Time To Speak Out Objectively About Trainz Quality and Other

[RRSignal]

I'm not sure how much this plays into this specific issue, but one thing people have to realize is that a lot of folks, like me, have little or no interest in paying for scenery. I've bought a few of your packs to check out and as a thank-you for your excellent freeware contributions, but the reality is, I like to share my routes as freeware. I feel it is selfish not to do so. However, it's difficult to add payware to a freeware product (or even a payware one for that matter!) Remember, it's difficult enough tracking down freeware located on numerous, often-defunct third-party sites (which is another issue, and something I'm eliminating from my ongoing and future works) but paying for content on top of it complicates things even more and, I think, would make the hobby less enjoyable for those who would download my routes. That's part of the reason I never followed any kind of content creation in MSTS.

By no means am I against payware - I don't even want to think how much I've bought - but you have to understand that this is a small market as it is. Add to that, I'm sure there are a lot, if not a majority, of folks who share at least some of the above beliefs, and the market becomes smaller still. The unfortunate side-effect, however, is that a highly-talented creator such as yourself may have a tough time competing in such a limited market space.

I do hope you consider creating new assets, be they payware, freeware, or donationware. I do think they're the best available, no disrespect to other excellent Trainz creators intended. Even if you don't want to create assets, I hope you do try to continue enjoying Trainz. For all it's faults, it's *by far* the best sim out there, and one the cheapest form of entertainment available, even with payware.

 

[Euphod]

Enzo, is there any chance you would be willing to edit the grossly over sized image from your quoted post above? It's bad enough it was posted at all, but quoting it makes it appear twice.

 

[bl4882]

Mcguirel, everything I have seen of your work is done well. Why are you torturing yourself in this way? If someday someone makes up a list of the top dozen or so content creators, you will probably be on it. What more do you want? What more can you aspire to? $1,000,000,000? Trainz isn't the place to look for it; ask Auran.

Not on your back,

Bernie

 

[sniper297]

Actually I agree with many of the points in the beginning, but about halfway down the first post it seemed to turn into the Unibomber Manifesto and I couldn't figure out what it meant.

 

[pware]

While I agree with a few of the points mentioned in the original post, much of what was said has appeared in these forums before - often with no consensus being achieved in the ensuing discussion.

Many of the arguments presented represent a minority viewpoint, and while they should not be dismissed simply because of that, a balanced and objective post would also have presented the alternative views.

Peter Ware

 

[JCitron]

Jim and Peter, I too agree with some of her points, then I found the rest of the post turned into a venting session.

Ms. McGuirel. I understand your frustrations with the attitude of some of the community members here. We all come down on them when they become the gimme pigs. They really don't represent the majority of Trainz users.

Trainz is not perfect, but neither is a lot of things in life. You just have to deal with what you've got and learn to get around the humps. I say this not as a fan boy protecting my favorite game (oh sorry simulation). I say this as someone who has worked in the computer industry for nearly 30 years. If we all felt the way you do, we would still be doing everything at the command prompt because Windows is far from perfect, and is made up of code that is decades old.

Oh, please don't be so hard on yourself. As a music major, I was constantly self-doubting, and still do today. It's part of the artist's life. We are usually overly critical of ourselves, and when our works are not accepted by others right away, or in huge numbers, well then we feel we're neglected or not good enough. This is an endless circle and a deadly one!

You really do great work. On my personal route, and those that I have modified and brought up-to-date, I have replaced all the existing trees with mostly yours models. Your Norwegian Maples and Rock Maples are gorgeous trees, and fit very well into where I live up here in the Northeast. So again don't be so hard on your own soul. It does nothing more than make you more disappointed in yourself.

Regarding the licensing issue, bring this up with the creator of Speed Trees. They are the ones responsible for enforcing the license, not you. Granted you paid a lot for this license, but this is like a concert pianist spending $180,000.00 on a Bösendorfer grand, and not an Imperial by the way, or $125,000 on a Steinway Model D. It's part of the package of tools you need to be successful. Your purchase may not pay off immediately, but it will in its own way. In part has the creation of those trees made you happy? Well there again the purchase has paid off its self in some way even if it's not monetary.

Take care and feel free to email me if you wish.

John

 

[cascaderailroad]

I have to read all the details of post #1 in detail.

It appears that Trainz is the top of the line ... over Railworks, MSTS and others.

Rail simulators are for a small limited target for very few of the worlds gamer community.

If Trainz went belly up ... I seroiusly doubt that any other rail simulator would/could step up to fill it's shoes.

Without Trainz ... Rail simulators might just faze out, and fade away ... and we all would be forced to go back to Model Railroading.

We should all work together for making improvements in the game ... and support N3V.

 

[matruck]

 

[ZecMurphy]

Hi McGuirel
I am going to go over this in detail (note, may take a few posts). However, some of this needs to be explained clearly. I may also ask a few questions...

Horizontal Graphic Texture Shearing/Tearing
Absurd SpeedTree Graphic/Tearing[/quote]
Note, I've combined these two, as they appear to be similar issues, although there is not enough info here to even begin to help with it. I guess, I need you to provide a screenshot of this issue. It may be something that can be easily fixed.

Compared to new games being released, the graphics look ancient.[/quote]
That really depends on the content... By the content creators... Trainz can look quite good, if the content is done well. With normals maps, specular maps, and env maps, with good detail in them. That said, if you use old content, it is going to look, well, old. You can't make old content look like new content with the game engine, the content itself needs to be updated. Again, we come back to, maybe we should just stop ALL old content from working, and REQUIRE all content be to current 'high end' game specs (and have very little content available...).

The game system check refuses to acknowledge the Nvidia Driver which I feel shortens the draw distance even more.

If Trainz/TrainzDiag cannot see your drivers, then this is a driver issue, and NOT a Trainz issue. Try removing then re-installing your Drivers. Please ensure you've got the latest drivers as well.

This intelligent draw distance is crap, absolutely crap. Allow each individual to determine their own settings for best performance.

If you are seeing the draw distance limiter come into effect, then this means you are reaching the resource limits for Trainz. Remember, Trainz is a 32bit application, and hence does still have a limit on the amount of RAM it can use - a 64bit OS will improve this, but it's still limited to about 3GB IIRC (1GB on a 32bit OS from memory). If the limiter is coming into effect, then Trainz is preventing itself from crashing due to inefficient objects. We have progressively improved the limiter with each update/version.

Your game engine is ancient, and totally needs rebuilt from the ground floor up.

Actually, it's not really that old... It has it's heritage in earlier versions of Jet, however TS2009+ are on a relatively new version of Jet.

If N3V is done creating service packs for TS2010, then combine them into one service pack. It takes hours to install them.

TS2010 only requires you to install two patches (if you don't want the MP beta/SP4). Namely, SP3+hotfix1, and hotfix2 (the recent patch).

The service pack installer is absolutely slow and should be able to rewrite the necessary files much much much faster.

Service Packs (which update code and content) have to modify extremely large files (the 8 .ja files are 7.5GB in size - not including the 'core' ja files, such as 'data.ja'), and as such the speed of the update is limited to the speed at which Windows can modify these files, which can be quite variable (e.g. how many programs are running, how much space is in your TEMP folder, etc).

It is time for N3V to rethink this and find a means for any asset to be used in any version, forward or backwards. They claim there are reasons for this to be such, but reality is that this is purposely done.

Backwards compatible (e.g. TS12 using older content) is fine, so long as the content is error free. If it has errors, then it won't work.

Forwards compatible (e.g. TS2010 using TS12 content) won't work unless an update is made for that version to use newer content (e.g. TS2009 SP4 can use TS2010 SP3 content - excluding SpeedTrees, which were a new feature in TS2010). There is a limit as to how far we can, or will, take this though. For example, TS12 introduced a new sound engine, which requires modified enginesound assets. Or the seasonal splines system in TS12, which requires changes to the code that won't function with TS2010. There is a point at which we need to make the choice to stop updating an old version, and release/improve the newer version.

There are to many versions of this game platform. TS12 is by far the worst marketing scheme to date. Truthfully, it was a Route Pack with some minor game engine improvements. These game engine improvements should of been part of TS2010, plain and simple. The routes should of been made available as an Add-On Pack to TS2010.

Some of those 'improvements' are actually major modifications to the software, such as introducing an entirely new sound engine. Especially if it means that older content needs to be upgraded to work correctly (e.g. enginesounds). Generally, major changes are only made available in a newer version of Trainz, particularly to help recover the cost of those changes.

Absolutely clueless why the Multiplayer Patches provide a "Download All Feature", but “Heaven to Betsy” you can not put that into the non-multiplayer version. The Multiplayer "Download All" Feature is the most effective and efficient manner to download updates as it overcomes CMP Asset Version issues whereas you must do each manually in CMP Single Player if you are at Asset Version KUID2:**:**:2 and require Asset Version KUID2:**:**:4.

Issue Four: Those who were very active in the Multiplayer Testing got ultimately screwed.

The MP beta is also TS2010 SP4, effectively. However, as it removes Compatibility Mode, we do not list it as such. Except for the multiplayer functions (which are a public beta), this version is fully supported by us, and we do provide technical support (including limited technical support for the MP beta - remember, it is a beta, and this area may not function correctly).

N3V claims they gave it to TS2010 people for free, but the reality is that TS2010 Multiplayer is extremely inactive. TS12 Multiplayer seems to be the platform version of choice. TS2010 Multiplayer People are left out in the cold as a result. This is in conjunction with Issue 3, Subsection #2.

We gave you the MP system for free for TS2010. How well this is used is then up to the community. We aren't going to strap people to their chairs and force them to play, it's their choice, and if the community doesn't use the TS2010 MP beta, then this is their choice. If TS12 is the version of choice, then this is the choice of the community, and if you wish to join these people, you need to go to this version. No different to 3rd party groups specifying a minimum version for their content.

Issue Five: Importing/Exporting Backups

Even though I copied over the folders onto a backup drive after countless days of missing asset resolution and other things prior to the new install, all I can say is "Welcome Back". Broken Assets and missing assets galore when resolved prior to the back-up transfer.

I just absolutely love CMP Import process times and among that the cpu resources it hogs. Recode CMP to allow a manual transfer of back-up folders to the new install folder directories with the ability to generate a new Database Repair. How simple is that? The installed assets do not require registry values so why can't you do this.

Well, we require you to import the folders (note, import the 'original' folder first, then the local folder, so as to ensure the 'modified' assets overwrite unmodified assets), so as to ensure all assets are added to the asset database. You can simply move the folder over, then start an extended database repair, however Trainz may not see all of the assets during the repair or may remove assets since they aren't already in the database. To ensure every asset is imported, you have to import them. You may not like it, which is up to you, however this is how we ensure the database doesn't skip items or have items removed incorrectly.


(continued next post)

 

[ZecMurphy]

(continued from last post)

Stop the Database Error Checking and this functionality should of been implemented in TS2010 SP4. Just love to play a game I then find I have no time to do so because of the nature of the game coding.

This means something has corrupted the database, and Trainz needs to repair it. This could be Windows, firewall, etc, etc, etc. If this is happening regularly, then you'll need to locate the program that is interfering with the database (generally firewall or antivirus, but may be something else as well). We could stop it doing database repairs, but then you'll likely see assets disappearing, or you may actually see issues with running Trainz itself...

I could go on and on about this, but lets face it N3V is doing this for revenue streams. A few features require you to Buy.

Yes, we are doing it for money, since we are a business. I believe you did the same with your payware trees (sold them to earn money). As to new features, we gave the community (for free!) access to the multiplayer system if they had TS2010. That's a big feature, which was given to the community in an update to TS2010... Not all features are introduced this way, but many are, and not always are they announced. That said, in most cases, updates/patches/etc are specifically for repairing issues/bugs that are being seen in that version, so as to improve the software.


I have removed that last section, as this really doesn't need to be replied to. If you feel you've been 'ripped off', then there are ways you can take action. Ranting on a forum, making attacks against people/companies are not the way to go about it, and could very well hurt any chance you have of taking action (particular if any of it is untrue). It could actually land you in hot water.

 

[ZecMurphy]

Now, this is a warning to everyone.

We will not tolerate personal attacks, from either side.

If anyone makes any personal attacks, we will be taking action.

 

[RRSignal]

Well, we require you to import the folders (note, import the 'original' folder first, then the local folder, so as to ensure the 'modified' assets overwrite unmodified assets), so as to ensure all assets are added to the asset database. You can simply move the folder over, then start an extended database repair, however Trainz may not see all of the assets during the repair or may remove assets since they aren't already in the database. To ensure every asset is imported, you have to import them. You may not like it, which is up to you, however this is how we ensure the database doesn't skip items or have items removed incorrectly.

Actually, one of my favorite things about Trainz is that you can copy an entire freakin' installation and have it work like a charm. You can copy it twice and have TWO fully-operable installations. You can copy it three or four times and have three or four fully-operable installations. Far more importantly, you can backup everything and not have to worry about reinstalling everything and altering settings.

Ironically, despite what some critics say, this actually makes Trainz one of the easiest-to-use products available.

 

[martinvk]

...You can copy it twice and have TWO fully-operable installations. ...

Funny how I never considered that to be a feature but yes, it sure is great to have when updates are about to be done. Duplicate the installed program, update one and if anything untoward happened, delete it and you still have a fully functional version. Definitely a great feature.

 

[mcguirel]

Zec,

First and Foremost, you have always been a good Trainz Family friend. Please, Keep that in mind when you read the following.

I am not going to copy the quoted comments, but structure my reply in a manner that hopefully flows well and is also understandable.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Issue One Reply ( Graphics ): I am fully aware old content can have a great impact on the feel of the experience. This is not what I am really pointing to as all creators work to the best of their ability to provide the community content.

• Normal Mapping is a performance disadvantage on the CPU I believe as they are not processed on the GPU (nmay be wrong). My specs of my computer is well above the minimum.
• As for my Nvidia Driver (GeForce 285.58 Driver) - as a fresh install all driver updates to the latest have been installed. Please explain to me why even if in the default folder location and/or a specified folder location it fails to recognize the most up-to-date driver?
• Horizontal Graphic Texture Shearing/Tearing: Finite Nvidia Driver settings can help resolve some of the issues, but many attempts of trial by fire has come up to the point some issues have been resolved. Most of the SpeedTree issues have been resolved, but there is still artifacting taking place and textures tearing in a few instances.
• The Jet Engine: Still the same platform with modifications. I will just leave that to rest as skills are trumped by your skilled programmers.
• Intellegent Draw: If infact you are progressively improving this implimented coding which was placed in TS2010, then N3V needs to make these improvements available to those who bought TS2010 whereas N3V implimented this process as well as other versions this feature has been implimented in. By not providing the platform fix to all those who have to deal with the intellegent draw implimentation unless you buy the next version only to experience similar situations is not a good approach. This leads me to the fact of "Getting Everyone One The Same Page".
• Intellegent Draw #2: IIRC also takes into account the GPU RAM Allocation, therefore the limiter is decreased further. PAE can help, but it also increases instabilitity. The fact remains that the limiter should be removed or ability to be shut off thus allowing individuals to choose video driver settings that work best for their computer hardware.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Well, Windwalker has commented already therefore I will not continue to update the points I wanted to. I will comment here on two points of Windwalker's comments about Normal Mapping/Graphics Driver.
Real Time Compression (DXT01 thru DXT05) is infact ran thru the CPU and can be processed thru the GPU. DXT10 which I do not believe is recognized in Trainz as of yet is most likely pushed to the GPU. As for the graphics driver, Windows (x64) Fresh Install Recognizes the most up-to-date Nvidia Driver therefore why is it not seen and as a result I believe impacts my draw distance with a more than satisfactory 9800GT 1GBDDR3 Video Card.

As for the bottom area of my original post, it has been stated "can generate hot water". I reported the truth, and was known by internal N3V Staff including select Trainz Support Staff months before the post.
I am leaving this post behind and allowing it to become a old post moving forward. It seems to be wasted effort.

 

[WindWalkr]

[*]Normal mapping is a performance disadvantage on the CPU I believe as they are not processed on the GPU (nmay be wrong). My specs of my computer is well above the minimum.

No; normal mapping is purely a function of the GPU. There is no additional runtime performance cost on the CPU, and only a very little initial loading cost caused by the additional data being transferred to the GPU.

[*]As for my Nvidia Driver (GeForce 285.58 Driver) - as a fresh install all driver updates to the latest have been installed. Please explain to me why even if in the default folder location and/or a specified folder location it fails to recognize the most up-to-date driver?

As Zec has noted, Trainz doesn't do anything special here. We ask Windows for fairly standard hardware graphics acceleration. If Windows can't provide it, then you've got a driver problem and it's not our fault.

[*]Horizontal Graphic Texture Shearing/Tearing: Finite Nvidia Driver settings can help resolve some of the issues, but many attempts of trial by fire has come up to the point some issues have been resolved.

Tearing can be fixed by turning on v-sync in the Trainz options. This will lower your frame rate, but in most cases gives a better visual result.

kind regards,

chris

 

[WindWalkr]

[*]The Jet Engine: Still the same platform with modifications. I will just leave that to rest as skills are trumped by your skilled programmers.

It is indeed the same platform with modifications, but so Windows 7, Mac OS X, Linux and indeed iOS and Android the same platforms dating back 20-40 years. Even with other game engines- Unreal Engine dates back to 1998, older than Trainz.

What's much more important that age is capability. In some areas, we're way way way beyond the earlier Trainz releases (think the number of baseboards in ECML as compared to the numbers in the first version routes, or the number of polygons in the locos, or the number of visible objects, or the draw distances, etc. ad infinitum.) In other areas, we really haven't changed much (the user interface, the lighting model.)

[*]Intellegent Draw: ...

I would simplify a lot more than Zec. We believe that the vast majority of problems here can be laid directly at the feet of the content in use.

That's not a criticism of the content creators, because they built the content for an engine that could only handle 1.5km draw ranges, and when we take that out to 5km draw ranges there are suddenly a lot of inefficiencies exposed which were once minor but are now very serious. We've provided the necessary tools to identify and resolve this problem, but it takes a concerted effort on the part of the whole community to completely eradicate it.

[*]Intellegent Draw #2: IIRC also takes into account the GPU RAM Allocation, therefore the limiter is decreased further. PAE can help, but it also increases instabilitity. The fact remains that the limiter should be removed or ability to be shut off thus allowing individuals to choose video driver settings that work best for their computer hardware.

We don't want to create a product where a player has to fine-tune advanced settings to make sure that their system is stable.

We don't want to create a product where a route or loco cannot be enjoyed on many computers because the person who create it was using tweaked settings and thus expects all users of the content to use the same tweaked settings.

We don't want to create an artificial content divide between the "haves" and the "have nots". If you have a better computer, you will get better performance. You won't, however, have access to an exclusive "high detail" set of content. You are certainly welcome to make a choice for yourself if you find content "too high-detailed" or "too low-detailed", but we won't force that choice beyond providing recommended specs for our software and we won't support content creators who want to force that choice.

kind regards,

chris

 

[WindWalkr]

I will comment here on two points of Windwalker's comments about Normal Mapping/Graphics Driver.
Real Time Compression (DXT01 thru DXT05) is infact ran thru the CPU and can be processed thru the GPU.

Texture Compression and Normal Mapping are not related. Please don't use my comments on one subject to refer to an unrelated subject.

Now that said, ALL texture decompression is handled by the GPU, never the CPU. (This is the only runtime aspect of the process; the actual texture compression is handled offline by Content Manager and may be hardware accelerated or not. Once the asset has been installed, and you're in the game, it's all GPU.)


kind regards,

chris

 

[johnwhelan]

I would simplify a lot more than Zec. We believe that the vast majority of problems here can be laid directly at the feet of the content in use.

That's not a criticism of the content creators, because they built the content for an engine that could only handle 1.5km draw ranges, and when we take that out to 5km draw ranges there are suddenly a lot of inefficiencies exposed which were once minor but are now very serious. We've provided the necessary tools to identify and resolve this problem, but it takes a concerted effort on the part of the whole community to completely eradicate it.

The thread has raised some interesting points.

Occasionally I've been known to create content. On the last few items I've made I've created normal mapped and plain versions and run them past a couple of beta testers neither seemed to notice any difference. If I crank up the normal mapping though I notice a slight difference.

So the question then becomes to normal map or not. If someone does a reskin normal mapping makes it more complicated but not impossible, these days the nVidia plugins make generating a new normal map fairly easy. I use Blender so provided I can recall the recipe it doesn't take long to add.

Another issue is when building a layout its possible to identify the worst performing asset. Great but when its the focus of the scene not quite so helpful. Could we have a top ten or something so the second and third most problematic assets can be identified as well.

What might be helpful in the wiki would be a set of best practices for content creation with an explanation as to why and where varying from it would have the most impact. For example we're seeing a number of new scenery objects of under 1,000 polys without lod arriving on the DLS. I assume with a 5 km drawing range rather than the 1.5 km one they have a longer impact on performance but I could be completely wrong.

Idle thought are we now at the stage where route building is best left to the specialists? And even some sort of performance tag might be useful, laptop friendly, liquid cooled nitrogen only?

Thanks

Cheerio John

 

[WindWalkr]

So the question then becomes to normal map or not.

If you can, do.

Another issue is when building a layout its possible to identify the worst performing asset. Great but when its the focus of the scene not quite so helpful. Could we have a top ten or something so the second and third most problematic assets can be identified as well.

Quite possibly, but it's not the highest item on our list of priorities right now. I'd like to do a lot more with providing performance feedback to content creators, but it's an endless topic with no immediate benefit to the majority of end-users. For now, the simplest approach is to use a test route and repeatedly prune any objects that you're not interested in.

What might be helpful in the wiki would be a set of best practices for content creation with an explanation as to why and where varying from it would have the most impact. For example we're seeing a number of new scenery objects of under 1,000 polys without lod arriving on the DLS. I assume with a 5 km drawing range rather than the 1.5 km one they have a longer impact on performance but I could be completely wrong.

Try the 'best practices guides.

cheers,

chris

 

[ZecMurphy]

On the last few items I've made I've created normal mapped and plain versions and run them past a couple of beta testers neither seemed to notice any difference. If I crank up the normal mapping though I notice a slight difference.

This really depends on the textures involved (mainly, what sort of surfaces you are looking at). If working from photo textures, you really need to do a bit of 'cleaning' to ensure a good normals map. You might need to 'overdo' the normals map to make it visible, particularly if the texture has highlights in it.

One of the advantages you may find is in using a specular map (alpha channel of the normals map). This gives you control over the intensity of the specular highlights on a particular 'pixel' of the texture. Good where you've got textured/baked shadows, or weathering that will reduce 'shine'. One that I've found good for rivets, etc, is to have a slight 'shadow' around the edge of the rivet, which makes the shine of the rivet itself slightly more visible, which in turn makes the rivet more pronounced.

So the question then becomes to normal map or not.

As Chris said, if you can, do it. The best way I've found to 'see' the normals map is to move the 'clock' around in Surveyor. Bit extremely, but it allows you to check it's all working. Although you don't really see it yourself (this is a bit like a writer not seeing all the errors), it is there, and if done nicely, will improve the scene. Subtle can actually be quite a good help here.

If someone does a reskin normal mapping makes it more complicated

That depends on how far the reskin takes things. If it's simply changing the livery, but not and of the 'bumps', then the normals map shouldn't need to change (unless it's got the 'paint' or 'weathering' in it!).

As note, since you use blender, have a play with baking normals maps (I believe they may be a little easier than 3DSMax in this case). You don't need to do it for the entire model, just parts, at least to begin with. Things like rivets, bolts, etc can be done quite nicely this way. Another is smooth surfaces. For example, the roof of a 'box van' can be made to appear much smoother than it is with a baked normals map.

Idle thought are we now at the stage where route building is best left to the specialists? And even some sort of performance tag might be useful, laptop friendly, liquid cooled nitrogen only?

This really depends on the content. If the content has LOD, and efficient use of textures, then the detail settings in Trainz should allow both ends of the spectrum.

That said, if you make a route that will only run on high end computers, even at minimum detail, then you might need to look at some of the techniques used. Or issue a warning. Or, release a 'cut down' version with slightly less detail.

The thing is, you don't need to be a specialist, you just need to be a bit more selective of how you build the route, and what you use.