANYTHING about a poll in the newsletter.

Same here, though granted I rarely check emails or thoroughly read them if they don't interest me.

TS12 takes my vote. Stable and does about everything I need it do to. There are a few bugs in the Mac port we never got fixed and probably never will unfortunately, seeing as N3V really doesn't care about anyone using anything other than TANE, but it's still working better than TANE for me in many ways.

Cheers,
SM

 

[martinvk]

Same here, though granted I rarely check emails or thoroughly read them if they don't interest me.

...

I suppose the same could be said for this self-selected poll. There will probably be many who will never see it so the results will also be challenged no matter what the totals are.

 

[JCitron]

Ditto. Gave it a passing grade despite the current hiccups.

Same here.

And I will second or third my vote for T:ANE after sitting through yet another validation of 48,000-plus assets again with TS12 because it can. I have none of that in T:ANE...

John

 

[ATSF854]

Voted once (unlike some people wishing to skew the results) for TS12.

It's going to be interesting to see how a third party poll turns out, but I just hope that some selfish people don't ruin it for everyone.

Also, I never saw ANYTHING about a poll in the newsletter.

The n3v poll was certainly real, I took it and voted for TS10, and I did the same on this new poll. But the legitimacy of the poll results there aren't something I'll talk about.

TANE in my opinion (after nearly 10 months of using it for route building) is superior in route building as well as the database stability. N3V PLS fix the spline issue that I reported twice. Adjusting track at 1000ft elevation is hell. If you press backspace on accident and it only deletes one digit, the whole thing gets screwed up and sets the track height to zero despite have a much higher number in the box.

I've also only experienced 1 or 2 crashes in that time frame in TANE, but that's not to say there aren't a lot more things to be fixed in TANE before it would be my favorite.

TS12 for me has been pure trash after SP1, constant lag and stutter from scenery loading at only 3000m, then the awesome database crashes and issues with windows 10. Fanboy? No, just my experience.

 

[Zeldaboy14]

2012 I have had no problems with. Works fine for me. Even 2010 and UTC work on Windows 10 just fine. TC3, I don't really know...

 

[Vern]

TS12 up to 49922 is fine apart from the splines detaching from interactives and becoming frozen, but that goes all the way back to Trainz CE. The programmer (probably by accident) somehow managed to fix it in subsequent versions of TS12 but introduced far worse bugs such as CMP utter unreliability (move the mouse while downloading and it locked up) and splitting splines losing the gradient info on the sections, i.e. new spline drops to ground level.

TS2010 has all the content and compatibility mode so really has to be the all round winner.

TANE in my opinion (after nearly 10 months of using it for route building) is superior in route building as well as the database stability. N3V PLS fix the spline issue that I reported twice. Adjusting track at 1000ft elevation is hell. If you press backspace on accident and it only deletes one digit, the whole thing gets screwed up and sets the track height to zero despite have a much higher number in the box.

I think part of the problem is that those up-voting TANE are not the ones who have tried to build routes in it. The new CMP is more reliable than in TS12 61388, for sure, but running it at the same time as TANE, or trying to run TANE without a re-boot afterwards is asking for trouble. When you sit there with your GPU spiking to 100C and waiting a thermal shutdown, it's not amusing or entertaining. Didn't experience the particular issue related above but plenty of odd behavior with splines, particularly spline points suddenly appearing where there were none, spline height as measured with the grab tool several 100m difference to the terrain height at the same location etc. Oh and the orphaned rulers, too.

 

[RRSignal]

I think part of the problem is that those up-voting TANE are not the ones who have tried to build routes in it.

There may be a shred of truth to this. While I generally like T:ANE and have been supportive of it, I have little substantial experience in T:ANE's Surveyor.

 

[clam1952]

There is no doubt that Tane is smoother, faster and prettier. In driver that puts it firmly in the lead.

As a route builder however, with thousands of assets at my disposal, management and selection of them is key. In TS12 I could add keywords to assets in CM and then call them up in Surveyor allowing an infinite number of pallettes of assets to work from. Ratings and favourites also helped as did the pick list.

In Tane there is only the pick list and I can't access it from CM, only in Surveyor. Add to that the occasional crashes (crashdumps have been sent) and T:ane is not a patch on TS12 from a route builder's perspective.

Stuart

That's where I disagree, never used favourites or keywords when in surveyor, I pretty much know what I need and shove it in the picklist.

Other than that route building works fine in surveyor other than a slight problem when typing in numerical values for things, in that backspace doesn't work properly and a minor annoyance in that when editing, it doesn't always go back to the last location.
Not one Single Crash here either.

For me, when used for prolonged periods of several hours TS12 49922 used to suffer things vanishing in surveyor, blue patches appearing after a few hours editing, surveyor getting stuttery and less responsive the longer you use it ( Suspected Memory Leak) Add to that in 61388 terrain not always being rendered properly, track vanishing, splines doing party tricks, speed trees vanishing (Memory Leak again I suspect) and not forgetting that replacing textures causes sink holes all over the place.
Bearing in mind my recently released route took me 8 years and the last 12 months or so I've spent at least 6 hours a day working in TS12's surveyor, TS12 surveyor isn't IMO that good but usable.

In TANE I've also created a freelance route using a chunk out of a random DEM which I've severely hacked about in TANE and have none of the TS12 issues, even replace textures now works without creating holes all over the place.
I'm keeping well clear of procedural track and it's problems at present until such time as N3V / Creators get it working correctly, I can live without it for a while yet.
That doesn't mean I'm entirely happy with TANE, just that for me it's more usable than TS12. I'm well aware that people with similar spec hardware are getting wildly different behaviour which shouldn't be happening, if it was affecting me I wouldn't be happy either!
Still a couple of bugs I submitted that need looking at, they are actually looking at one of mine at present but not getting my hopes up as it's content creating related.

 

[JCitron]

TS12 up to 49922 is fine apart from the splines detaching from interactives and becoming frozen, but that goes all the way back to Trainz CE. The programmer (probably by accident) somehow managed to fix it in subsequent versions of TS12 but introduced far worse bugs such as CMP utter unreliability (move the mouse while downloading and it locked up) and splitting splines losing the gradient info on the sections, i.e. new spline drops to ground level.

TS2010 has all the content and compatibility mode so really has to be the all round winner.



I think part of the problem is that those up-voting TANE are not the ones who have tried to build routes in it. The new CMP is more reliable than in TS12 61388, for sure, but running it at the same time as TANE, or trying to run TANE without a re-boot afterwards is asking for trouble. When you sit there with your GPU spiking to 100C and waiting a thermal shutdown, it's not amusing or entertaining. Didn't experience the particular issue related above but plenty of odd behavior with splines, particularly spline points suddenly appearing where there were none, spline height as measured with the grab tool several 100m difference to the terrain height at the same location etc. Oh and the orphaned rulers, too.

I have built and worked in T:ANE on a couple of routes already including one that's about 280 miles long and dates back to 2003 and was dragged along between the various iterations of Trainz in between. SP1 is far better than the previous versions and we don't see the larger temperature issues which were present before. Now I'm not saying the program is perfect either, but in part the code has become more efficient, however, there are still issues with the temps due to this being DX11.

With my GTX780Ti, I've seen 83C and no more than that, and with some extra cooling I have installed in my desktop (tower) case, I have kept the temps lower than that. Compared to other new games, the 83C temps are not uncommon. I saw this with both Cities Skylines and Arma3. Yes, these non-Trainz programs do push the hardware too. In part the issue stems back to DX11 as that has shown to have poor power issues.

Regarding the thermal specs in general.

The optimal highest temperature for the my NVidia card is 83C, according to NVidia, the newer GTX980-series is 95C with the max for some cards as high as 105C. This is all within their operating safe ranges for the hardware, which is maximum of 120C! This means the hardware is working safely at this higher end and will not cook. In fact it is very rare for an NVidia card to thermally fail, not saying they won't, because they should and usually do automatically throttle themselves back, operate slower, and automatically kick the fans up to a higher speed to cool things down. These power curves can be adjusted using supplied by the OEM tools such as Precision-X by EVGA. However, the supplied power curves work well most of the time.

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answ...maximum-operating-temperature-and-overheating

You will note in here the mention of "if reaching the maximum temperature all the time then additional cooling should be considered" to paraphrase the link.

Now this is all well and good for the video card its self, but if the case is poorly vented, fans clogged, or their numbers and placement inadequate, then there's still going to be thermal issues with the machine. This is an issue with some of those machines purchased at the big-box stores such as your beloved PC World, or our BestBuy stores over here, and for many laptops of course. These places sell these whiz-bang big machines to the unknowing public who thinks they are these super gaming machines. If you look at the machines you'll find that this is far from the truth. They lack the cooling capabilities, the power, and use low end components. If you look at machines meant for the gaming enthusiast, you'll see those that have the venting, and space inside to allow for proper heat dissipation, and A+ grade components.

Speaking of frying video cards. I donated my old GT8800 to my dad when I built a machine for him a number of years ago. He called me recently because his screen had blocks and lines on it. When I took a look at the machine, I saw every fan, vent, crack and opening stuffed with dirt. He keeps his machine in his basement in his workshop and studio so its really dusty down there. After a dusting out using an air compressor, the machine still had a bad video card which required replacement. The old card was dead, in fact a bit of forensics showed blackened metal where the card overheated like you see on an automobile exhaust pipe! That card was toast, literally!

John